| An Arab man told his story in the news, he has been the victim of racial profiling for quite some time now. He is a frequent traveller, but finds himself in trouble each time he tries to go somewhere new. In the recent article, he described his situation in one instance where he was trying to fly to London. He was stopped and questioned by a security officer who selected him from a group of people, and began questioning him about his intentions. This was a regular thing for the man and he calmly responded, but said that it was irritating being singled out for no practical reason. He also claimed that he wasn't alone in his predicament. "If you look Arabic, or if you are black, or if you are a woman wearing a head scarf, they make a beeline for you and ask a series of provocative questions (that I doubt have anything to do with smuggling)." Acknowledging that security measures are put in place to protect him, he still feels that it is people profiling against him, rather than him being legitimately a suspicious individual. |
| To a degree, the people who 'harass' the man and others like him are just doing their jobs, but when it gets to the point that people like him cannot walk into an airport without being singled out and questioned, a problem emerges. This example, like the others, is evidence of a witch hunt in progress because the man and those like him are being brought to the side on no other basis than race. The question then becomes what can be done to address the problem? Relaxing security too much could lead to very serious problems with people having actual malicious intent getting into the wrong places. I discuss this more on the page describing what is being done to try and solve the problem. |
| This information was drawn from the New York Times article "Travelling While Arab", from 10/17/2014, written by Lizette Alvarez |