Xenophobic? No. Overly cautious when it comes to air travel? Yes. There is a difference.
Pity me? Whatever floats your boat.
Define Middle eastern appearance.
Is Cat Stevens of Middle Eastern appearance?
How about Indonesians? or Malaysians? Egyptians? Sudanese? Timorese? Palestinian? Jordanian? Syrian? Israeli? Kosovian? Serbian? Checnyan? Irish? English? Pakistani?
Can you tell the difference? Is there a difference to you?
Do all their governments teach that Americans are evil? Which ones do, and which ones don’t?
Is everyone with a tan and a beard a threat?
Mohommed Atta was clean shaven. Salman Rushdi isn’t. Would his features make you look at him and assume a threat?
Do you look at every passing person with darker skin than yours and assume “threat”?
If you are willing to do it at airports, why not do it at car rental agencies? Why not do it for anyone buying fertilizer? Why not do it for anyone who looks at you funny?
Tell you what, lets look at the colour of someones skin, assume they’re terrorists and treat them as such.
During WW II, despite the precaution of rounding up and imprisioning the Japanese, ten people were arrested for spying for Japan.
All of them were caucasion. So much for racial profiling.
The blonde girl with the “big boobs” is actually just as likely to be a terrorist. Think about it. If you ran a terrorist orginization, and knew that security was on the lookout of people of Arab decent, wouldn’t you employ whites to do your dirty work? There ARE, after all, white-looking people in the Middle East, not to mention people who have defected and converted to a militist attitude toward America.
The terrorists are not stupid. I doubt if their next attack would be carried out in the exact same fashion as September 11th, simply because they know we’re on the lookout for it now. (Which is the problem with our security measures: they can only be reactive.)
Honestly, if a terrorist wants to taget a plane, he/she will find a way to do it, and probably in a way we haven’t thought of. Our security precautions have been exhaustively reported in the media, and who knows, there could be people on “the inside” who are studying security in order to circumvent it. As the saying goes, if there’s a will, there’s a way. Harassing innocent passengers simply because they happen to have a beard and darker skin won’t do anything except sour relations with people of Arab nations.
I don’t fly any more, myself. It’s out of fear of crashes, not terrorists. (I had a near-miss, and since then won’t go near a plane.) Has it limited my geographical range for vacations and such? Yes. If you’re that concerned about your family’s safetly, don’t fly. Drive. You’re a much smaller target, and one of such little “body count” that the terrorists probably wouldn’t bother. Your family is much more likely to be killed in a plane crash due to pilot error or mechanical failure than a terrorist attack.
Are you saying that you can’t look at someone and take a guess at the general region that they are from? You won’t be 100% correct, but we are looking at generalities here, not specifics. Can I tell the difference between the typical Irish male and the typical Pakistani male? I could hazard a good guess. Are you saying you can’t?
Well, here is one example. Are you saying that Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Syria and Palastine are fundamentally different in their approach to the US?
And you know the color of my skin how? Again, are you saying you can’t tell the difference between a Pakastani and someone from Mexico?
Do they search your bags for guns and explosives when you rent a car? Buy fertilizer? When you walk down the street? Sorry, you are reaching here.
Where did I say that we should treat people as terrorists? Is looking through peoples bags treating them as terrorists? Is taking the wand to peoples shoes treating them as terrorists? Is using caution when allowing someone to get on a plane treating them as terrorists?
This is not about racial prejudice. This is not about hatred. This is about looking for the most likely suspects when trying to uncover terrorism. Don’t make it sound as if I’m spouting hatred or genocide, I am not. If you work at the airport, who do you check first? The 75 year old little old lady with the blue hair, the 22 year old latina woman with a baby, or the 31 year old male who appears to be from middle eastern descent? Not rough them up, not deport them, not round them up into camps. But simply look through their bags and give them an extra wave of the wand.
Faulty analogy, for two reasons. First of all, nobody is advocating locking up all people of Middle Eastern descent, or even all non-citizens of Middle Eastern descent, as was done during WWII. Second, the Japanese internment camps were created without any logical reason to believe that Japanese Americans might betray their country. There was no precedent. However, we have very much reason to believe that people are coming over from the Middle East for the express purpose of killing Americans. Why? Because it happened.
Now, I don’t think that police running around randomly stopping Arab-looking civilians for interrogation is a sound idea. However, if we have forces who are actively looking for terrorists, doesn’t it make sense to look at the people who are statistically more likely to want to kill us?
