Brown Skin + Heavy Coat + Backpack = ?
Op-ed pieces by New York newspaper reporters Paul Sperry, Charles Krauthammer, and Haim Watzman endorsed the practice of using ethnicity, national origin and religion as primary factors in deciding whom police should regard as possible terrorists - in other words - racial profiling.
Krauthammer blasted the random-bag-checks program adopted in the New York subway in response to the London bombings, calling it absurd and a waste of effort and resources. His answer: Security officials should concentrate on "young Muslim men of North African, Middle Eastern and South Asian origin." He argued that authorities should work backward and "eliminate classes of people who are obviously not suspects." In the category of the innocent, Krauthammer would place children younger than 13, people older than 60 and "whole ethnic populations" starting with "Hispanics, Scandinavians and East Asians . . . and women," except "perhaps the most fidgety, sweaty, suspicious-looking, overcoat-wearing, knapsack-bearing young women."
Sperry has his own proxy for suspicious characters. He warned security and subway commuters to be on the lookout for "young men praying to Allah and smelling of flower water." Keep your eyes open, he said, for "a shaved head or short haircut" or a recently shaved beard or moustache. Men who look like that, in his book, are "the most suspicious train passengers."
Watzman argued that the London police officer who chased down and put seven bullets into the head of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes without asking him any questions or giving him any warning "did the right thing." In their heightened state of anxiety, witnesses reported that Menezes was dressed in a heavy coat and acting suspiciously - jumping over the ticket gate before bolting from armed officers toward a train. Police also said that he failed to obey their instructions. British ITV news, citing closed circuit footage, said that Menezes was dressed in a denim jacket and walked casually into Stockwell subway station, stopping to pick up a newspaper before riding the escalator down and running to board his train.
So while advocates of racial profiling would have authorities subject men and women of black and brown hues to close scrutiny for criminal suspicion, the following would pass the Krauthammer/Sperry eyeball test for terrorists with ease:
• White male Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh, who killed 168 people, including 19 children, and damaged 220 buildings
• White male Dennis Rader, the "bind, torture, kill" (BTK) serial killer who terrorized Wichita for 31 years
• Washington D.C. born-and-raised white male John Walker Lindh, who converted to Islam and was captured in Afghanistan fighting for the Taliban
• Those "non-Arab, non-South Asians without black or brown skins" Muslims from Chechnya who've taken down passenger jets, hijacked schools and used female suicide bombers to kill hundreds and wound thousands in Russia
• The IRA bombers who killed and wounded hundreds; the neo-fascist bombers who killed 80 people and injured nearly 300 in Bologna, Italy; and the truck bombings in Colombia by Pedro Escobar's gang.
As Colbert I. King wrote in the Washington Post last month:
"What the racial profilers are proposing is insulting, offensive and - by thought, word and deed, whether intentional or not - racist. You want estrangement? Start down that road of using ethnicity, national origin and religion as a basis for police action and there's going to be a push-back unlike any seen in this country in many years."
- Info compiled from various internet and print news sources
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Comments and faves
Jen SFO-BCN, Hilary (curioush), vickitequila, annappleaday, and 19 other people added this photo to their favorites.
:R.e.a.s.o.n: (83 months ago | reply)
POWERFUL POWERFUL STUFF! thank you for this, youve opened the eyes of people who had them closed, ignoring what is the truth, in the end we are all human beings, nobody should label anyone as anything except with that!
johannal (83 months ago | reply)
No matter how progressive we think we are, we still live in a primitive society, neither savage nor wise, reduced to being ruled by a cadre of fearmongers.
terrors (83 months ago | reply)
great shot and a fantastic piece on this abhorrent idea! keep it up!!
mimbrava (83 months ago | reply)
Amazing image, with the fluorescent glare contrasting with the murkiness on the other side of the frame, the graininess and angles contributing to a sense of disorientation. Another outstanding merger of image and thoughtful text.
