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p>I have a big deadline right now, but I feel compelled to respond to this bulletin from the Chicago Police that asks people to “immediately report any or all … suspect activity” including note taking, camera usage, video usage and map usage. [via BoingBoing, link to flyer image].
Before 9/11 I would have said that this sort of thing makes me want to explode, but I’ve expurgated such language in the same way that I no longer say hello to friends named Jack at the airport. I’ll simply say that the bulletin makes me sad and upset. You know exactly whose photo taking will be reported as suspicious and whose wont; Chicago has the third largest South Asian American population in the country, there are plenty of browns to drop a dime about.
I’ve been on the receiving end of this myself. Once I took a pad and pen to the courtyard behind my office to try to figure out how to craft a memo for work and was interrupted by the police who said that there had been a report of “suspicious activity” namely somebody “suspicious” “taking notes”.
I showed them my note pad and explained my behavior (which wasn’t unusual for that area at all), but that wasn’t enough for them. They wanted my ID and then they followed me back to my office so that they could verify that I actually did “belong” there. All for sitting around on a nice spring day and writing on a pad. And this was in a liberal town where they actually decided to follow procedures rather than detain first and ask questions later.
While I was able to get the whole thing straightened out, this sort of policy is deeply flawed for a variety of reasons:
- The list of suspicious activities is so broad that basically you get calls about “suspicious people”, i.e. brown folk. This means that the cops waste a lot of time with false alarms which crowds out their ability to do things that actually make us safer from terrorism, like investigate. Conservatives understand opportunity costs w.r.t. economics but seem to forget it when it comes to security, which baffles me.
- Cops are less able to actually investigate terrorism because they have alienated the very people who might help them get important leads. After my experience I think twice before reporting even a stray bag somewhere, can you imagine how hesitant an immigrant Muslim might be to go to the police if they heard something suspicious?
- Not only do cops do less productive anti-terrorism work, they also do less policing overall. The last figures I saw showed the FBI reduced the number of important crime prosecutions (drugs, organized crime, etc) by 30% in the aftermath of 9/11! There were 17,448 deaths due to drunk driving in 2001 — think about how many lives might have been saved if more resources had been spent on road safety. That’s almost a 9/11 death toll every two months.
- Innocent people get arrested and swallowed up. Purna Raj Bajracharya was a tourist from Nepal who took a video of a street that had a building with an FBI office in it. He was arrested and vanished entirely, his case was wiped from the public record. He got out only because the same FBI agent who arrested him got concerned and even that FBI agent couldn’t get the system to release Bajracharya, he had to go to the Legal Aid Society.
Security theater makes white people feel safer, but it is deeply pernicious and makes us all less safe. Every security expert I’ve spoken to has strongly criticized these sorts of policies (and I’ve been friends with some fairly high ranking security folk), but the politics of security seems to over ride all other considerations.
Moor Nam – I get stopped for not doing anything. I had a highway patrolman follow me for miles once waiting for me to slip up on the rules of the road to pull me over so he could run my license. It’s easy for you to say nothing will happen to you. I hope nothing happens to anybody. But I’ve had things happen to me already, and we have blogged about plenty of other cases where things have happened to other people because they were brown, so I know it is possible.
How does it help security to tell the public that they should call 911 every time they see somebody use a map, camera, video camera or take notes?
The sister of one of my closest friends died in a terrorist attack (I knew her very well). I have a family member who survived one in India, a cousin who narrowly missed a bombing in London, and have several acquaintances who barely survived them in the USA including one who is now scarred and handicapped for life. I understand that there are threats out there, however a real threat shouldn’t justify nonsensical actions on our part.
What I want is (a) an America that lives up to its values including due process and (b) an America that makes its citizens secure. These actions violate our values AND make us much less secure.
That’s the way it should be.
Some people might not side with me on this, but there are times when my ‘practical’ viewpoint overpowers my ‘idealistic’ one. If I’m in a hurry and a simple ‘showing the ID card’ can resolve a problem, then I’ll not argue with the cop.
While flying, I have a lingering feeling at the back of my mind that I’m being singled out by a lot of people. But this never stops me from doing things that I would normally do.
