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.
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.
@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."
"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.
@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!
@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.
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...
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.
@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?
@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.
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.)
@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.
@WretchedGnu: If you start voicing dissent at authority figures, pretty soon you won't be willing to get up and do bogus Powerpoint presentations in front of the U.N., and the next thing you know, no hell breaks loose.
I wonder what it's going to take for some people to doubt Crowley's account of things. Lucia Whalen has now said flat-out she never spoke to him at the scene, so at least one part of his report is a demonstrable fabrication. But please, keep scolding Gates for something you have no reason to believe he did other than the word of someone who plays fast and loose with facts, and who started calling in other police cars while he was still in the house with Gates, before he had committed any "crime" whatsoever.
By the way, a correction: Crowley was not investigating a burglary. He was investigating a possible burglary. He saw almost immediately that there was no burglary in progress.
So...in this situation, if Skip Gates is the Iraqi people and Officer Crowley is the Bush administration, it would have been perfectly okay to beat the guy, pull his pants down, sodomize him, pour gasoline on him, light him on fire and then claim he pointed a weapon at you?
@Mediahohoho: Seems like a strained analogy with Iraq and Powel, but if you still want to make it you could replace "perfectly okay..." with "better for you and your family to choose your battles, don't resist when you're being arrested and interrogated, cooperate, and then, if you feel you've been the subjected to some injustice by the army, to make your case publicly afterward." Which sounds like sound advice, realistically speaking.
But I don't think you were going for a lucid analogy so much as expressing a desire to hold Powel accountable for any role he may have played in persecuting the war in Iraq. There's an intelligent debate to be had about that. Alas, that's a battle I don't want to choose right now.
@hilikusopus: Nah, I'll stick with my original analogy. The key difference you chose to make is to substitute the soldiers for the administration. That's a big difference. But it is curious that you think there is some forum where the Iraqi people can make their case in the great sometime-after (there isn't). Or that it would matter to the authorities (us) who haven't even felt that Iraqi civilian casualties were even important enough to count. Fifty-thousand to half a million, give or take, am I right?
Thanks, but I'll stick with my main point, which is that the case for war in Iraq is the starkest case of racial profiling I can think of in my lifetime. At a time when any raghead would do, the administration chose the most convenient target, the dude who'd been looking at us cross-eyed ever since we'd taken him off the payroll, never mind that absolutely no credible case could be made with the available evidence that Iraq posed any threat to us whatever. To extend the metaphor, which I think is very lucid, Colin Powell is the corrupt cop who plants a gun on the unarmed victim, except that he did it after the fact, with millions watching, at the UN.
That's what he gets to live with. He should keep his mouth shut about racial profiling.
@Mediahohoho: I don't think the best time for an Iraqi to redress the wrongs done to him or her is when they are getting sodomized, as you put it. Hard to do that when there's a gun pointed in your face or, in Gate's case, when you're in cuffs. That's just life experience and a lesson you have to learn growing up. To that extent, I was acknowledging Powell's logic, which you're using as a springboard to make your own valid point. But as I said, I think I'm just speaking to a point which you weren't intentionally addressing. I appreciate your sentiment, and I agree with you. I was nit-picking -- no worries.
As for Powell, he's a cop-out and blew all the credibility he has ever earned in a lifetime of service in about twenty minutes at the UN. He can't pick a wall paper pattern without the world second-guessing him now. I wish that were enough to exact revenge on those responsible for the approximately 100,000 Iraqi civilian casualties this war has created (not to mention the psychological, cultural, and material costs). I'm a skeptic, so I have a hard time believing that anything could have stopped Cheney and his cabal of neocons from knocking down the gates of Babylon.
@hilikusopus: Well, you're right that that's where the analogy breaks down. Gates had the option to just shut up and wait for the cop to get out of his house; your average Iraqi casualty had just a moment to think "oh shit" before the bomb turned him or her to incinerated human goo. Meanwhile the cop in the Iraqi house keeps hanging around, messing with the tchochkes.
I've never seen anything more arrogant than watching Colin Powell trying to tell Gates how he should be a better citizen. It's almost like Powell is white or even a white man with state power. Like a cop abusing his power. Like a fucking liar exercising state power to justify actions that will kill thousands of people. Like Kissinger. Only not quite as bad as Kissinger.
I think it's hilarious that anyone--white, black, yellow, brown or purple--is trying to say they wouldn't lose their shit if someone tried to arrest them for getting into their own home. Never mind the fact that brother had just flown in from China. AND was sick with some kind of flu! Puhlease.
@yourfriendandneighbor: As a person who works in a business where we think about security all the time, I can tell you I wouldn't lose my shit if a cop asked to see my ID after I'd just broken into my own home. I would lose my shit if he didn't ask. And yes, I make a lot of overseas trips as well.
@yourfriendandneighbor: No one tried to arrest Gates for breaking into his own home. The cops were investigating a burglary. Some people might "lose their shit" in that case, but maybe the cops should just go ahead and continue to investigate the burglary anyway. You know, just in case some bad guy has learned that all he has to do to make the cops leave is jump up and down and cry "racism."