I received the photos in the mail, Duane and love them! Let me please remind viewers that drp's images on Flickr are for sale. If you like them here, think how much you'd like them on your wall.
small fry (83 months ago | reply)
Brilliant image - one of your best. Clever treatment, and almost seduces us into the same dehumanisation process.
Astonishing how thin the veneer of intelligence is at a time of fear.
Dichoom [deleted] (83 months ago | reply)
you've written great things today duane..thanks for all the time you've spent looking out for informations.
I'm going abroad soon and i just can't stop wondering about the extent i'm going to be judged as an individual because of my skin colour and ethnicity.(i'm hindu and my ancestors are from South india,the Tamils.)
It really hurts profoundly when you see people doing things like that...
Again thanks duane..i really appreciate your post today.you don't know how much that means to me.
Hugs :)
Today is a good day (83 months ago | reply)
Duane,
Well said....you're rolling!
Matt Niemi (83 months ago | reply)
The "War on Terror" rolls on and on and on...
velvetart (83 months ago | reply)
very well said DRP.
i love the image
DubbyUB (83 months ago | reply)
So well presented, and so important, Duane. Your passion for justice is apparent and you incite and evoke with this piece. I'm glad you are on the internet.
*CA* (83 months ago | reply)
Hear, hear!!!!!
Iseult (83 months ago | reply)
I am so glad you chose this subject to illustrate with photo and text. It is such an important one, and the list you include of terrorists who would pass easily the racial profiling, illustrates perfectly, the point that it is a useless, and decidedly dangerous way to try to pinpoint potential terrorists. People have gone down this route before all over the globe with horrendous results, and it is still going on in many places, where entire peoples are being wiped out because they fit a certain criteria. This is something that can not be tolerated, but should be exposed at every turn.
Terrorists, by their very nature, work in a very random, and mostly unpredictable pattern, with a high degree of adaptability to any particular situation, much like a serial killer actually, which makes catching them ahead of time, from this kind of profiling, extremely difficult, if not impossible most of the time. It is more to lull the public into thinking that they are safer, so they will continue their lives as usual, and so that everything won't come to a standstill. I believe it is mostly to pacify a wary, nervous public, but profiling actually creates in many cases, a heightened sense of panic which in turn has people seeing terrorists at every turn, in every darker skinned, or Arab looking person. This is the height of insanity, and very dangerous, because look where it often ends up...with events like the tragic death of an innocent man, Jean Charles de Menezes, in London. A man simply going about his daily life, working hard, doing the simple things of life we all do, and then suddenly being gunned down, without even being questioned first. They gave him not a single chance to say who he was, even though they didn't know anything about him....just murdered him in cold blood, because of racial profiling and because the authorities, due to the recent train bombings, were on a hair trigger edge. People need to wake up from their complacent little lives, and pay attention here. This not something that can be tolerated in what we call a free society.
Thank you, Duane, for illustrating this point so well.
Airchild (83 months ago | reply)
Very interesting read. In this heightened state of alert, there always comes some "brilliant" ideas from bigots. This is repeated in history, with the most extreme example in Hitler. Sigh*
Very strong visual here... did you take this with a spy camera? I thought photography is banned in NY subway.
cariocando (83 months ago | reply)
Been there,done that. Let's beat Slimfat !
Cilest (83 months ago | reply)
great stuff. thanks for photo + text.
Norma Tub (83 months ago | reply)
Damn, just when I thought it was safe to start wearing a turban again.
Garnite (83 months ago | reply)
Shaved heads? You've had it. "perhaps the most fidgety, sweaty, suspicious-looking, overcoat-wearing, knapsack-bearing young women"? Damn, sounded like my kind of women, now I find out they're criminally inclined. I have a tendency to pause when I speak, so no using the cell phone and saying " ah'll ah, be right there."
ÑøñØ åL3sl { ByeBye } (83 months ago | reply)
Nice shot ^_^
D200guy [deleted] (83 months ago | reply)
Brown Skin + Heavy Coat + Backpack = Brazilian electrician - too easy! Thought provoking stuff Duane.
