Black travelers who go abroad, especially women, are far more likely than other travelers to be stopped and searched by U.S. Customs according to a recent Government Accounting Office report. The bad news is that this practice can be seen as simply the extension of policies within the agency itself. PNS commentator Linn Washington Jr. is a journalism professor at Temple University and a graduate of the Yale Law Journalism Fellowship who writes extensively on inequities in the criminal justice system.

Bringing Cuban made cigars into the USA is illegal.

However, flying back from a vacation in the Dominican Republic last summer I overheard two tourists on the airplane openly discussing their Cuban cigars.

Neither man was a major smuggler. One just loved good cigars, the other man routinely brought back "primo" Cuban cigars for business clients. On the beach a few days before, this man said he was willing to take the "risk" for his clients. What struck me about this casual admission of smuggling was that the last thing this white man worried about feared was a search by U.S. Customs agents while for me -- a black man -- being searched is a constant fear.

This white man had never heard of the crime "Flying While Black" -- the practice of targeting black travelers for searches on the erroneous suspicion that minorities are the majority of drug smugglers.

I knew about Flying While Black and its highway counterpart, Driving While Black (DWB), because I've written numerous articles over the past decade detailing these repugnant practices.

Recently, the Congressional General Accounting Office released a report detailing how black women were strip-searched by U.S. Customs agents more than any other American passengers returning from overseas travel -- despite the fact that black women are the least likely of any category of travelers to be found possessing drugs or other contraband, including Cuban cigars.

This GAO report is hardly surprising. Its findings merely mirror evidence contained in media accounts, Congressional studies and lawsuits filed against the Customs Service.

One lawyer in Chicago is representing over 100 black women who have filed a class action lawsuit against the Customs Service alleging illegal profile searches. One is a teenage girl searched by Customs agents when she returned from Jamaica with her mother and aunt. The girl is black while her mother and aunt are white.

Customs officials consistently deny that their agents use skin color as profile evidence of possible drug smuggling. Black Customs employees dispute this -- one told me she removes her braided hairstyle when vacationing to avoid being profiled when she returns to the USA. Customs agents consider hair braids a physical trait of possible drug smugglers.

Although the mounting evidence documenting disproportionate searches of minority travelers does not surprise me, I remain surprised at the refusal to see that these searches are a symptom of a deeper sickness.

The real problem is not well intended Customs agents overzealously waging the War on Drugs, as Customs officials' claim. The real problem is racist employment practices within the Customs Service.

Beleaguered black Customs employees say top management refuses to address workplace racism, sexual harassment and other abuses that produce the atmosphere propelling the much-criticized profiling of black travelers.

Customs officials deny discrimination. However the evidence here, too, indicates otherwise. Earlier this year, a federal jury awarded $500,000 to a black Customs employee after determining that the employee's firing resulted from racial discrimination.

U.S. Customs Commissioner Raymond Kelly bristled during a December interview when asked repeatedly if he planned to launch a major initiative against employment discrimination comparable to his commendable initiatives against allegations concerning profiling of black travelers.

Kelly said he has taken steps to strengthen protections for Customs employees who expose wrongdoing within the agency.

However, Customs officials are moving furiously to fire Cathy Harris, a veteran Customs employee in Atlanta, whose exposure of profiling of black travelers prompted a Congressman to introduce anti-profiling legislation this year.

Customs officials demoted the white male supervisor in Atlanta responsible for directing much of the profiling at that airport exposed by Harris. Yet, officials are firing Harris, proclaiming she violated regulations by releasing documentation on the profiling.

Customs officials defend firing Harris while demoting the supervisor as fair enforcement of disciplinary procedures. Officials deny they are retaliating against Harris for exposing profiling and filing numerous job discrimination complaints, including one against the demoted supervisor.

Kelly won't comment on Harris' firing but did caution, "You have to understand that a lot of the people claiming to be whistleblowers only do so when they are facing disciplinary actions for other infractions." He refused to comment further.

Until officials in the Customs Service and other law enforcement agencies seriously address and properly penalize employment discrimination rampant within their agencies, racial profiling of minorities will persist.

Racist employment practices and racial profiling are flip sides of the same badly worn coin.