Racial Profiling?

(Fox News) - Jesse Jackson is coming to the defense of two white major league baseball umpires from Kentucky — Sam Holbrook and Greg Gibson — after investigators asked their neighbors whether the men were in the Ku Klux Klan.

Baseball is stepping up background checks on its umpires, following news that a professional basketball referee bet on games.

Jackson says — "Major League Baseball has done a disservice to its progressive social history by equating southern whites with white supremacists."

Its "…false impersonations of friendships and ill-contrived questions further press sensitive racial stereotypes, with no basis for suspicion. They have essentially defamed their people in their own neighborhoods."

A baseball spokesman denies any inappropriate conduct by the investigators.