Sunday, April 11, 2010

Racial Profiling

Racial profiling. Two words that have always made me cringe. The thought that in 2010 in the United States an African American could be stopped simply for being in too good of a neighborhood. The thought that he or she surely didn't belong there and therefore had to be up to no good. That kind of thinking was something that I could not comprehend. So imagine how surprised I was when I unwittingly did the same thing to an innocent person.

I was recently on a flight from Las Vegas to Houston. Seated across the aisle from me in the center seat was a man of middle eastern descent. He was clutching a very expensive camera with an equally expensive lens. As the plane taxied and took off the man became extremely agitated. He could not sit still in his seat, was sweating profusely and at times appeared to be crying. Every few minutes he would take the camera apart, look inside and shake it and then put it back together.

My mind started on a roller coaster ride through my head. Was the camera set up as an incendiary device? Was he about to leap out of his seat at any minute and head toward the cockpit? Was the camera going to explode or start a fire. What was he up to?

So I started making a plan. Every since 9-11 I had decided that if I was ever in a situation where terrorists were trying to take over a plane that I would not be one that sat by and let fate dictate my future. In other words I was not going to go down without a fight.

I started looking around to see who might be of help. To the left and behind was a woman traveling with two children under the age of five. No help there. Behind me was what appeared to be her husband with two other small children. Probably nothing there. In front of me was a large man that looked like he would welcome the opportunity to kick anyone's rear end at any time for any reason. Other than that, there wasn't much in the immediate area.

So I sat back and watched. He continued to take the camera apart and put it back together. Fidget in the seat and sweat through his shirt.

Of course, in the end, thankfully he was just a nervous flyer. But it made me think. If that had been a middle aged white man doing that, right away I would have probably just written him off as a nervous flyer. But since he was middle eastern I jumped to the conclusion that he was a terrorist and made plans to try and stop whatever he was planning.

I had unwittingly engaged in racial profiling. I am not proud of it and have tried to rationalize it a million different ways. I was just being cautious, or it is just the way of the world post 9-11. The reality is, it was wrong and no matter how I try and make it seem OK, it isn't.

It's like they told us in Grammar School, you can't judge a book by it's cover.

I wonder what I will do if I am confronted with a situation like that in the future. I am sorry to say that I cannot be sure that I will not do the same thing.