To add insult to injury, the mom was flying to her brother's funeral when, upon deboarding the plane plane, they were stopped by cops and questioned under suspicion of human trafficking. Can't imagine how rough the whole trip was for her.
Had the same when travelling with my ex-girlfriend who was small and East Asian. Yeah, kind of racist of them, but whatever.
If I'm honest, I'm kinda okay if that happened to me, because if their methods are helping to stop actual human trafficking, then it's worth it.
I remember me at the beach with my girlfriend once. She was 22 at the time, but looked younger than that - 16 or 17. I looked like, well, the 23 year old dude I was. She fell at some point and I crouched to assist her. A lifeguard walked up to us and the whole time he was addressing her: "are you okay? do you feel safe?" Etc. My girlfriend answered all his questions and then he went away. He probably thought I was some pervert trying to take advantage of the situation. And I was like "I get it." If she was an actual minor and I was some pervert stranger, I'm glad someone was paying attention to the situation.
If stopping Arabic-looking people stopped actual terrorist attacks, would it be worth it?
I gave this question far more thought than it probably deserves and the answer is no.
The only world in which this is possible is one where you define terrorism by appearance (which already hits pretty damn close to home). So I'd want the same mechanism applied to all people to catch the violent extremists of all appearances.
Fair point, but that's a different context, and I agree with you with that sentiment.
The 9/11 terrorists didn't even have beards. They tried to blend in as much as possible. So, you're right. Harassing people with, say, beards and turbans is bullshit.
Most terrorists in the states are usually white and Christian.
Curious what the argument for “no” might be.
I hope this is a bad attempt at a joke, because I feel like it should be obvious.
But let's imagine you're one of those Arabic-looking people. Would you okay with being strip-searched every time you went through airport security if it was in the name of stopping terrorism, while people of other races went through relatively unmolested?
I think you’re forgetting that the premise was “stopping” Arabic people (not ‘strip searching’), and that it “stopped actual terrorist attacks.”
I take “stopping” #1 as the familiar, “please step aside” + thorough search of belongings, and “stopping” #2 as…actually stopping attacks.
Okay. How about, you, an Arabic-looking person, get pulled aside at the airport, EVERY time you travel. Your whole family does, and your children, by people carrying guns. While a stream of white people walks through unmolested.
Every time, for your whole life, you and everyone else that merely resembles you in some way are singled out for your appearance - regardless of who you are, what you've done, the danger you actually pose to society. Just because somewhere, sometime, it might catch a bad person.
And let's not pretend that random strip searches don't exist. If you travel a lot, the likelihood of one happening to you increases.
Most of us these days wouldn't think that kind of racist fascism was okay. Because world history has shown the danger of profiling by race for human rights. But, whatever, I'm not you I guess.
How often would it stop terrorist attacks for each person stopped? We are talking about saving lives versus saving people from being offended correct?
You're talking about formalising the concept of treating an entire demographic of people as 2nd class citizens who experience additional social barriers that others do not have to.
"I racially profiled every Mohammed in the US and 128,000 improper searches and surveillances down the list I discovered a terrorist. Mission accomplished."
Thank you for providing a ratio. No I would not be okay with that.
I'm sure I wouldn't be okay with racially profiling based on the real world numbers either. But I would be okay being questioned because I matched a statistically significant group of people who commit a crime that impacts the safety of others.
But I think the point is that race and gender are most often not statistically significant identifiers and shouldn't be used. And if they are indicative, then it better not be used for any of amount of time longer than needed.
If we had intelligence that suggested we should expect a terrorist attack from a specific country during a specific time period at a specific airport then it might make sense on a temporary basis. I don't know, I'm not a professional at preventing terrorist attacks.
If there were rules against race on a more permanent basis because of events in the past or something then that would be stupid, ineffective, and would needlessly offend people.
My only real issue with threads like these is the over generalization and trying to say that something should never happen or always happen. I don't think life is like that.
The TSA can't even prevent weapons from going through security checkpoints, and they have real equipment and guidelines for their security checks and still fail to find contraband over 80-90% of the time when they do internal audits of TSA security checkpoints.
The TSA is a joke as is, and the last thing we need is to give them more of a reason to harass people while failing to do their actual job.
How many times would it have to happen to you before it got old and you stopped being okay with it?
I don't know. That was 20 years ago. We only lasted about a year, and that happened just once. I can see how it could be annoying, but again, it's not like they're pulling me over for "driving while brown." There's a genuine concern about human trafficking.
If my annoyance helps innocent people from being trafficked, I'm reluctantly okay with it.
Let's cross that bride when we get there?
You do not want to cross the bride. Don't do that. Though, seriously, that's no good for anyone who it has already gotten very old for and that people are explaining away the feelings of.
Bridge?
I stand by what I said
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