I live in Washington, D.C.
I have lived here since I moved to this great city from my native California in 1999, to attend graduate school. Back then, I went home at least twice a year; between Priceline.com’s $125 roundtrip fares and living three miles from Reagan National Airport, flying to NorCal was as easy as taking the “Metroliner” to New York City. I loved traveling. I loved the excitement, the anticipation, the permission I gave myself to buy mind-rotting magazines and over-priced candy from Hudson News, right before sauntering up to my gate.
Then, everything changed.
Traveling was no longer glamorous and thrilling, it was fraught and terrifying. Was it going to happen again? How could we stop it? How do you protect a massive, liberty-loving nation from crazed zealots who are willing to sacrifice their own lives for some twisted ideal?
Security. Lots and lots of security.
Lining up to be screened for hidden box-cutters or submitting to more thorough searches through our baggage made sense. We were trying to protect this country. We kept repeating, “Never again.” But somewhere between justifiable caution and utterly comprehensible fear, common sense was lost. What replaced it was an obtuse over-reliance on the obvious– but not your obvious or mine, no. It was the “obviousness” of the ignorant which suddenly became a battering ram of blunt discrimination used to profile, persecute and pervert. I kept flying home, but now it took hours. Hours to get through security. Hours stuck during layovers in random cities. Hours to get to and from the airport, because my Mother was no longer able to pull up to a curb and wait five minutes for her child to leave baggage claim. And when I did leave baggage claim, I did what I always had– I rushed in to her waiting arms to be held, except now, instead of mutual joy, I was looking for comfort.
“They pulled me out of line and checked me TWICE”, I’d howl. And the more often it happened, the less I wanted to fly, anywhere. Watching everybody else get on a plane EXCEPT for the vaguely brown-looking people was depressing, then infuriating. When concerns were raised initially about how racist TSA’s procedures were, how discernment had been replaced with straight-up discrimination, things got worse, in my experience. I still got pulled out of line, but so did an 89-year old WASP in a wheelchair, in considerable pain, who was flying home to die. Watching TSA brusquely shove him around in his chair, looking for a weapon he was presumably sitting on, while he trembled broke my heart. Yes, this was justice indeed. Now the “extra screenings” were being conducted on brown people and the vulnerable, common sense be damned. I thought of all of this because I read this:
Azaad Singh cried when he entered the glass enclosure at the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., airport for extra screening.
He was patted down. His bag was searched. And then the security officer went through his prized possessions: his first Elmo book, his second Elmo book, his mini-mail truck.
Azaad, whose name means “freedom,” is an American and a Sikh.
He’s 18 months old. [AP]
Because all Desis are barely two degrees apart, I think I have seen pictures of this child on Facebook. That made it even harder to read this news story, because my brain immediately fleshed out a grainy mental movie, starring this baby. I could picture him scared, crying and confused, and my heart cracked a bit. No, it’s not going to ruin his life and I’m sure he’s recovered quickly and is doing well. But I can’t help but hang my head in sorrow for the path this country is on, for the choices which are being made which result in “Security Theater” vs. actual security. Part of me wants to cry for Azaad, because he’ll never know the America that I grew up in, that I enjoyed for 26 years before everything went horribly wrong. I know, the correct response to this maelstrom of feelings is to get motivated, to get up, stand up, and shout for change. I’m willing to do that, but I’m also grimly aware of how much work it will take– and how little will come to us, as a result of it. I have the right to be dismayed. I don’t have many rights left. I’m keeping that one.
Azaad’s father, Amardeep Singh, told a House hearing Thursday that he’s not sure how he’ll one day explain to Azaad why he and his Sikh family seems to always need extra screening. [AP]
Now just to be clear– this is not our Amardeep Singh, who blogs at Sepia Mutiny and also has a precious toddler son. I don’t want to confuse anyone.
I can’t imagine how he’s feeling. I fly (ha.) in to a livid rage when a dog bullies my puppy at the dog park. I can’t fathom what feelings churn within when it is your baby being intimidated.
The House Judiciary civil rights subcommittee is exploring potential legislation to stop racial profiling. Witnesses proposed that Congress require studies to document how often particular groups of victims are stopped or arrested and whether they were threats to the United States. Legislation also should provide for legal redress for those who were wronged.
Witnesses told the committee that profiling remains a national problem for African-Americans; Hispanics are increasingly victims, especially in states and communities that have cracked down on illegal immigrants; and, since Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims and Sikhs have been regularly targeted.
