I will forever object to being profiled getting on a plane because I’m not a criminal. And I don’t want to be treated like I’m one either. My ethnic background does not make me a criminal.
And secret services and members of security firms are paid to know who to target and what to investigate. There is nothing throughout the history of my soon to be 26 years on this earth that indicates I’d have any inclinations towards extremist causes. Don’t simply look at me and assume I might be a terrorist sympathiser just because I’m Moroccan. I don’t respect that or see it as anything other than racist.
Do you want to know the extent of how bad my few hours in Paris was?
After getting off a plane and being grilled at passport control, I left the airport (CDG) to catch a shuttle to ORLY airport. At the EXIT door of the airport I was stopped by armed police who instructed me to empty my bags out on the floor. The fucking floor. I refused. I told them if they wanted to see the contents of my bag they are welcome to empty it themselves and pack it back up again afterward. After that, I left the station and was refused help by someone who worked at a bus station.
After getting to ORLY airport I was again stopped by the police and searched again. I got to the entrance to the gates and was searched, pulled into another room and scanned for residue of drugs. They interrogated me. After letting me free I walked into the lobby and no less than 60% of people in there did nothing but stare at me.
I sat down, people got up and moved away from me. People didn’t want to be anywhere near me.
And then I got to the gate of my plane and before boarding was pulled over again.
I don’t care what other people do because that isn’t me. I’m not a terrorist. I’m not a sympathiser. I’m not a fundamentalist. I’m a working class man who is just trying to live a good life and look after my family the same way my father always did.
So I will never appreciate being treated like someone I’m not.
I will never appreciate being routinely stopped by police and searched. I will never appreciate being overlooked for promotions at work because I’m not a white middle class man with an Oxbridge background. I will never appreciate knowing that I’m qualified enough to get a job but also knowing I probably won’t get a call back because of the name on my cv.
And I know the above isn’t what you necessarily said but I went off on a tangent again.
I think @SRCJJ’s experience in Paris outlines quite succinctly the problem with racial profiling, it’s never ending.
Rather than racially profile people so planes don’t get blown up (can anyone point to any evidence that racial profiling stops planes from being hijacked as opposed to simply the raft of safety measures that now exist post 9/11 being the key factor?) how about we just search everybody or do a full body scan on everybody wishing to board a plane. Society probably wouldn’t accept that but it says that what happened to SRCJJ in Paris is ok.
I also counted, in a quick search of mostly German sources, 13 German school shootings/spree killings/terrorist attacks since 1999, one of which was Munich 2016 (mentally unstable person of Iranian decent), one Berlin 2016 (terror attack by Isis sympathizer). The other have all been perpetrated by good ol’ German white guys (one girl), about half of them of middle class background and most of the them members of “schützenvereine”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schützenverein This is excluding the at least 150 people killed by Nazis since 1990, the RAF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction, the NSU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Underground or the Munich bombing of 1980 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfest_terror_attack
In short, in Germany the people who merit racial profiling for deadly attacks most, are white guys.
I wouldn’t bother to dispute any of this, and would argue against anyone saying otherwise (as I think I did in another thread previously). Terrorism happens all the time, in various forms, not related to race at all except in a very narrow sense. In my defence I referred to airport security. I think the issue with ISIS and similar groups and the hijacking of planes does, unfortunately, mean that areas of the world containing Muslims therefore represent the greatest threat. If I was investigating tax havens or the selling of arms I’d probably profile rich white men. But obviously I get the point…conflations of this kind, no matter how accurate they may be, are not particularly helpful in the broader sense of making society a healthier place. I certainly meant no offense to anyone because racism is the last thing I would waste my time with. I don’t even believe in race. But if I was personally instructed to run an airport I would still profile the shit out of that role, unless it could be proved that other methods, as Shammy suggested, were better. And thinking about it he’s probably right.
I mean I am doubtful, but there could be some stats on the issue from US/UK sources. And I might have heard some schemes where they were thinking of doing that but maybe orhers would know more.
Whoever’s is the majority are going to look at the minority as lesser. And even in the minority’s they are going to look the different as lesser. That’s the reality of which most ethnic minorities to grow up under particularly blacks. Apparently we are at the bottom of everything
Having lived in America for a while I always found it interesting that some of the most homophobic and intolerant people I met was the black population.
I always thought that was hugely ironic, you know, given everything the black population in America has historically been through.
People from poor backgrounds and those who have worse education and living conditions tend to commit more crime. Discrimination against those who aren’t white and male restricts opportunities for betterment, which suppresses income and quality of life. So those who are discriminated against are more likely to have worse living conditions and live in areas where crime is higher.
And that is why crime statistics show those from minorities are more likely to commit crime. It’s a never-ending downward spiral.
And when did I say that? I’m sure I never said anything about gay people what so ever and transgender is a mental health issue no matter how you try to spin it. Just because you don’t agree for whatever reason does not make me wrong it’s classified as such
I grew up in East London and I remember being about 12 or 13 and being shocked when I got a sense of the racism in the Asian community. My best mates were Asian and I’d notice how their parents were totally cool with me as a white guy, but that they didn’t want our black mate coming into their houses, that they’d label him a troublemaker or a bad kid. As a white kid they saw me as being respectable and someone they seemed to like their kids hanging out with, I guess partially because I did well in school and probably because I was middle class and pretty well spoken for a deprived, working class area. But the skin colour was a big part of it when contrasted with our black mate.
I remember being rather shocked, I think even at that age I had an awareness of racism and kind of presumed that Asian people would be cool with black people because they were both minority groups who had been at times very badly treated in a majority white country, that there’d be a sense of unity of sorts. I didn’t think that Asian parents who’d lived in England in the 70s and 80s and had seen (or even personally experienced perhaps) horrible discrimination towards their race would harbour prejudices and actively discriminate against black people, because they’d see that those prejudices and behaviours were the same shit them and their people had faced.
Homophobia was rampant across the board where I grew up. I’m so fucking grateful I wasn’t homosexual and visibly so, growing up there would have been awful. There were a couple kids at school when we were teens who were openly assumed to be gay and they were treated like utter shit. Some of the most important non family adult figures in my life growing up were gay people so I’ve always been entirely comfortable and accepting of different sexual orientations, but no way would I have been friends with a gay kid at school. The bullying and social ostracism would have been more than I could have handled. The bullying I got daily for being white (and “posh”) in the first three years of secondary school was fucking horrible enough already lol, there was no way I’d take the chance of being labelled gay, which is what would have happened.
I was even in a French GCSE class once and a teacher said that gay people deserved to die, in front the class. This is the most egregious example of what I meant above when I said the homophobia went across the board.
Yeah it’s weird isn’t, enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of thing. You’d think the minorities would find common ground and stand together.
The Asian (as in Indian and Korean/Japanese etc.) communities in America are super racist too, and it’s like:
@Ryaninho argued that the black community is so intolerant of the LGBTQ community because of religio, and from my experience it’s true, but that’s even more retarded because that was a religion forced on them by their old slave masters.
The black community in America should be the biggest LGBTQ allies out there.