The “if you see something, say something” policy feeds paranoia and harassment.
I don’t mind the extra security that much, but I only fly once a year or so. It’s the ‘Link it to terrorism’ mentality that I think is out there:
Global Warming/Energy Policy: Our Oil dependancy funds terrorism and causes global warming. Immigration and illegal aliens: The southern border’s wide open Terrorists could come through. Need more federal funding for your law enforcement: Declare that public ice ring a potential terrorist target and get federal funds.
So when is the “third-largest South Asian-American community” (actually, everyone who’s against this ridiculous policy) going to do something about this?
everyone protects their own turf. USA belongs to the goras, who built it up from the wide open land it was to the superpower that it is today. You guys, first/second/third generation browns etc, are all visitors who decided that they liked it and did not want to go to the trouble of working hard to make their own homelands something similar, so just decided to freeload on what this country has to offer. Except for an occasional desi serving in the military for the promise of a greencard/citizenship, I doubt if desi immigrants and their progeny thought of dying for their adopted land. So, no point crying when goras implement their policies to protect what they think is their own, when they think it has been harmed by someone brown.
Anna and friends do not take it to heart, but I have noticed that often when people disagree with you or say something that does not agree with your general outlook here, your moderators often castigate them, delete their posts, and ban their ips etc. Now, it is all okay as it’s your blog and therefore your terriroty, and the few sentences which are subjective enough to be interpreted in any number of ways which make up the posting policy of this places comments apparently give you the moral authority to do that as well.
I ask you all, how is the increased gora surveillence of the browns any different from anna and her moderators prowling the comments, deleting, critiquing and banning? Might or might not be right, but putting up with it is the price the commentors have to pay for the privilege of posting here. Similarly, it could be that the average gora american sees such treatment as the price the browns have to pay for the privilege of using the facilities of this country.
aquafina, True dat.
Because America has a notion of non-racial citizenship at this point, one which was hard won by Catholics, Jews, Blacks, Latinos and Asians, each of whom had been excluded from full membership in the polity before. For us to go backwards here is a repudiation of all that America stands for, which is full and equal citizenship leading to full and equal standing under the law.
In other words, the founding idea of America is a government of laws and not men. The Gora Americans who are supporting such policies are destroying that basic ideal. They are unamerican.
dude. that’s such a pussy unamerican attitude, you should be waterboarded to ‘fess up to your al gaeda, traitorous credentials.
In most cases, brown ppl are ‘screened’ not because of what they say or do, but because of the way they look.
We own the blog, it is not a democracy and there is no bill of rights. The goras do not own this country, and it is a democracy with a structure of civil liberties that all government employees have sworn an oath to protect.
Forgive my ignorance, but what are ‘goras’? Native Americans?
Whitey. White Devils. Honkeys. Crackas. Caspers. Ofays. Gweilo. Gringos. Albino Apes. Pink Nips.
I can go on but I think you get the idea. Those are my favorites though.
I have a 9/11 file, which gets me cordoned off to the special screening section everytime I fly. How? My lovely little Coach tote bag used to serve as my laptop carrying case while working in NY. Unknown at the time, the condo where I was staying at, was right next door to a monstrosity being built, with over-sized cranes doing the bulk of the work throughout the day. As I made the hop, skip and beat to a cab just outside our door, little snowflakes and raindrops carried down the noxious fumes and traces of nitroglyceride, which tested positive when boarding a Southwest flight. Not only did I miss my flight home and required to surrender all of my belongings until they cleared my identity, but I have been stamped into the system as a potential terrorist to watch. I did inquire about the legality of the offence, to which airport officials said I’d be off the list in 5 years [insert bomb joke].
Did I mention I am 5″6 and 102 lbs?
aquafina, you desi, how dare you! Go use a bisleri handle instead!
aquafina brings up some good points:
1) This land belongs to goras, who first arrived a few hundred years ago. The rest of us are visitors. 2) Setting up ridiculous systems of paranoia and policing are exactly like moderating blog comments (remember that time SM Intern didn’t like what I had to say and I was locked up in Cuba?) 3) we “first/second/third generation browns” have DONE NOTHING FOR THE US
I sure as hell feel privileged.