“It’s not fair. It’s not safe. It’s not American,” said Singh, who was returning from a family vacation in Mexico two months ago when the incident occurred in Fort Lauderdale. He’s director of programs of The Sikh Coalition. He testified wearing a traditional Sikh turban. [AP]
He’s right. It’s not fair, it’s not keeping us safe and it’s not American. And poor little baby Azaad deserves more than this depraved reality show he was forced to star in, at the airport.
don’t the dudes at the security just stop for a moment and think “what are we doing?”. wonder what they think they achieved that day.
the worst exp. i had with this, the main one in fact, was in dusseldorf, where all the swarthy young males were stopped by the police at the departure gate and given a thorough double-check. some of it was so farcical (the double-checking of individual pieces of candy, the curiosity as to what a laminated map meant) so for one dude that he started laughing, at which point he was taken aside and interrogated. that made it clear to the rest of us we should take it all seriously….
I can totally relate to being dismayed but I wouldn’t wanna have the right to be dismayed. I’d much rather hold on to the right to be safe if someone was stepping over my other rights. That’s probably why I accept extra screening as long as it’s done politely and non-invasively even if it’s being done discriminately e.g. I have to bear the brunt cos I’m being lumped with the identities of the non-white bad guys. tbh in my experience I haven’t experienced discrimination at airport screening. I’ve seen even white toddlers taken out of line and have their shoes checked.
The last time i flew to east coast, i was carrying my items (lip balm, tooth paste, deo) in a clear plastic bag & quantities as per the TSA requirements. They took that stuff, did some testing on each of those & patted me down. I was enraged since my other desi friend was also questioned. I am brown, clean shaven, look like a student & well dressed when i travel. I don’t think these are random screening but looking at the brighter side, after 9/11 there are no major terrorist attacks in USA but in India there are several. I think achieving that is important, given that my anger lasts for few minutes. I can bear the extra screening as long as innocent people are saved from any future attacks, so all is good. Now i have become smart, i check-in all my stuff & just walk without carrying any luggage. Also this is not just done in US, i was screened in Hong Kong. That was even scarier, they took me into a separate room. There were three cops. One patted me down, other checked my carry-on & the other was standing right behind me with his hands on his gun. I was 21 at that time & got really scared.
Racial profiling doesn’t work. Aren’t a lot of the TSA people Desis?
Do they really know what they are looking for I wonder or if a lot of it is mindless busy work?
@Chestnut
The problem is that they have a limited amount of time and energy, so while they’re checking you extra other people are going through with less scrutiny. Given that we have had bad guys who are brown, yellow, black and white skinned, is this really a good idea?
Remember what happened with Jihad Jane, she was recruiting white females precisely because they wouldn’t be checked. Does that make you feel safer now? How about the shoe and pants bombers? This isn’t an academic point, it’s about leaving the back door open while you double bold the front one.
I’m in two minds about this. Having a VERY muslim name I’m always picked out to be checked when I travel – including inside India. Where I find that a pleasant attitude moves things along quite quickly. It doesn’t always, but I’m half of that interaction, and if I don’t adopt a ‘how dare you think I’m a terrorist?’ attitude it leaves more space for security to just check rather than give in to their own demons and intimidate. Sometimes it’s still awful. But I’d rather they checked than not.
I wonder if some of the anger I hear stems from a sense of lost entitlement? Which is not an unreasonable way to feel, but I’m not sure rules against racial profiling are in and of themselves the best way to solve the problem.
I’m white, and was pulled out of line at Heathrow by a desi woman who was working security there. I’d forgotten I had a tiny clip in my hair and it had set off the alarm, so they needed to do a search with the wand/pat down. Whatever, no biggie I guess. I was sort of making friendly small talk and laughed that I had forgotten to take the clip out, and reached up to get it, and she started screaming at me. Literally screaming at me–“don’t move! Don’t move a muscle! Keep your hands where I can see them!” Everyone in line turned to stare and gawk; I’ve never been more embarrassed in my life.
I’m not sure what the point of telling that story was, other than being singled out and made to feel like some sort of criminal really REALLY sucks, and that it sometimes has less to do with skin color (not that it doesn’t often have everything to do with it) than with some security personnel being extremely tired and overworked.