Imagine you’re at the airport. You have two people there that you can do a random search upon (because, I dunno, it’s a slow day). One is a 60-year-old woman. She is walking on a cane, and is accompanied by a 5 year old (presumably) grandchild. The other is a 25-year-old person who appears to be of Middle Eastern descent. Who do you search? Do you flip a coin? Do you figure, “Hmm, I already searched an Arab today, so I should search the woman out of fairness”? Or do you search the Arab-looking guy, because the odds of the grandmother being a terrorist are so tiny as to be laughable? If you do any but the last, then you, sir or ma’am, are a friggin’ idiot, and I would ask you to stay the hell away from a career in security. But if you do the latter, then hey - you just profiled someone. For shame!
It’s not that the Arab guy is likely to be a terrorist. It’s that he’s statistically more likely to be a terrorist. And given that we have a finite amount of resources to allocate on finding terrorists, it makes sense to look in areas more likely to turn up results. Now, if the granny had a strange bulge in her blouse that was beeping funny, go ahead and search her. But all things being equal, searching her is a waste of time, a waste of money, and a needless concession to the PC police that potentially jeopardizes the lives of innocent civilians. Personally, I would choose to inconvenience a legion of Middle Easterers if it would save a small handful of lives.
Hey, you know, you’re right. We may as well abandon all of our security measures, because if the terrorists want to take our planes, they will regardless. A pox on luggage screeners, and metal detectors! Away with random searches! And that lady who asks if your bags have been out of your sight at all? Out on her unnecessary ass, she is!
Jeff
As did the bombing of Pearl Harbor. There may have been no logical reason for internment camps, but nevertheless, they existed. The ostensible reason was to prevent espionage and sabotage, regardless of how logical it was. They didn’t just announce they were locking these people up for the hell of it: they had to give the American people a reason.
Dozens of propaganda posters hinted that Japanese people may look like they’re going about their everday business, but they were really just waiting for that careless word to report to the Emperor. * Life Magazine * actually ran an article entitled “How to Tell the Chinese from a Jap,” because violence against Asians was sometimes targeted at the wrong nationality. The article did not condemn the violence, just cautioned people to be careful not to abuse the wrong Asians. Chinese citizens actually wore buttons identifying them as such to avoid it.
And, I might point out, after September 11th, 30% of New Yorkers said they would support internment camps for Arabs.
According to some reports I have read, some of the people in the camp in Cuba did nothing deserving of imprisonment, yet there they are, and there they will stay indefinately.
I did not suggest this, I was merely pointing out the reality that despite our precautions, terrorists can find a way around them. People continue to steal, so should we eliminate property laws? Absurd. I no way am I suggesting we not TRY to secure our airports, but chances are, a future attack would not be airline-related, anyway.
She’s already gone. They decided that it was useless, so the question is no longer asked.
No, no, no, no. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are very dissimilar. Pearl Harbor was an attack by Japanese citizens in Japanese planes flying from Japan to bomb our military targets. 9/11 was Arab citizens who were in this country legally (or had at least come here legally) getting on board American airliners in America to fly said airliners into civilian buildings. There was no (credible) reason to believe that US citizens of Japanese descent would suddenly decide to forsake the country that they had decided to become citizens in so as to serve as spies. Also, inasmuch as we were trying to prevent another Pearl Harbor-type attack, it was an indirect method of doing so. We were not locking up people who we thought might fly Japanese bombers and bomb our bases.
The point of profiling Arabs in airports is specifically to prevent another attack against civilians by terrorists who want to use our own planes against us. We know that they may do this, because they already have. And we are not locking anyone up, we are just, at worst, searching them to make sure they’re not carrying weapons.
As I said, horrible analogy.
Very true. In large part, because potential terrorists know they would have a much harder time doing it since we upped security. However, that didn’t stop the shoebomber, did it?
Really? Someone should tell the people at the airports I fly out of. I’ve flown twice since 9/11, and was asked that both times.
Jeff
Yes, I know this. The media, however, compared 9/11 with Pearl Harbor quite a bit after the event.
I know that the reasons for internment were not credible, as did the thousands who were interred. Hell, even the people who were doing it probably knew that, but nevertheless, rage against Japanese people was so intense that the American people were clamoring for something to be “done.” These people, who were ordinary citizens, were imprisoned solely because of their ancestry/race. Today, those who want Arabs to be profiled want them to be stringently checked solely because of their ancestry/race. Some of them even wanted camps for Arabs after 9/11 based solely on ancestry/race. I still don’t see where this is a poor analogy.
You already agreed that terrorists are unlikely to try to use aircraft again. While I agree that we should be vigilant in secuirty, I still see it as insulting and unnecessary to automatically assume that a person is a greater threat just because of his race. Not all people who look like Arabs are from the Middle East. Not all Middle Easterners are terrorists. Treating people like potential criminals is rude. Once predjudice is established, it doesn’t end with simple security checks. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported that some Arabs have been kicked off of planes simply because the pilots thought they looked “suspicious,” and that flight crews have denied boarding to people with “Arabic” names.