Andy Welsh (83 months ago | reply)
Great shot with complimentary article.
The whole London shooting did our Police no favours at all. I can only say that especially in London, it is very difficult for anyone to feel comfortable at the minute of any racial background.
cobalt123 (83 months ago | reply)
Thank you for posting the image and the great great great commentary!!!!
tinhart (83 months ago | reply)
Now you need to broadcast this message to the policy makers... we need bumper stickers, TV spots, Radio talk show hosts, CNN talking heads, messenger pigeons, smoke signals, massive web presence, and billboards the size of Kansas to get the message across... your powerful posting reminds me of how little we learn from our repeated mistakes. Goddess save us... :(
Hilary (curioush) (83 months ago | reply)
beautiful Duane -- the thoughts, the photo
among the myriad things that bother me about racial profiling -- particularly as it relates to terrorism -- is that um, the terrorists are reading the same papers we are. if we announce policies of profiling, wouldn't the next logical step be to start evading the profiles?
e.g., i was traveling in Spain a dozen years ago or so. with two other youngish females and a baby. our car was stopped and searched -- fairly routine in a country that has the history that Spain does.
the woman who was driving the car explained that this is very common there, as the ETA had caught on that the typical young male had been profiled. so they were recruiting more young women, using babies as covers, etc., in order to evade the profile. seems pretty sensible to me. figure out what the profile is, then find people outside of the profile to do the dirty work.
and don't even get me started on how much irony i find in that whole "hate our freedom" business -- so we'll turn around and harass people in the name of freedom.
Oops. didn't mean to start on that rant.
just meant to say thank you. brilliantly put.
OldhaMedia (83 months ago | reply)
And you don't know what you'd write if you started a blog.
Get thee to blogger.com!!!
HariKB (83 months ago | reply)
Thank you indeed for the post; as a Brazilian with dark hued skin, it angers me that what's going in the world isn't new at all, it's just more visible, and recheable to the public ear. And I will vote on your image during this competition.
Love the 214 (83 months ago | reply)
well said...we live in a crazy world.
Jane_W [deleted] (83 months ago | reply)
Very, very well said Duane.
zeitspuren (83 months ago | reply)
Thanks for putting up a very important subject!
JourneyToNoWhere (83 months ago | reply)
very informative :-)
RichardLowkes (83 months ago | reply)
interesting thoughts, though looks like hilary beat me to making the point i wanted to make. i suppose if this method worked a *certain* degree of inconvenience would be understandable in most people's eyes for added security. but, it doesn't-and surely provokes the consequences hilary mentioned. and when it leads to the shooting of innocent people...
(voted)
s2art (82 months ago | reply)
» I disagree with Hilary Curioush, the images are haunting the text is haunting, they remind us of our fragile existence, the tenacious grip we have on our own destiny in a world gone mad, and this makes them terribly terribly important.........
...and haunting
slight clutter (82 months ago | reply)
Very insightful and powerful words, Duane. They work really well with the photo.
conspirisi (80 months ago | reply)
interesting and kind of agree. But I think John Lindh Walker was fighting an invasion even if it was by his own country, and the chechens are probably more on the recieving end of terror having 250000 of their people killed by russians.
good photo though.
David Mery (73 months ago | reply)
You may be interested by Techie and terrorist behavioural profiles are the same. I hear more and more about people being detained and/or stopped for taking pictures (in London).
br -d
simply innocuous (73 months ago | reply)
So racial profiling wouldn't be effective?
flickr.com/photos/mcammer/84026082/
Brunocerous (70 months ago | reply)
bravo to you!
welpen2004 (69 months ago | reply)
You ignorant naive idiot don't know anything about profiling, violence and terrorism. Hope You will be a victim one day of an angry Turkish very soon!
simply innocuous (69 months ago | reply)
I thought I was only joking because the point of the subway picture is that public transportation in a large cosmopolitan city serves many ethnic/racial peoples and to profile would be to effectively shut it down, but somehow welpen2004's comment seems to make the issue of racial profiling serious, as in maybe we better start doing it.
