This from ThinkProgress today:
Dan Fanelli, a “former Navy and commercial airline pilot” who is competing in the GOP congressional primary for the chance to run against Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) in the general election, has begun airing a new ad in which he seems to endorse racial profiling of darker-skinned Americans to detect terrorists. Fanelli implies that all terrorists look alike.
When I was in grad school, I worked in retail security for some extra money (and the employee discount, of course!). We used to switch off duties between working the desk (radios, paperwork, employee surveillance (yeah, we did that), and working the floor undercover). We also conducted employee loss-prevention awareness activities, which included the occasional cheesy skit. I bring this up because once of the things that was really important to get across was you have to watch *everyone* on your sales floor - not just someone who looks like they "don't belong" in a 5th Avenue store. The skit went something like this:
- Sales clerks standing at desk
- Enter shabbily dressed person of color, with eyes darting about
- Sales clerks dutifully follow said customer about the department, making sure he/she is not lifting merchandise
- Enter dressed middle-aged white couple donning designer clothing and accessories, completely unnoticed by sales personnel, who are busily surveilling person of color
- Middle-aged white couple proceeds to steal various merchandise and leaves the premises
- Person of color eventually glares at sales clerks and leaves without purchasing anything - or buying anything.
- We left out the present-day scenario where said potential customer reports the store for racial discrimination.
Now, I'm certainly not trying to convey a notion that middle-aged white couples are not trustworthy. in fact, that's quite the point. It has nothing to do with race or ethnicity and sometimes has nothing to do with appearance. Chances are that the couple in the skit who stole items was probably returning them without a receipt and the store could have gotten a description of them when they tried to do that. THAT is the cause for following them around and there is a chance that they might have been caught because of surveillance.
In the case of terrorist acts, such as ignition-devices on a plane, etc., look at how much we complain about the inconvenience of having TSA check the occasional bag at security points or x-ray child seats. That sort of checking, in my opinion, makes some sense. It's a pain for those of those of us who travel a lot but I've never been angry about having my bag checked because something caused a weird shadow on an x-ray or something (Ok. It only happened once. Maybe I'd be angrier if i happened a lot). And, to draw another parallel to my college job, watch certain persons because of past behaviours. Put funding into LEGAL surveillance (read as: get a warrant for wiretapping before doing so and have probable cause).
We should be safe and we should have laws that address our safety but racial profiling does not accomplish that.
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