White airline passengers are routinely stopped and searched unnecessarily at Britain's airports just so staff can prove they're not 'racist.' Muslim women in burqas tend to get right through because nobody wants Muslim sensitivities to be offended.
Daily Mail (H/T MWP) Even when customs officials have been tipped off about a black drug mule arriving on a plane from the Caribbean, they deliberately intercept a number of innocent white passengers so they can't be accused of discrimination.
John Vine, chief inspector of the UK Border Agency, says staff try to ensure the right racial 'mix' even though they have no legal right to detain people on such grounds.
This is because they are petrified about being hammered with allegations of racism every time they stop and search someone from an ethnic minority background. Airport security operates on the same senseless basis.
We've all watched elderly white passengers being put through the third degree, while young Asian Muslim men wearing backpacks waft past unchallenged.
I've seen distressed grey-haired pensioners being patted down intimately and forced to empty all their belongings out of their hand luggage.
Meanwhile, women in full burkas are waved through with a cheery: 'Have a nice flight.'
Now I'm not suggesting these young Asian Muslim men were planning to blow up the plane, or that the women in burkas were a security risk.
Like it or not, though, the fact is that potential suicide bombers do tend to come from that particular demographic. And Al Qaeda suspects have been known to shield their identities behind a burka.
Humiliating every Howard and Hilda heading off on a package holiday, just to meet some artificial racial quota, doesn't serve to make air travel any safer. It is witless, inconvenient and inefficient.
The authorities know that it causes widespread resentment, which is why airports are plastered with notices giving dire warnings that anyone abusing staff will be arrested immediately and prosecuted.
There's something horribly wrong with any organisation which has to threaten its customers with arrest before they get to the counter.
I have to bite my lip every time I travel by air to stop myself railing against the insanity of it all, otherwise I'd be in handcuffs before I got anywhere near the departure gate. Don't do it, Rich, it's not worth it.
Passing through Britain's airports is already an ordeal. And now that the CIA claims to have discovered a new Al Qaeda metal-free explosive device aimed at bringing down aircraft, it's about to get a whole lot worse. Expect even more stringent security, especially on transatlantic flights.
As someone who travels to the U.S. fairly regularly, I'm acutely aware of the threat posed by terrorists. I was on a North West flight into Detroit just two weeks before the so-called underpants bomber tried to bring down another North West plane above the same airport in 2009.
So I'm glad that the authorities are doing everything possible to prevent more aircraft being blown up or flown into skyscrapers.
I just wish a little more intelligence was applied to the process. When was the last time any plane was hijacked by a 78-year-old granny from Leamington Spa? Precisely.
The nature of the threat makes the case for racial profiling at airports compelling. The security services already do it covertly. Stopping and searching those who plainly pose no danger, simply for the sake of keeping up appearances, is obtuse.
Yet when Jeremy Clarkson suggested recently that a little light profiling of air passengers might not be a bad thing, the twittering lynch mob went knee-jerk berserk and there were bovine calls for him to be sacked from the BBC.
Look, I'm not denying there are still genuine problems with racial discrimination. But we've come a long way and it still isn't possible to have a grown-up debate on the subject.
William Nicholas Gomes
WordPress.com
