Because the last thing I want people to think is that I am somehow biased, I decided to make up for yesterday’s posting about profiling at the RNC with a story about profiling at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Am I not fair? From the Boston Phoenix:
There were so few arrests for DNC-protest-related activities, we now know, because there were so few demonstrations to begin with; everyone, apparently, was waiting for the Republican National Convention to make their voices heard. As for the massive security efforts orchestrated for the DNC, well, how safe should we feel now that itÂ’s become clear that, with federal authorities at least, “suspicious” individuals were targeted not based on what they do, but on how they look?
I know, I know. Racial profiling is a necessary component of a twelve step processes blah blah blah. I don’t really want to get into that yet again. The reason this story interested me is because they interviewed some onlookers who saw the whole thing. It was refreshing to get a third person perspective in an article for once.
IT’S HARD FOR me to believe that my looks had nothing to do with it,” says Vijay Shah, a slight, exceedingly polite Cleveland, Ohio, native who now lives in Cambridge. Specifically, the 33-year-old son of Indian immigrants finds it hard to believe that his mocha-brown skin and full beard didnÂ’t play a role in his detention by federal and local authorities on July 25, the Sunday before the DNC started. After all, Shah and other eyewitnesses say he behaved like any of the 1000-plus protesters in the ANSWER Coalition’s march against the DNC — walking the designated route, watching passers-by. But only he, a dark-skinned man in what he calls “a sea of white people,” ended up tagged as “suspicious” by police. He wonders, “If I was a pale albino, would I have been lifted from the march?”
He wound up within feet of Alissa Johnson, a 25-year-old Dorchester resident who had attended the march “for the heck of it” that day. It was after 3 p.m., and Johnson and her roommate had recently homed in on two conspicuous people in the crowd — a white man, dressed in a navy sports coat, and a black woman, dressed in a white blazer. Both of them wore an ear-piece, with wires tucked behind their collars. Johnson nudged her roommate. “Hey, Sarah. ItÂ’s the feds,” she recalls saying, while pointing out two agents later identified as Secret Service. Then, she spotted another man, donning the same type of earpiece. Johnson and her roommate watched as one of the three fingered a protester, who happened to be Shah.
From behind, Shah appeared “familiar,” Johnson says, as if he were “in my English class or something.” He wore a gray T-shirt, khaki pants, and a backpack. Johnson found it “weird” that the Secret Service would be tracking him, since, she says, “he wasn’t doing anything.” But then, she got a good look at Shah. “We were like, ‘Oh, of course,'” she adds. “Of all people to be pulled out of the mainly white crowd, itÂ’s the person who looks Arab.”
About 6 years ago my brother occupied an apartment building across the street from the Chinese embassy in D.C. Being the curious chap that he is, my brother figured he’d try to get a glance at the Chinese President (or is it Premier?) when he was in town on a state visit one weekend. He told me that as he stood on a corner outside of his apartment building a man with an earpiece came and stood next to him and then said, “See my boys up there on the roof? They see everything.” At this point he nodded to a sniper on the roof.