Back to freeloading off the gracious gora sahib who allows me to live in his native land.
Why the hell does it always come back to me? I am not the only moderator here. I don’t delete when someone disagrees with me, I delete when they break our rules. For you to insinuate otherwise is like spitting in my face.
The “general outlook” here is something we work hard for, which attracts amazing commenters and distinguishes us from 90% of what’s out there. If you think I’m some biased, dictatorial thought nazi, why stay? We have a very clear, very reasonable and very necessary commenting policy. It’s totally unfair of you to somehow transform those guidelines and our best attempts at enforcing them in to something petty and unjust.
And “prowling”? You think I get off on this? On moderating? Seriously? Honestly, if you knew how much work this site requires (maybe you should listen to Abhi and Amardeep’s radio interview), you would feel embarrassed for writing such thoughtless, ungracious, pseudo-provocative words.
Then why faux-piously complain about it or worse, insinuate that we’re like a police state? It IS our blog. We do what we’ve done for four years because it works. Those of you who are so perturbed never make the one choice which makes sense– not to read something you so violently disagree with.
I don’t go to your home, start smoking and then, when you object, give you some pathetic weaseling about “you’re like Bush, killing my freedom…but it’s YOUR house, so I GUESS it’s okay…”. You get to control the environment in your home, where I might be a guest. We get to control the environment on this blog, where you are a guest.
My, you contrarians are so righteous and brave, crusading for freedom on a private website, where you are anonymous and not invested in a damned thing. Spare me. I have no time for such shenanigans– not when I need to prowl and persecute innocents, like I’m the Chicago PD.
AHAHAHAHA. Ennis, you forgot ‘papadum‘
I live in Staten Island 🙁 , New York, and commuting to Manhattan daily, I often get such treatment. If I am on the Staten Island ferry or in any other public space with a high volume of human traffic, I often get searched by the police. In these same places, if I have a backpack sitting next to me and I get up to throw some garbage in a bin that is even 6 ft. away, passengers often stare at me until I sit down near my backpack again. Being searched in front of many people, often by the same officers on different days can be a tad humiliating, especially because of the intent with which the public watches. I’ve also noticed that for every 5 or 6 brown people they stop and search, they stop one random white person (even if they don’t have any large bags) so they can attempt to argue that they aren’t being discriminatory. To be honest, though, I get searched on flights to India every time, too, so I guess no peace for me.
I am reminded of Brazil, where an errant fly causes somebody to be flagged as a terrorist. On a side note people are advised not to wear the same shoes/clothes after handling fireworks/hunting to the airport as that can also cause positive tests for nirate residues.
Bwah. Thanks, Ennis. Now I know not to read any further than that.
Also, I’m sorry you had to go through that nonsense. Personally, I don’t see how anybody can just shrug off racial profiling/targeting. Being black, one I get a lot is security and employees following me around in stores, watching to make sure I don’t steal things. Not the same as being frivolously picked up by the police and taken in for questioning, but the base is the same – keep your eye on that colored person over there because you know (s)he’s up to no good. It makes me sick that ignorance like that continues to make its way into policy. But the sad part is that it’s not all that surprising.
Sorry for botching the quote tag up there! My newness, it’s glowing.
Did I miss any good ones? I collect racial epithets, especially obscure or evocative ones. I added Caspers and Pink Nips because I remembered them later.
Haha, no I think you’ve covered it, as far as I know.
But there’s also Snowflake, which is fitting for this time of year.
Down here (South Florida, that is), Nordic features will get you profiled every time. I vote Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-Palm Beach as the best place to be brown in America. Even the whites over here are so nice and brownish.
Here’s an instance of brown on brown paranoia from B’bay, Dec 2007: My cousins and I were driving past a naval facility in South Bombay at @2AM, and decided to stop and take a pic in front of a giant metal gate labeled “Elephant Gate”. There were no signs posted or anything stating no photography. As we were getting back in the car, two randon local-yokel types pulled up on a scooter and told us to stay where we are, that we were doing something illegal, and went to get the gaurd who had been there all along about 100 meters away. We were asked by the guard to give him our camera and he erased pics. We then asked to speak to the supervisor (a martini too many?) and were led inside. We explained to the supervisor that we just wanted a picture of the gate and made some nationalistic statements, after which the officer told us to just take the picture and buzz off. It was no big deal to the officer, and we had to go through the rigmarole just because of the local vigilantes. This can happen anywhere, not just the US.