There is a political tendency to explicitly remove what is termed political correctness and be explicitly for profiling. It may be a vote getter in elections. A sense of knowing and exercising rights is a core part of American culture. Now some are denied this right, and the idea of being judged by the content of character and not color of skin goes possiblly too. Land of the free for all is a basic right that some Americans see possibily in doubt.
I’m shocked that there are people commenting here actually defending these fake-security practices. This kind of complacency is probably the reason citizens haven’t yet organized and refused en mass to support a government that allows this. I wish at least one airline would point-blank refuse to screen any passengers (except perhaps, at the very most, the metal detector method that was in place pre-9/11). I would gladly fly with such an airline.
Folks, let’s face it. All this moral posturing against issues like racial profiling and torture during interrogation is nice to hear. But reality? Most terrorists in recent times have been brown. I can’t understand how anyone can say “racial profiling is of no use” in security. Can you ever quantify how many easy terrorist attacks have been prevented simply because a brown man is very likely to be checked, which serves as a deterrent for the bad guys from using simple means like box cutters? Now they have to look for more difficult ways. They have to look for white folks to do their job. A new loophole to cover, yes, but much more difficult now. No one is saying an 18yr old is plotting something. What prevents an adult wrong doer from hiding a weapon in a toddler’s clothes if they weren’t being checked as thoroughly? How sure can you be that no one slipped in something into the disabled person’s wheelchair to pick up later? Ok, all those of you who denounce racial profiling, why don’t you stand up and propose a more effective and more PC way for airline security?
Racial profiling is a real, but often overlooked thing–when i tell friends about getting pulled out of the airport line more often than the average joe, they often suggest that I’m jetlagged or overly-sensitive to such matters (or acting out, inviting such!). Until there is a systematic analysis of who gets pulled out, and what demographics are over-represented, we won’t know what is really going on, and we will continue to be belittled by people who think that TSA is race-blind.
This, of course, does nothing to help the situation of racial profiling, which I think exists (based on my own experiences & those of my friends). I would love to hear (here) about studies that verify or contradict the lived experiences mentioned above. I don’t think that the TSA policies will improve until there are quantitative studies showing a correlation between race/ethnicity and special treatment (e.g., pulling ppl out of line) which are recognized or presentable in mainstream media. While not all of us are in academia, I suspect that some little academic or two has been working on this, and that their research is just waiting for a bigger spotlight, by a (potentially justified) desi population. So why don’t we try to figure out if that little researcher’s work is done, and if not, advocate or donate money to appropriate areas to have the reasonable scientific research done, so we know what’s really going on?
the tsa is using the drug playbook. back in the day, when drug trafficking into america on airplanes was at its peak (they have better ways to get the drugs in now), there were cases where drugs were hidden in toddlers’ prams, and in one case, if memory serves correctly, a dead baby was used to smuggle drugs.
no reason terrorists won’t use similar techniques. quite the resourceful lot they are.
security is a thankless job. the mishaps that are prevented because of the measures put in place will never get noticed unless there’s a lapse.
not to say there aren’t dicks. that asshole co-worker of yours that gets his/her kicks by intimidating people? if that person works at the tsa, the passenger is going to suffer.
the tsa can take measures, perhaps, from customer service, where you as a passenger can submit a feedback form with the personnel’s name or badge number and your grievance.
if this is a personality thing, and the person is breaching training or protocol, you will not be the only person experiencing this. if a particular employee has a high number of complaints, from people with no record or obvious reason for suspicion, they should get pulled up, reprimanded, fired.
this is on the TSA to balance security with passenger comfort. perhaps airport security should be privatized. but then their calculations would be purely financial.
How many irate passengers = 1 successful terrorist attack?
If ABC< damages from a terrorist attack, they don’t tighten quality standards.
p.s. there is obviously a sense of entitlement in this post about airport security. i don’t blame anna, that’s what ya’ll grew up with in the US. In india, only ticketed passengers were allowed past security. always. so when i came to the US, and saw the whole meeting your lover/friend at the gate, as soon as you get off the plane, i was charmed. after 9/11, i was reminded that it was a luxury not a necessity.
If a particular person wants to throw away their rights they are free to but why should they try to argue for an entire community to do the same?