This is no different than pulling over a black person because he/she is driving a nice car and the assumption is that it must be “stolen.” Or, if they’re in a nice neighborhood, they must be “casing.” Blacks report being irritated at shopclerks shadowing them in stores, and watching their every move. I don’t see where this is much different than pulling Arabic-looking people aside and going over them with a fine-tooth comb.
It was all over the news a few months ago.
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Here’s a cite.
I know for a fact that profile innocent people will create terrorists. I was detained for three hours and searched to the extent of having my journal read at Stansted airport in London last October for no reason, and I’m nowhere near over it. I swear to God I still want to blow every one their heads off. I still have plans cooking in the back of my head for some sort of revenge. Seriously.
Considering that all of the 911 terrorists were Arab and/or Muslim, NOT profiling Arabs and/or Muslims would be pretty stupid; rather like going after the attackers of the Alamo, just so long as we don’t profile any Mexicans.
I’m not saying I can’t, I’m saying I don’t.
I don’t look at someone and because of the effect of the sun on the skins of their ancestors, see “threat”.
Please provide cites that it is government policy to teach that “america is evil and you must kill Americans”.
Not a blog, not www.honestreporting.com, not the words of a local cleric. unbised cites that The Governments of the Countries you list, less Iraq, actually teach that “america is evil and you must kill Americans”.
Actually, please give details of the last Iraqui terrorist attack on Americans. Not Yemeni, not Iranian, Not Iraqui Army, not anything else, but the last time Iraqui terrorists attacked American targets.
And you presume to know mine?
If in the interests of security you want to protect Citizens from plane hijacks, search everybody. no exceptions. give everyone the extra wave of the wand. There are other terrorist groups out there, and now they all see the possibilities of hijacking planes.
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No I’m not. If you are going to profile one threat, profile them all.
If you are going to profile one colour of skin, profile them all.
If you agree with singling out people of Middle eastern appearance, do you also agree with racial profiling of people of African appearance?
If I may bring a cool air of rationality to the debate?
I admit I don’t know whether I like racial (or really ethnic) profiling. Yet for all that there are other terrorists, it seems there is a deep correlation. While I don’t like the idea of American citizens being targeted because of their ancestry, I’m not sure the US can afford not to do so.
SO I’m going to hold my nose, admit the world sucks, and do it. I can’t condemn anyone who disagrees with me, but I can find no other practical solution.
People who live in Saudi Arabia say that it is so over in the “I hate Saudi Arabia” thread, which was started by someone who was spurred by a bright young student of his coming up to him and saying he hates Amerca and would like all Americans to die. these people have high credibility with me, since they’re “on the ground” so to speak.
That’s one example.
thats not a cite that the government are actually teaching that.
Well bully for you. It’s probably hard to see through those rose colored glasses you wear. You must be a better person then I am. I don’t like feeling nervous when I see a Middle Eastern man sit next to me on a plane. But I do. I don’t want to feel that way, but I do. And I don’t see them as a threat because of their skin color per se, but because more than likely they come from a country that hates America, hates Americans, hates all that America stands for and is a breeding grounds for terrorists and religious fundamentalism. If it were a group of countries that were mostly albinos that ahd this kind of mentality and carried out terrorist acts, then I’d prefer that all albinos be checked at the airport.
That is like asking to provide a KKK site that they hate blacks. You aren’t going to find it. However, it doesn’t mean that
it doesn’t happen.
You are right. None of the top 22 most wanted terrorists wanted by the US is Iraqi. That must be a country full of tolerance and love for America. I guess there aren’t any terrorist groups in Iraq.
Show me were I claimed to? You said “Do you look at every passing person with darker skin than yours and assume “threat”?” You are the one who presumed my skin color.
Impossible and you know it. I didn’t say stop random testing. I didn’t say not to check the blonde or the old lady once in a while. Random testing is fine, but I didn’t see Mary Joe America on that list of wanted terrorists or her picture being one of the people who flew a plane into a skyscraper, killing thousands of people.
If you can present a feasible plan to check every single person getting on a plane, please do so.
I actually don’t agree with racial profiling in most cases. However, it can be useful. If a cop sees a young white boy leaving a improvished, non-white neighborhood at 1 am, then I think the cop should pull him over and check him out. Do I think the cops should pull over black teenagers because they are driving a car. Nope. A black or mexican person because they are driving through a rich white neighborhood? Nope.
Once more.
