Is it impossible to be white and a criminal?

[sp1814]

You'd have thought so by the indignation that some people feel when they are pulled out for a random search in airports.

http://www.dailymail....urity-Wear-burka.html

Look at the responses - 'the humilation I felt', 'the indignity of a pat down search, all to ensure security staff aren't seen as racist.

Should airport security focus their efforts exclusively on black and Muslim travellers? Should white travellers queue in a separate lane to everyone else? s

Perhaps a form of airport apartheid?

[friedgreentomato]

AOG have you ever worked in airports?

[sp1814]

AOG

The 'tip off story' sounds like a load of nonsense to me. Would airport staff get a warning along the lines of 'A young black male is travelling back from St Kitts on the British Airways flight BA1902'.

No - they would have a name. Most drugs hauls are picked up through intelligence, not random stop and searches.

Furthermore, of course this is an issue about race. Why is it more 'humilating' for a white 70 year old woman to be pulled out of line for a random check, than a 20 year old black male?

As you have said before, we should have a level playing field, shouldn't we?

[naomi24]

Personally, when security is an issue, I don't see why anyone should feel humiliated. This might interest you.

http://www.thisislond...airports-7737089.html

[sp1814]

Thanks naomi24, but the argument I'm trying to put across isn't about racial profiling - it more to do with the outrage expressed that white passengers have been searched.

It's almost as if the responders to the DM story think that no white travellers should ever be stopped.

I agree that racial profiling makes sense, but people have to acknowledge that it's not just terrorists that airport staff are looking out for. There are also currency and drug smugglers - and they come in all different hues.

[naomi24]

SP, //people have to acknowledge that it's not just terrorists that airport staff are looking out for. //

I agree. They should, but often they don't.

[sp1814]

naomi24

And if people think that it's bad in the UK, I suggest they take a trip to the USA. I went to LA in January, and after being interrogated by security actually started to believe I was a member of Al Qaeda.

[naomi24]

Ha ha! Me too!

[emmie]

what about those who smuggle people, can't seem to stop them.

[sp1814]

em10

That's a more difficult area - the problem is proving intent. A lorry driver may be 100% innocent of people trafficking, even if authorities find illegal immigrants in his load. Sometimes people break into lorries without the driver knowing...

[emmie]

they also come through airports, if the person being brought in doesn't speak the language then what hope is there.

[emmie]

how do you think so of these young girls are being brought here to work in prostitution, via the airports, the people bringing them are their guardians!!
fake passports, and a easier passage because of our links in the EU. If they do not speak the language their guardian will, so no problem, pose as a male relative, it's almost impossible to break that.

[Baldric]

sp,
your OP was about airports. where the heck do lorries come into it?

[emmie]

not sure, perhaps it's because i mentioned the vile trade of people smuggling.

[boxtops]

Last year when going through security at Gatwick, the woman in front of us with a full facial covering was taken into a side room by a woman security officer so her ID could be checked.

I agree with the "get a grip" comment - I hope we would all rather fly safely that let someone through without checking, for fear of offending them.

[naomi24]

Boxy //Last summer my then five year old daughter was 'patted down' on both legs of our journey, some people just need to get a grip. //

I wasn't sure how to take Sherrard's comment, but, like you, I decided she meant the complainers need to get a grip rather than the security people.

[barcelonic29]

White British people have become increasingly racist. The papers print what is on the people's minds.

Unfortunately I think we're all a bit racist to be honest, regardless of our own ethnicity.

UK has an influx of immigrants; the working class mentality in this country is the dominant one (The Sun is the most sold 'newspaper' in the UK, and it is a racist tabloid paper), and so the papers start writing stuff the people will like to read such as negative remarks about immigrants.

I believe increasing racism in the UK among white nationals has been in correlation with all of the anti-immigrant articles in some of the most widely disseminated publications in the the country.

My advice: don't buy into it yourself - you're smart enough to pick up on what is going on. It dumbfounded me too when I realised how stupid the people of this world are too but once you accept it you'll no longer revere the media whether intentionally or not; you'll begin to see that we shouldn't pay too much attention to the 'Mail Online' and its attempts to woo the populace by feeding into its ungrounded paranoia.

White people commit crimes all the time which hurt many people. In this case Im thinking mostly of white-collar crimes which are the worst of all and are mostly legal. So commiting a crime and breaking the law (in my opinion) are not one and the same.

Good post - you should feel like this after reading such a racist article if you ask me. The people leaving comments are the prime target for this material. If it were not in the mainstream and were merely a racist website with a following, we probably wouldn't even know the name "Daily Mail", but unfortunately the people have spoken and the media has begun perpetuating it.

In the 90's the UK people loved new immigrants for a while and the Mail and the Sun both reported positive articles about attitudes towards immigrants. So they will always reflect the popular opinions of the day.

[boxtops]

Yes naomi, that IS what I meant - the complainers, not the security services :-)

[mike11111]

'Scuse me, but how can a crime, white-collar or not, ever be "legal?" This is a contradiction in terms.

[Baldric]

The mass immigration forced upon us in recent years has focused a lot of peoples attention on the subject, and they don't like it, but dare to criticise and you are 'racist'
also, How the feck can white-collar CRIME be legal???? ........get real!

[emmie]

I don't care for this statement at all, it's such a generalisation

White British people have become increasingly racist