I’m w/Politics. You wanna get frisked? Be my guest, just leave me the hell alone. I have a plane to catch and just because Miss TSA is bored (hasn’t met her frisking quota?) as I am getting in line to board (and because I have been frisked before oh so many times), doesn’t mean institutionalized paranoia and dumb-ass profiling AND politics make me feel I should have to suck it up just because I write on Arab-American affairs for several publications and I, of all people, should have some idea why this is important. Sorry, I don’t, Get your damn hands off me before I whomp you over the head with whichever non-English I can get my hands on first. This stuff has got to stop. I am about ready to create a roll-up poster with my theories as to why I am being so frisked so I can entertain the audience staring and wondering who the lucky person is who gets to sit next to me. I’m sorry. It’s not random. Profiling and other criteria are regularly used and I don;t think it makes us any safer just like I really don’t think all those soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting for democracy in the US. OH, PLEASE. The turnip truck I fell off of left at least a week ago, not today.
What I find so wrong is that the last two terrorists – the underwear bomber and the Times Square bomber – who boarded a plane bought one way tickets in cash and no luggage. Why aren’t they flagged?!!!! Behavioral profiling would have worked. Also the underwear bomber was super wealthy, he could get passed security without a even a passport. All of that security and the last two terrorists get passed it with behavior that should have sent alarm bells ringing.
One was black and the other South Asian. Neither Middle Eastern. So racial profiling for Middle Eastern men doesn’t work. Plus what white people don’t get is that there are Arabs who are white skinned and light eyed and have blond hair. They run a spectrum from African looking to Nordic looking. You don’t even need a Jihd Jane.
I don’t know if profiling does or doesn’t work. But keep this in mind: Law enforcement uses profiling to find serial killers (more prolific ones have all been male, white, loners …). The most successful terrorist mission in US aviation history had 19 terrorists all sharing a religious, racial and gender profile. Yes, there have been a couple of attempts by others not fitting that pattern. But with limited time and resources, certain heuristic methods have been followed. Just as much as there have been a couple of female serial killers (Aileen Wuornos ), it isn’t exactly the first kind of suspect that comes to mind when one hears of a serial killer loose does it ? The TSA is probably going by what is an established fact based on recent experience, and that is Middle Eastern men are the most suspect. Yes, it maybe a wrong directive. But that is how things work. If the 19 hijackers had been Chinese women, I doubt the TSA would be hassling Middle Eastern looking males. Would we be upset if Chinese people standing in line next to us were pulled out for extra screening ? I doubt it.
I completely agree with RealityCheck…..Racial Profiling is necessary to reduce security cost to tax payers…..Even if I used an unbiased computer to predict terrorists based on background, religion, nationality, color….I bet 95% of potential terrorist would be South Asian or Middle Eastern….So brown people should stop crying and learn to live with it…And about being discriminatory and unfair….well life is unfair…most people are what they are because of family they were born into…if they were born in sub-saharan country half of us have been dead before reading this post
Except for 9-11 how many of the terrorists on the airplanes have been from the Middle East? Shoe bomber, underwear bomber – neither were Middle Eastern. Racial profiling doesn’t work. Behavioral profiling works much better for airports. Also the guys who have been terrorists in the West were middle class and rich. They got radicalized somewhere before their terrorist career. They probably should have been flagged by local, state, and country authorities and cross country law enforcement long before they ever attempted to board a plane.What they have in common is not race but radical thoughts. What you need is law enforcement on local, state, federal, and cross-national (interpol) working together along with the public (they need our help too) to catch or at least to flag terrorists. By the time a terrorist bombs a plane, there is a whole lot of actions, meetings, planning that was missed by law enforcement.
The TSA is the LAST line of defense for airlines, NOT the FIRST.
Look at the most recent arrest of two would be terrorists in NYC – one was Latino. Different race – same radical thoughts.
Jihd Jane – white blond female – different race, and gender – same radical thoughts.
Remember the LeT attack in Mumbai in 2008? Think the Let is only in South Asia and not in US? Wrong. They are here, and they are mulitracial including white guys – different races same radical thoughts.http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2010/02/18/the_long_arm_of_lashkar-e-taiba_98806.html
One LeT guy – a white guy – used to work for CAIR. Look up that case in Virginia back in the early 2000s. All those Virginia LeT guys (multiracial) are in prison.