Side note: What's with all the purple people being thrown in with the lists of races? Purple people have been mentioned a bunch of times, yet they are so rare in this country that I may only have seen as few as half a dozen in my life.
@yourfriendandneighbor: He's sick, jet lagged, cranky, and a cop shows up at his front door accusing him of breaking in, so of course he's going to overreact. And the cop is mad because some guy is calling him a racist when he's just trying to do his job, so he also overreacts. Both of them were out of line.
@optical_allusion: Agreed. Since when is it expected that you lose your shit on a cop asking to verify if that you are NOT breaking in to your own home??? Seriously, does everyone go around losing their shit on cops all day? They have power and guns. I tend to shut up and I never shut up. I'd say "here officer, I live here". Why is that so hard? Someone please answer that very obvious question. Why couldn't he just show his ID? Any other person would have been asked for ID in that situation.
I'd be glad someone cared enough to check to see why someone may be breaking in to my house. Next time, just let everyone break in. Then they'll be called racist for not responding promptly to a reported break in. They both acted out of line but if Gates had just not lost his "shit" the issue would have been OVER. He acted like a hothead and no one wants to admit it.
@yourfriendandneighbor: Because I have an allergy to being arrested, I would not have lost my shit. I mean, in my mind I would have lost my shit. After they left, I would have lost my shit. When I was on the phone with my attorney filing a civil action against the Cambridge Police Department (well, I wouldn't have done that, but on the short list of options one could imagine this might reside), I'd have lost my shit. But with police present, a cooler head would have prevailed, if for no other reason than self-preservation.
@WackoJacko: Would've been hard to get anywhere with that civil action if you didn't have the first name and badge number of the police officer who was in abuse of power, don't you think? Why is everyone pretending that Gates "lost his shit" simply because a nice lil' ol' cop meandered up to his door and politely asked him if everything was alright in there?
@bboston88: He DID show ID. He showed two forms of ID. It was clear they were no longer investigating whether he had any right to be in the house, since it was established that it was his house. Read the report!
He lost his shit because the cop wouldn't leave. If you just came back from a long trip, was sick and just wanted to go lie down and be alone, and the stranger in your house wouldn't leave, then yeah, I bet you'd lose your shit.
@ChillbearLatrigue: Ah, how soon we forget basic facts. The cop was already leaving, on his way to the car, when he decided his ego was hurt by the professor's mean words.
@allyzay: Look. I'm not saying that I wouldn't have been angry but I am programmed to never antagonize the police. I can't think of ANY instance or example in life where yelling at the police produced a desirable outcome in the person yelling. It's not fair, it's not right, but it's true. If you don't want to go to jail, don't antagonize the police. If you want to go to jail, antagonize the police.
I put together a Powerpoint presentation called "The Audacity of Home: How Not to Give New Meaning to the Term "House Arrest." This pretty much covers slide 2/2. Arguing with and insulting law enforcement gets you cuffed and often times arrested.
@afterabe: Yeah, but you should be able to argue with law enforcement. You just shouldn't be able to do it in such a way that you break other laws no matter how strongly you feel that the cops are in the wrong. However, you are probably correct in your assessment. Right or wrong, arguing usually gets you in trouble.
@ChillbearLatrigue: Oh please. You say people should be able to argue with cops, but you know that's not the case. And that has everything to do with the mentality of the police and nothing to do with effective law enforcement. Forgive me if you actually believe this, but if you do, you're in the vast minority.
@Mediahohoho: I chose the word "should" for a reason. You should be able to say, "look you're making a big mistake," or "you're dead wrong about this," or even "you're really fucking up here." However, when it comes to a situation where you are shouting in the cops face, you have crossed a line.
Example, a cop is sitting at the counter of a restaurant. He sees a customer standing and shouting at a waitress. The cop goes over and tells the guy that he has to stop or he will be arrested. The customer then very politely says in a normal tone of voice, "I'm sorry, officer, but she made a mistake on my order." No pissing match with the cop. Then he turns around and continues to shout at the waitress. Do you think he's not going to jail because he was polite to the cop and rude to a waitress that the cop doesn't even know? Of course he is locking the asshole customer up. He has an obligation to protect that waitress as well as the peace of other parties in the restaurant. Now, why would you think that the cop would have to take more crap himself than he would allow to be aimed at the people who he is sworn to protect?
Shouting at a waitress in a restaurant is not protected speech and neither is shouting at a cop on your porch.
@ChillbearLatrigue: Um, interesting analogy, but totally specious, as there isn't a third person here. And I submit to you the very simple line I draw in this case, with help from the U.S. Constitution. Here it is: once the cop found out Gates was in his own house, he (the cop) was trespassing, and his only job, since he had no warrant to be there, was to leave. Period.