Taking photographs in an airport area is a criminal offence in India. Although as always – a small bribe works 😉
Photographing any Indian military installation is a violation of the law. If you have a problem with that take it up with your local MP and try and get the law changed.
Besides I’d like to see you try and photograph any military installation in any country at 2 at night and not get picked up. There is stupid and then there is stupid.
I seem to remember a saying from the early nineties…..”Young Republicans….tomorrow’s Nazis today!”
Seems, in the end…it’s more true than not. But what can you expect from a world held hostage by “James Bond” style villans…and sadly no “James Bond” to sleep his way to their demise….
Wow. Just Wow. Another blog post decrying racism against browns followed by racist statements about whites.
Ennis said “Whitey. White Devils. Honkeys. Crackas. Ofays. Gweilo. Gringos. Albino Apes. Pink Nips.”
My stomach hurts seeing these names applied to me. So funny huh? Ha ha ha. I can’t read this blog anymore.
For shame.
Gorrrri –
I’m sorry the collection of slurs has put you off. As you can see from the context, it was not directed at anybody, it was merely an enumeration of ethnic slurs in response to a request for a definition.
While I respect your strong visceral reaction to these words, I am somewhat puzzled that you felt they were directed at you. Further, a number of these — Gweilo, Gringo, Whitey, Casper — are mild slurs at best.
I’ve tried to make this a welcoming space for everybody and taken some heat for it; I’d hate to think I’d made you feel unwelcome here.
E
So Prashant, lets get this straight: The guard and the officer were okay with it, but the local goon who raised the ruckus is the genius? This is a facility in the middle of B’bay on a busy road, not remote or set back or anything.
Its a question of knee-jerk mentalities in both cases, as in action occurring independant of gray matter.
What a bigoted and ignorant rant !! (comment #56). One of the first casualties of the Iraq war was a Desi.
I have no problems with profiling in theory. My understanding of it is that it is simply related to probability. The application of it is where we get into difficulty. Those who are the frequent recipients of it will certainly have much to say about it.
I do find the views of democracy here very idealistic. My expectations are much lower which enables me to avoid being persistently offended or entitled.
Ultimately all of these issues are mediated via historical and political influences etc and thus our concept of who we are and what rights and expectations we assume will change relatively speaking. Those of you who believe the practice of democratic principles is ahistorical and apolitical and therefore offer everlasting protection are in for further pain.
No democracy is ever safe or unsafe as long as people are around.
You are looking at this the wrong way. This is a site where everybody hates everybody. If you perceive that the comments are ant-white please remember ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer’.
I don’t hate white people. Some of my best friends are white. Really!
Yes, we are here for the clean restrooms and so thankful.
🙁 Maybe I don’t want to go to a large city for grad school or a career…
Ennis, to the question of ‘what are goras?’, I think the simple response of ‘whites’ would have been fine. And more generally, I can see why a white person would be put off by some commenters’ attitudes on SM (spanning multiple threads). And HMF, I know it is white privilege that makes me even think like this or stand up for them…and I’m fine with that. I should also add that it was embarrassing to have Doug read all the anti-black racist stuff on the LSU thread…so it cuts both ways.
I could have sworn that “Pink Nipples” was something to tell Scythians apart from Lemurians. It would have made a great test too: “Hello, random hot desi girl! I can tell where your ancestors came from just by looking at your nipples”. What girl’s top would not rise to the occasion?
Back on topic: it’s one thing for the Chicago PD to post notices with the “See something/say something” message, but is there any indication that they themselves take it seriously or expect it to produce any results? From the disjointed stuff I’ve read over the years, the impression I have is that a real terrorist group cannot be detected at the local scale or by random passers-by, but only by someone with access to a lot of nationwide data going back 10 years or more, and computer power to match. This is generally what is declared by the computer science departments at many universities, I suspect solely to get DHS funding. At least one of them (the CS department spiel, or the Chicago PD) is wrong in its assumption. Which?