@20
I agree that the TSA should be the last defense against aviation terrorism. But when you have the law enforcement mess that we have in this country, that is unfortunately what you get. The CIA will not or cannot by politics/design share information of terrorists obtained overseas. 2 of the 9/11 hijackers were tracked by the CIA in Malaysia but this information was not shared with domestic law enforcement when they entered the US. Consider the situation of illegal trespassers into the US across our borders. Why cannot they be treated as potential terrorist threats ? If a person was allowed to board a plane without being asked about their citizenship, a passport, without a ticket, without means of financial support in the US, without luggage I daresay other travelers who are subjected to such questions would be very upset. But on our borders if somebody crosses over and is questioned by police officers using the very same guidelines used at airports, it is apparently a “violation of rights”. Go figure. Until a uniform policy is used everywhere, there is no hope of any improvement in security.
White men and women already share the same radical thoughts – Jihd Jane and Let white guy not the first and definitely not only ones:
Al-Qaeda’s white army of terror Published Date: 13 January 2008 “Security experts say the growing secret army of white terrorists poses a particularly serious threat as they are far less likely to be detected than members of the Asian community.” http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/AlQaeda39s-white-army-of-terror.3667425.jp
So perhaps white people ought to stop crying and learn to live with racial profiling too.
From that article
“One British security source last night told Scotland on Sunday: “There could be anything up to 1,500 converts to the fundamentalist cause across Britain. They pose a real potential danger to our domestic security because, obviously, these people blend in and do not raise any flags.
“The exact figure of those who have converted to Islam and turned to terror is not precisely known. Not everyone who converts becomes radicalised and it may be that just two-fifths go down that path, but it remains a significant and dangerous problem.”
Carlile said he was not aware of specific numbers, but confirmed to Scotland on Sunday that Whitehall was aware of the new threat and was actively tackling it. He said: “These people are an issue and are potentially very dangerous. There have been cases of non-Muslims converting before, and of these, Richard Reid, the so-called Shoebomber, is the most obvious example.
“They are more difficult to detect and the security services are right to place some focus on this issue.”
Carlile said the majority of converts were targeted when they were in prison: “These (converts] are outside the standard type of profile which most police forces would have of a terrorist, which is male, young, and of Middle Eastern or Asian appearance. That is why they are so potentially dangerous.”
Carlile added: “The Home Office has a lot of money, millions of pounds, which is being put forward for communities and fighting radicalisation. There is no question how tackling this issue is best achieved: it is achieved at a community level.“”
Racially profiling for Middle East or Asian men is so 2009. To keep up with terrorists and beat them you have to include white men and women today because no one suspects them.
Sameer:
When the Washington DC area sniper attacks were going on in 2002, the talk show host Phil Donohue made that infamous comment about the killer had to be white because most serial killers were of that profile. In effect he was saying that only white people should be profiled. So yes, in certain contexts, white people are profiled more, rightly or wrongly.
I’ll never forget the experience my mom and aunt had when flying to India out of LAX. Because they were both wearing saris (not because the metal detector went off) they were both pulled aside and forced to stand in a completely see through box for everyone passing through security to gaze at. They had to stand there on display for 5 minutes before anyone came to search them. It wasn’t so much the pulling aside that bothered me since I understand that the many layers of a sari are probably an opportune place to hide contraband; it was the publicity of it. The need to put them on display as it were for all passers-by to gawk at. They could have taken them aside to an enclosed area and done the examination in private. Needless to say my mother was completely embarrassed having never experienced this in her 25 years of living in the US. I understand times have changed, but I completely agree with you Anna that some people have just thrown common sense out.
On a related note, I’ve always been curious about whether this blatant profiling (sadly even of small children) occurs in UK airports as well? Every time I have flown through Heathrow I’ve always noticed the obvious number of South Asian workers there and I’ve always been curious if this same activity goes on considering that it would be South Asians profiling other South Asians. Or do they leave this job to the few Anglo British?
I say this as someone who travels a lot, about 4 times a month mostly domestic, once a year to India and every other month to London. Have never been subjected to anything remotely similar to other people’s experiences on this forum. The worst I have been treated in terms of hostile immigration agents was at Heathrow twice. I can see why people are upset about being singled out, but isn’t there an argument that due to these very security procedures there have been no successful attacks?
I should clarify, there is no way I am implying in 28 that what others are saying does not happen, just that has not happened to me yet
LOL at white people being profiled ever.
Reality check- here are a few groups for you to consider-
suicide bombings- started by the Tamil Tigers various attacks on civilians + perceived military both domestic and international with substantial support from populations in other countries- Mossad, Haganah, ASALA, the IRA, ETA. The ASALA staged an attack at Orly Airport in 1983.
