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The Gawker Guide to Racial Profiling Outrage
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Sonadelite
08/18/09

In reply to The Gawker Guide to Racial Profiling Outrage
I agree - as a brown woman in a turban, racial profiling is going to happen. For some reason, it always happens to me when I have cleavage, and if I'm covered up, it's less likely to happen. So if you're a brown person with cleavage, apparently you're asking for it.

I do object to a few things - when the TSA allows self pat downs of turbans in their bylines, and when their personnel in certain airports (oh in my case Phily) neglect to inform you of that option, I have a problem. Or when I'm chemically swabbed (I wish I was kidding) when I'm traveling with three other twenty somethings that weren't even pulled aside, I have a problem. Logic dictates we would all "allegedly" be involved, but the TSA doesn't work with logic.

Then there was this one time when they felt the need to go through every single item in my bag in an airport in Rochester (seriously, Rochester?), and this petite grandmother got offended on my behalf and unloaded a can of verbal whopass on the staff. That was pretty sick.
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skymotel
08/18/09

@Sonadelite: Points to the Rochester grandmother for speaking on your behalf.
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BookishLookish
08/17/09

In reply to The Gawker Guide to Racial Profiling Outrage
I used to get profiled as a drug dealer when I traveled, especially if I showed cleavage. Boys and people were always wondering if there was anything down in there. Now I almost always have my five-year-old with me when I travel and I swear, I could be smuggling bricks of heroin on his person and my own, yet we breeeeze right through every time.

Caveat: No matter your skin color or last name, travel with a rugrat or little person and you are golden.
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CaptainFantastic
08/17/09

@BookishLookish: "Ma'am, regulations require that I make sure you don't have anything between your bra and your skin and the female agent is on break. Now, let me just slide in behind you, un-tuck your blouse, and...[unintelligible]... Oh yeah, everything seems to be in order. Nothing foreign in there or anything. But now it appears that I'm smuggling something in my pants! HaHa! Enjoy your fight, miss."
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BookishLookish
08/17/09

@CaptainFantastic: Oh, CapFan, you naughty boy.

"But, Officer, it's only fair if I give you a thorough inspection too. Your wand looks so...powerful. My plane doesn't leave for another hour and I see your colleague is motioning for you to take your break...."

I would love to continue this scene, but I don't provide this kind of service for free and I don't think Gabey & Co.'s gonna pony up.
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CaptainFantastic
08/17/09

@BookishLookish: [www.sadtrombone.com]
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levari
08/18/09

@CaptainFantastic: cap, don't enable her. book has been turning all her posts lately into 'bookie needs nookie III' and i am disturbed and puzzled. i want dorothy parker, not samantha jones, dammit!
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BookishLookish promoted this comment levari was starred levari was unstarred

BookishLookish
08/18/09

@levari: It's summertime, miss, and I've switched from martinis to sex on the beaches (teaches of Peaches). And you'll take what I give you and you'll like it.
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CaptainFantastic
08/17/09

In reply to The Gawker Guide to Racial Profiling Outrage
[comment redacted due to only being tangentially related]
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Edited by CaptainFantastic at 08/17/09 8:22 PM CaptainFantastic was starred CaptainFantastic was unstarred

Robert Synnott
08/17/09

In reply to The Gawker Guide to Racial Profiling Outrage
One of the guys who founded a startup I used to work for had to go to the US frequently. He found that if he shaved beforehand he was fine but if he kept his beard he was detained for a few hours every time, at the airport...

So remember, BEARDS, a terrorist's best friend.
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Claire Buoyant promoted this comment Robert Synnott was starred Robert Synnott was unstarred

Claire Buoyant
08/17/09

@Robert Synnott: Facial profiling? Seems appropriate, and a more broadly useful term.
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thegreatfratsby
08/17/09

In reply to The Gawker Guide to Racial Profiling Outrage
eh, big whoop. I'm light brown (beige? ecru?) and I never get stopped. It's all about your attitude going through the checkpoints. Also, it helps to remove your bombs and guns.

Racial profiling is a fact of life, though, and will be as long as we continue to have any sort of racial disparities related to crime/terrorism. It may be tough, but for those of us who are non-white and/or Muslim, maybe it'll help to think of the one time the state trooper catches the rapist, the murderer, or the terrorist because he's profiling.

Or maybe not. Still gonna happen.
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Cheap Shot
08/17/09

@thegreatfratsby: I am beige as well and when I'm boarding a plane I don't mind getting profiled but I don't. What do I have to do, grow a beard and mumble to myself?
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takeouteurotrash
08/17/09

@thegreatfratsby: Always go with "Persian." Americans immediately think of soft cats.

[www.youtube.com]
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booge
08/17/09

@Cheap Shot: I'm a young brown woman and I get profiled often in airports. It pisses me the fuck off. It has everything to do with what I'm wearing. When I'm in jeans and you can see my ink, I always get frisked. When I'm wearing a suit, I never do. People tell me I'm asking for it--profiling, that is--by dressing inappropriately when I travel, and that I should know better.