Is there a cultural divide here, that Americans and Europeans speak in ironic modes but welpen2004 reads the texts as literal?
marcellyumistenkyl (68 months ago | reply)
FOR MUSLIM WOMEN ONLY, PLEASE:
www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate/playboy.htm l
matkaantytto [deleted] (64 months ago | reply)
wonderful!
matkaantytto [deleted] (64 months ago | reply)
Well, I read that and that was in ancient times, although many Muslim countries really need to work on their women's rights like crazy not every1 (yes, even in Iran) goes exactly by what the Quran says, and women, for example, in Iran, Syria, and Lebanon have political power, education in college, own businesses, many are doctors, voting rights, etc.
Others are not so lucky like Saudi Arabia and destroying of genitals
matkaantytto [deleted] (64 months ago | reply)
isn't the only trully peaceful religion Buddhism?
matkaantytto [deleted] (64 months ago | reply)
but yes Islam is a violent religion. So is Judaism and Christianity.
we should all convert to common sense and patience
patrickbseattle (63 months ago | reply)
So police should use no barometer for any profiling what so ever?
All people are equally a threat? That amounts to all people are a non-threat, thanks for bombing us today.
Western Societies are full of nice juicy soft targets, at certain places airports, malls, train stations there is a large density of people that make perfect places for attack, if your happy with police searching NO ONE in an effort not to offend/profile(how can you truly have "random searches" then do not bitch when people strike and kill 50, 100, 200plus.
Sorry to say but Islamic radicals do not care about happy go lucky western values and many of them were too strict to live in their own countries so they ironically came to the UK, US, Canada, France.
My guess is your not gonna find a Wahhabi in an Irish bar or wearing a Crown Royal shirt.
I've been all over the world and I am not afraid of Islam or Moslems in anyway, but to say the risk of suicide attack is the same with a 90 year old Irish granny and a 20 something year old Salafalist is not based in reality.
Profiling can and does work, and every person here profiles people inside their mind every single day.
Jesse Jackson once said when he is walking down the street late at night and hears two young men approaching from behind him, he is relieved when he sees its two white men. ....
Cozitsme (62 months ago | reply)
Great piece DRP...
I have thought long and hard about many different fears that govern our modern day lives. It's almost a psychological warfare has overtaken us. We are constantly being pounded with images of war and disaster, created by Governments with hidden agendas, reported to us by mass media houses, whose incentive is to guide minds and steer us like sheep, then to put everything into an even bigger spin, Religion steps in, further fuelling the fire of hatred and mass hysteria on a grand scheme. No wonder we all feel so helpless at times.
Sometimes we have to remember " The greatest thing we have to fear is fear itself ".
Blair and Bush have really sucked us all in to this decade of terrorism.........
_mattxb (62 months ago | reply)
Five men have recently been sentenced, in the UK, for plotting to develop a fertiliser bomb and destroy (one of?) several UK targets, including the Ministry of Sound nightclub (this is usually known as the "Fertiliser Bomb" Plot).
This page has pictures of the five men: www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1725 608.ece . This bbc page has *some* pictures, but a better picture of Anthony Garcia: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6608213.stm . Does he fit the profile? In some news reports it's explained that the organisation got Garcia to buy the fertiliser itself, because he was the least asian (muslim) 'looking'...
Jordyn// (60 months ago | reply)
Powerful. It is wonderful to have this up.
It (in SOME cases, but it is not always true) may be that some terrorists aren't white, but there are many that are.
The statements of people to watch (or not watch) are so rascist and prejudiced. They think women aren't capable of eing terrorists, also.
Thank you for the truths.
I would vote, but I couldn't find the area.
Good luck to you!
vries4Life!! (56 months ago | reply)
great shot(_(_)_)
screamingsnapshots (51 months ago | reply)
two thumbs up for your caption.
felix_m (45 months ago | reply)
interesting talk!