@30
Yeah well, I doubt cops would be stopping non-white people if they were looking for some violent KKK gang members would they ?
@31
I’m sure there is an alphabet soup of terrorist groups to search for… Baader Meinhof, Red Brigade etc all have staged violent attacks.But not in the US. In the post 9/11 context, there hasn’t been any other active group other than Islamic groups making repeated attempts by any means possible to attack the US.
The point of course is that racial profiling need not imply racial discrimination. Many of the above comments seem to suggest that the two are the same but it is relatively easy to conjure up scenarios where the “optimal” law enforcement strategy might involve targeting people from some groups more than people from other groups. This poses a problem: when can we conclude that racial profiling is indeed racial discrimination? The Wikipedia page on racial profiling gives a reference to a paper by John Knowles, Nicola Persico and Petra Todd (“Racial Bias in Motor Vehicle Searches: Theory and Evidence”, Journal of Political Economy, 2001) which tries to answer this question using data from searches conducted by the Maryland police. The paper cannot be accessed easily unless your institution subscribes to the journal or JSTOR. I’ll content myself with giving the abstract which makes for interesting reading:
Police checking for illegal drugs are much more likely to search the vehicles of Africanâ€American motorists than those of white motorists. This paper develops a model of police and motorist behavior that suggests an empirical test for distinguishing whether this disparity is due to racial prejudice or to the police’s objective to maximize arrests. When applied to vehicle search data from Maryland, our test results are consistent with the hypothesis of no racial prejudice against Africanâ€American motorists. However, if police have utility only for searches yielding large drug finds, then our analysis would suggest bias against white drivers. The model’s prediction regarding nonrace characteristics is also largely supported by the data.
It’s interesting to note that the paper suggests that the Maryland police may actually be biased against white drivers!
Personal Note: Whether or not the police is biased, it still sucks when you are targeted. I’ve been targeted at Pittsburgh, Houston and L.A airports on visits to the US. (Oh, the sheer joy when you find your boarding pass stamped and highlighted with “SSSS.”) But I also spent a year in Jerusalem, Israel where I learned that I “looked like an Arab.” My first realization was when on a random walk around the old city, I found myself near the Western (or Wailing) Wall. I saw the security officials just checking the bags and cameras of everyone [read “white”] who was entering the complex but no one was being asked for identification. The moment I stepped up, however, I was taken aside and asked for identification. It proved tricky because I had left the passport at home. I offered to go back (and not enter the complex) but this wasn’t allowed either. I had to wait for a security official to come and conduct an interview before he allowed me to enter the complex. After a couple more such encounters, I learned to always keep my passport on hand.
I think racial profiling is a symptom and not a core problem. The core problem is American Foreign policy. If you can lower US meddling in middle east, eliminate drone attacks and illegal wars then you would not have this screening problem in Aviation for the minorities.
Brilliant. We’ve solved the probem of Islamic terrorists targeting Americans.
Now, if we could only stop them from targeting the Israelis, British, Spanish, Indians, Jews, Lebanese, Indonesians, Iraqis, Chechens, Jordanians, Egyptians, Christians Nigerians, Buddhists, Beauty Contestants, Algerians, Saudi Arabians, Women, The Pope , Homosexuals, Filmakers, Novelists, Cartoonists…
I could go on, obviously.
The remedy of all the insane security screenings that everyone has to go through is worse than that threat. More people die from drowning in the bathtub than do from terrorism. We have gone way overboard. IMO, the terrorists have won, because we have already lost many liberties that we once had.
36 comments and everybody is missing the key point that Anna was trying to make, there were a couple of Elmo books in the bag. And everybody knows that Elmo is the new face of terror.
Pay close attention what is said at the 2:17 mark, it scared me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIpZwJxC_EQ
@36 Brooke Lorren “More people die from drowning in the bathtub than do from terrorism.”
umm, but when someone dies in a bathtub it’s just him/her. Whereas one terrorist can take down a flight load of passengers. Apples and oranges.
As someone said, you wouldn’t be looking for brown men if you were looking for a KKK member. Limited time and resources mean profiling is inevitable. I’ve never taken offense at being searched, I’d actually think very poorly of security if I was not thoroughly searched. Flying on an airplane is not a fundamental liberty, its at the discretion of the airlines and the airport authorities.
@Manju: Great post. The overly PC atmosphere means that the intolerant ones are given a free pass, but the ones who point out their intolerance are seen as “bigots”. It’s a topsy-turvy world, but people are not going to take it forever. We’re already seeing the political ramifications of this arising.