@Mediahohoho: I don't think it has ever been established where the yelling stopped. If he followed the cop out and continued to yell, then it's likely that he was at least technically in violation of the law. I'm not sure how it works in Massachusetts, but there would have to be a definitive statement by Gates, before its actually considered trespassing. Usually there has to be a sign or a verbal announcement that the person is trespassing. A statement like "Get off of my property," would suffice. However, you're correct in saying that once the exigency is over, the cop no longer has a legal right to be there. It's just not automatic trespassing.
@ChillbearLatrigue: Well, I would hope you know the law about that better than me. My point is that the cop could have left without any danger being posed to the neighborhood. No offense intended, but implied in my social contract is that peace officers aren't entitled to hurt feelings. That said, I've never gone out of my way to provoke anyone in blue.
08/18/09
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.
08/18/09
08/17/09
Caveat: No matter your skin color or last name, travel with a rugrat or little person and you are golden.
08/17/09
08/17/09
"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.
08/17/09
08/18/09
08/18/09
08/17/09
08/17/09
So remember, BEARDS, a terrorist's best friend.
08/17/09
08/17/09
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.
08/17/09
08/17/09
[www.youtube.com]
08/17/09
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.
08/17/09
(Dumb) people say the same thing to/about rape victims, and it's just bullshit.
08/17/09
08/17/09
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.)
08/17/09
08/17/09
07/29/09
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07/29/09
You have the right to remain deferential.
07/29/09
07/29/09
By the way, a correction: Crowley was not investigating a burglary. He was investigating a possible burglary. He saw almost immediately that there was no burglary in progress.
07/29/09
Speak it like you live it, Mister Secretary.
07/29/09
07/29/09
07/29/09
But I don't think you were going for a lucid analogy so much as expressing a desire to hold Powel accountable for any role he may have played in persecuting the war in Iraq. There's an intelligent debate to be had about that. Alas, that's a battle I don't want to choose right now.
07/29/09
Thanks, but I'll stick with my main point, which is that the case for war in Iraq is the starkest case of racial profiling I can think of in my lifetime. At a time when any raghead would do, the administration chose the most convenient target, the dude who'd been looking at us cross-eyed ever since we'd taken him off the payroll, never mind that absolutely no credible case could be made with the available evidence that Iraq posed any threat to us whatever. To extend the metaphor, which I think is very lucid, Colin Powell is the corrupt cop who plants a gun on the unarmed victim, except that he did it after the fact, with millions watching, at the UN.
That's what he gets to live with. He should keep his mouth shut about racial profiling.
07/29/09
As for Powell, he's a cop-out and blew all the credibility he has ever earned in a lifetime of service in about twenty minutes at the UN. He can't pick a wall paper pattern without the world second-guessing him now. I wish that were enough to exact revenge on those responsible for the approximately 100,000 Iraqi civilian casualties this war has created (not to mention the psychological, cultural, and material costs). I'm a skeptic, so I have a hard time believing that anything could have stopped Cheney and his cabal of neocons from knocking down the gates of Babylon.
07/29/09
07/29/09
....and somehow the Gawker gods saw it fit to randomly change my avatar to an Onion character just now. How bizarre. Is it a sign?
07/29/09
07/29/09
Edit: Okay, back to the Onion character again. Just a cruel cosmic joke, I guess. Where's a Jewish grandma to cheer me up when I need one?
07/29/09
07/29/09
07/29/09
07/29/09
Side note: What's with all the purple people being thrown in with the lists of races? Purple people have been mentioned a bunch of times, yet they are so rare in this country that I may only have seen as few as half a dozen in my life.
07/29/09
07/29/09
07/29/09
I'd be glad someone cared enough to check to see why someone may be breaking in to my house. Next time, just let everyone break in. Then they'll be called racist for not responding promptly to a reported break in. They both acted out of line but if Gates had just not lost his "shit" the issue would have been OVER. He acted like a hothead and no one wants to admit it.
07/29/09
In addition to obtaining the ID of the resident with his own picture on it, of course.
07/29/09
07/29/09
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07/29/09
He lost his shit because the cop wouldn't leave. If you just came back from a long trip, was sick and just wanted to go lie down and be alone, and the stranger in your house wouldn't leave, then yeah, I bet you'd lose your shit.
07/29/09
Voice dissent? Here's your cell.
07/29/09
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07/29/09
Example, a cop is sitting at the counter of a restaurant. He sees a customer standing and shouting at a waitress. The cop goes over and tells the guy that he has to stop or he will be arrested. The customer then very politely says in a normal tone of voice, "I'm sorry, officer, but she made a mistake on my order." No pissing match with the cop. Then he turns around and continues to shout at the waitress. Do you think he's not going to jail because he was polite to the cop and rude to a waitress that the cop doesn't even know? Of course he is locking the asshole customer up. He has an obligation to protect that waitress as well as the peace of other parties in the restaurant. Now, why would you think that the cop would have to take more crap himself than he would allow to be aimed at the people who he is sworn to protect?
Shouting at a waitress in a restaurant is not protected speech and neither is shouting at a cop on your porch.
07/29/09
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