As thus far Ennis has only stated that the words in question applied to goras, I can safely assume that none of them were directed at me or any of my white-skinned sisters.
Thus, I’ve got no problem with it. *__^
Ennis – I know. You were quoting slurs made by others. My comment was not directed at you. Talking about insults – I wonder how a Yank would react when an aussie bloke becomes mates with them. Best mates insult each other. There is even a group on FB for Aussie insults.
I know how to insult an Aussie – call them a Kiwi!
Please don’t call Australians “Kiwis”. You must be one of those Canadians.
Melbourne desi, does this have something to do with why sledging in cricket seems to be much more accepted by Australians than by South Asians?
I can speak Strine with some strain, but Kiwi is a damned hard dialect …
If we can put racial profiling aside for a second, I have a bone to pick with the “See something/say something” in general. There are several facets of American society in which enforcement is totally dependent upon anonymous informants, and many of these situations are not criminal matters at all. For example, in upscale communities, neighbors blatantly rat on each other by calling their towns’ code enforcement if they don’t like someone’s new fence or tool shed or the length of the grass. By dutifully following up on anonymous complaints, our cities have not only condoned “ratting on neighbors” but made it a civic responsibility.
But wait, it gets better. One of my two businesses is a chain of preschools, obviously a heavily regulated business as well it should be. Any disgruntled employee who was denied a vacation request, any parent who is two weeks behind in payments and is upset with the poor employee demanding money, can drop the proverbial dime on our business. They can call DCF, file some phony complaint without even identifying themselves, and DCF WILL investigate us within 48 hours as stated in Child Care Ordinance.
Neighbors or consumers, in this case parents, have the right to file complaints. But I object to the anonymous part. By letting people hide, we are taking “See something, say something” to a very undemocratic, fascist level.
This is not a brown problem. This concerns all Americans.
aquafina’s comment is damn stupid on at least 10 different points. I recommend ignoring the troll.
Gorrrrri, I don’t want to speak for Ennis, but I think the purpose of listing all those epithets was to contextualize that “gora” is often used as a slur, although it can also be used in a non-inflammatory way as Amitabh described (i.e., simply to mean “white”). I hope that doesn’t turn you off from reading.
Ginge, I’m glad you’re around 🙂
yes. it is standard behaviour to insult your mates. In fact it is a feature that in all sport you insult your the opposing team and call its captain “a wanker” Eg You call an opponent whom you admire ‘an utterly worthless bastard’. Sledging is ‘fun’ in Australia. Spectators hurl abuse at one another (sometimes fight) at the footy (Australian football). Hence I think the reaction of the Australian team to a few monkey noises from Indian fans was unaustralian. I could call a mate ‘a dole bludging skanky ho with a body like a brick shithouse’ and she could call me ‘two face ratbag with a face like the north end of a southbound cow’. All done in jest.
Hmmm – calling an aussie a Kiwi is asking for a punchup 😉 To talk Kiwi – talk like a regular aussie -but swap ‘i’ and ‘e’. So six is sex and vice versa. Bloody hilarious. congrats on your strine – I find it very sexy to hear a man talk in strine. It would be a shame if it died out.
aquafina: “everyone protects their own turf. USA belongs to the goras, who built it up from the wide open land it was to the superpower that it is today.” If you edit out the underlined part about the wide open land and replace with “who raped, tortured, stole land from the native americans,” then yes, your statement is correct. “You guys, first/second/third generation browns etc, are all visitors who decided that they liked it and did not want to go to the trouble of working hard to make their own homelands something similar” Visitors? I was born and raised here, attended US govt schools, and English is my first language. This IS my homeland! “I doubt if desi immigrants and their progeny thought of dying for their adopted land.” I doubt the majority of white people think of dying for their “home” land. “So, no point crying when goras implement their policies to protect what they think is their own, when they think it has been harmed by someone brown.” Again, this land is just as much mine as it is a white person’s. “Harmed by some brown?” As a Desi-American, why I would I even dream of harming my country? Echoing what Ennis said, so many people have fought for a colorblind citizenship system in the US for years, and the actions of these so-called “goras” are disgusting and unamerican.