What’s sad is that we know there are outfits out there who would have absolutely no qualms about stuffing a toddler’s pull-ups with explosives. So yeah, searching babies is not that bizarre an act if you think about it.
Sorry to personalize in this way but Manju why don’t you put yourself up for profiling for yourself and your family and then get back to us on how it works out and how rational it all is. And also if certain people are going to have to learn to be quiet and accept these processes, which are deeply contrary to American culture, then maybe they should be consistently celebrated as American heroes for putting themselves and their family on the line for others
Maybe a business meeting after a check after which you have to compose tour thoughts and make a meeting a competitor made earlier because you fit the profile, or maybe tour kid. Think about it from a cost of business angle maybe
Also the point about the political aspect is some parts of the move towards racial and superficial appearance based profiling may be, indeed about politics and not based on sound principles. Those who object to racial and superficial appearance based.profiling are concerned on these grounds
Sorry to belabor the point, but also consider the impact on ability to compete on educational grounds among children whose racial identity is or is assigned through superficial appearance based characteristics to a profile. A generation that is forced to accept that there identity or assigned identity makes them an identified problem unless proven otherwise. Based on what and with what processes will we be asked or directed to take these steps, and for how long? What is the.metric for when these supposed hopefully special circumstances can be lifted, and how would this be decided?
I am a prety tall and broad brown guy and being lazy enough, I always have a bit of a stubble. I would presume I will be the prime contender for some good old profiling at the airports. But interestingly , all throughout my frequent travells, I dont think I have been singled out more than 2-3 times. But when my mom (who is barely 5’1” and the most innocuous looking thing imaginable) was here for a visit, she got singled out atleast 3-4 times in a month and they did the whole wand search and pat down on her every time.
I am still trying to figure what makes her such a perceived risk
The KKK IS about race. They are a white only group. So in this case it would make sense to look only for white people.
Terrorism that we face now is NOT done by one racial group. The terrorist network is multiracial and multinational, those born into the faith who became radical and those who converted and then became radical. So racial profiling will not work when the organization is multiracial. Not only does it include men but another report wrote about terrorist recruiting women to implant explosives in the breast so to beat the super scanners airports have installed in places like Britain.
@46
I think you are missing the point. Profiling is a composite tool, with gender/racial/religious/ethnic/behavioral data forming weighted factors in building an approximate model of the kind of terrorists one is looking for. To entirely sweep off any factor is short sighted. Depending on the context, the weightage attached to each factor is a sliding scale. Israel uses a bunch of these techniques to thwart attacks very successfully.Is any technique totally fool proof ? No. Like the line goes, every time you build a good mouse trap, a smarter mouse comes along. Does that mean you wont catch atleast some of the dumber mice ? No. So what do you suggest as a way to prevent and apprehend terrorists and prevent innocent people being sometimes harassed? Even cancer cures sometimes raise your risk for getting other kinds of cancer. Those are the breaks. Everybody knows what supposedly “will not work”. But nobody has any suggestions of what will work.
So far we’ve been lucky. My two boys, 4years and 18 months, have yet to get pulled aside for extra security, although my then-9-month old got wanded because the TSA agent thought his rear felt a little too full. Well, duh. He had a wet diaper! I offered to let the agent change his diaper. But I think it’s really really sad that my 4 year old son, when he goes to the airport, immediately takes off his own shoes and puts them on the conveyor belt with his hat and backpack.
The hardest thing about travel is explaining to them why I keep getting pulled aside for extra screening (probably because of the hijab), and why they aren’t allowed to come near me during then. Freaks the younger one to no end. And the TSA folks are not very sympathetic that there is a kid wailing for mommy.
The thing is, I never felt comfortable with the whole stand up and make my voice heard about things to protest. Because wouldn’t that mean I am putting myself up as a target – I might get in trouble with the TSA for being “un-American”
The hardest thing about travel is explaining to them why I keep getting pulled aside for extra screening (probably because of the hijab),
As an American, it’s important that you explain to them that it’s not because of any blind racial hatred that you have to go through this but because more than a negligible number of people who follow your religion indulged in some rather sad activities that unfortunately led to this mass stereotype about all Muslims. It’s sad but logical and to be expected.
@35 Yeah, next time I will try and provide the solutions to all the worlds problem on a random blog. Thanks for letting me know.