I asked you for cites that Goverments of the countries you listed teach that America is evil. You fail to present them. And, instead you present one link that says two teachers have bad opinions of the US. Not proof of your asertions, and I don’t accept your “Thats not to say it dosent happen” if you want to present rhetoric as fact, I’ll call you on it.
Hold on. America is trying to gather support to bomb the fuck out of Iraq. they have been doing that for the last 10 years. who’s suffered the most? In their drive to rid the world of saddam, who has Suffered the most? Saddam sure hasn’t.
Meanwhile the ordinary Mohammed Q. Public suffers. Both Saddam and the UN embargo’s are responsible for the suffering. Is it any wonder than they might be a bit pissed off at the US?
But, in spite of that, Do you see Iraqui terrorist groups being formed out of the civilian population and attacking America?
anyway, I asked for a cite. You failed to provide it.Not teachers, or clerics. Governments. You are lumping every middle eastern country into one group and every person that is from there and make the assumption that they all want to kill Americans. When you make assumptions you make an ass out of u and mptions.
You’re the one that is blinkered, not I.
As I said, you will not find an official position of any government that they teach hate or support the teaching of hate. Feel better now?
However, the words and actions by the citizens of the country say something completely different. Do you have any cites of pro-america rallies in these countries where the shout “Huzzah America, long live freedom”? Well then, what DO the thousands of people who rally chant?
When the Stormfront people invaded, they all claimed not to hate minorities. The posted the FAQ from their message board stating that they don’t hate anyone as proof. However, the words of the members who posted their showed quite the opposite. Are you saying the Stromfront people don’t hate?
So it’s the US’s fault that terrorism exists? It’s the US’s fault the Sadam steals from and starves his people, all the while building gold laden palaces proclaiming his greatness? The UN embargo could have been lifted long ago, but your buddy Sadam doesn’t want to loose face or power and has done a damn good job at brainswashing Mohammed Q. Public in the process. Apparently he’s had some effect on some other people too.
I have not seen proof that Americans should be overly cautious when dealing with citizens of middle eastern countries at this time in world history. I would prefer we err on the side of caution. I wish it weren’t that way, but it is.
You know what, Thunderbug? Tonight, I went out after work for someone’s leaving do. It was held in a nice Lebanese restaurant in a hotel in town. Everyone except me and one other guy was an Arab or “Middle Easterner.” From Iraq. From Lebanon. From Jordan. From Morocco. From Syria. From Palestine.
People laughed, and ate, and joked. They clapped to live music that was played in the room. They got up and danced. They had a good time. As did I.
Except for feeling truly fucking sorry for some guy far away on an internet messageboard that thinks people like me and Twisty are the ones with distorted vision.
Sounds like a lot of fun. What does this have to do with racial profiling though?
Where did I say that you or Twisy had distorted visions? Are you part of the group that cheers for the downfall of America? Do you refer to America as the great Satan? Do you go up to Americans and say “Don’t take this personally, but I want to destroy your country”?
Problem is, when getting on a plane, it’s impossible to tell whether you are or not. I’m sorry that the 22 most wanted terrorists have “Arab sounding” names. I’m sorry that the terrorists that hijacked those planes and killed thousands of people were all “Arabs”. But they were. I’m sorry that we constantly see thousands of “Middle Easterns” rallying around government buildings chanting “Death to America, praise be to Allah”. But we do. I’m sorry that at this point in time good people are lumped together with religious fanatics. But they are. And if that means protecting the good people (including those “Middle Easterners”) by being over zealous with an x-ray wand and a bag search of those same good people, then so be it.
I don’t know you, I don’t know Twisty. You might be great people. I don’t know. If you are males and Middle Eastern looking, would I be nervous sitting next to you on a plane? I will admit I probably would be, at least until I talk to you and get to know you.
Thunderbug You’re not alone. I think racial profiling for security of terrorism is a good thing. But there are too many people that are afraid to insult or offend somebody that is “different”
I am not Arab, but I have black hair, I have olive colored skin, I am 30ish in age, and I often travel alone. I often get scrutinized more than other people traveling. I do not get offended by this! Why do people make such a big deal about this? I don’t mind that I probably resemble an Arab person and have to take off my shoes and be just short of strip searched three or four times every time I travel. Sometimes I think that they should search me when they let me pass and not the old lady using a walker!
I was reading TwistofFates posts, and sensed that there was a feeling of superiority because he/she can trust everyone, and go to dinner parties with middle eastern people, and feel sorry for people that believe that racial profiling is a good thing.
Well, I also go to dinner in Middle Eastern restaurants and laugh and enjoy myself, but I also don’t mind when every “Mohammed” (and me) is stopped twice trying to get on a plane, or train…or…
Check everyone, but double check the ones with greater propensity!