None of this shit has made me feel safer. It is intimidation to me--the same shit the plainclothes cops do that park on the streets in my neighborhood. I still hear shots in the night. I fear gangs and the police. I fear crazy zealots and homeland security.
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Claire Buoyant
08/17/09

@booge: People tell me I'm asking for it--profiling, that is--by dressing inappropriately

(Dumb) people say the same thing to/about rape victims, and it's just bullshit.
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se7a7n7
08/17/09

In reply to The Gawker Guide to Racial Profiling Outrage
I don't know where white middle-class suburban woman getting tazed in front of her kids rates but here it is...
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Edited by se7a7n7 at 08/17/09 6:13 PM se7a7n7 was starred se7a7n7 was unstarred

naugahydeinplainsight
08/17/09

In reply to The Gawker Guide to Racial Profiling Outrage
So Khan is on a trip to promote his new movie, which happens to be about racial profiling? Who did they have to bribe to pull him aside and hold him?
Oh, wait, I know. They did it for free.
Everybody wins!
(I know, it's all fun and games until someone gets lost in rendition.)
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bens
08/17/09

@naugahydeinplainsight: AND the police say he was only held for one hour. Because his luggage was lost and they had to find it. Flying from India to the US without any luggage isn't sketchy or anything. NOTE TO INDIA: This is how you prevent people from blowing up your planes. Your law that makes it so "dignitaries" don't have to go through security checkpoints? Sooner or later its going to bite you in the ass. For now enjoy the manufactured outrage.
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Forgetitjake
08/17/09

In reply to The Gawker Guide to Racial Profiling Outrage
How many points does Bob Dylan get for not sitting in the back of the police car making Skip Gates jokes for his own private amusement?
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Collin Reynolds
07/08/09

In reply to College Kids All Racist In Their Own Special Ways
Is it just me or does the one in the orange look like a vulcan?
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TheMac
07/08/09

@Collin Reynolds: Vulcans are humanoid (over 98% human similarities).

Also, I am not having sex.
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Mediahohoho
07/08/09

In reply to College Kids All Racist In Their Own Special Ways
My first two roommates (tripled up!) in college were "Ag Tech" majors from the boonies: up at dawn, bed by nine, good old fashioned farm boys. They didn't know what to make of me and my suburban stoner ways. So they just kind of pretended I didn't exist. Worked for me.
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Mo MoDo
07/08/09

In reply to College Kids All Racist In Their Own Special Ways
Can't we all just sing Avenue Q songs and get along?
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Spirit Fingers
07/08/09

In reply to College Kids All Racist In Their Own Special Ways
Well, I always take my post-adolescent race cues from The Real World, where there are actually 4 racial temperaments.

1) Drunk, cavorting white kids

2) Drunk, cavorting kids of color who either

3) keep to themselves

4) try maybe a little too hard to co-mingle, uncomfortably in some instances, with the white kids, and they still end up ostracized with the white kids wondering aloud things like "Why is the black castmate keeping to himself so much? There must be plotting afoot, so we should definitely fight later in the season, maybe? Yes, we definitely should." It won't be race driven, it'll just be the growing pains that exist when one race finally acknowledges that the space-sharingness of living with someone of a different race makes their insides go all wiggly and tight with apprehension, confusion, love, and undigested corn bits, so acting out in some childish way seems apt and appropriate.

Cue most every season of this show. Even the one with Tek. Remember lovable Tek? Yah, they wanted to call him out for being lazy until he got to the job early and was like, "What, bitches?"

Racist.
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A Message To Rudy
07/08/09

@Spirit Fingers: Or the black guy who comes IN with a racist chip on his shoulder, a la Kevin Powell. He doesn't keep to himself but is quite the opposite: in someone's face.

"Yo, Chester, why you gotta be wearin' the cowboy hat? YOu don;t like black people or something?"

Ha.
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Spirit Fingers
07/08/09

@Ken Green: Nope. Powell mostly kept to himself. There was a bit of tension on that point because he had an apartment in Brooklyn, ( I think it was Brooklyn) while he was on the show. And I think the fight (oh, there's always a fight) started because Julie made some comments with regard to race. That always goes well.
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hamburgerhotdog
07/08/09

In reply to College Kids All Racist In Their Own Special Ways
I think they recruited people of color for the WI satellite campuses upon the condition they pose for those catalog photos. Now smile big and play frisbee! I said smile really big! You love living in this godforsaken frozen state!
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BullfightsOnAcid
07/08/09

In reply to College Kids All Racist In Their Own Special Ways
But what if you're of mixed breeding? Does that mean you make yourself uncomfortable? Can I "break up" with myself?
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readingisforkids
07/08/09

In reply to College Kids All Racist In Their Own Special Ways
Asians really should have separate colleges. Well I guess this is kind of what the UC system has become.

They are socially awkward and make the other students uncomfortable especially since campus gun laws are all out of whack.
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Gabriel Snyder
07/08/09

@readingisforkids: Since the story's about racism, let's all be racist! Banned.
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