Irrationally Terrified of Arabs September 4, 2007

While I must admit I’m drawn the title of the repost from AllHiphop.com, “Dumb Bitch Holds Up Flight Profiling Arabs”, this story from SignOnSanDiego.com just shows what happens when that sad, lamentable part of human social psychology known as “profiling” starts to present itself.

She was simply “protecting my tiny little family,” she insisted, adding that “all I could think of was 9/11.”

But yesterday, Leigh Robbins offered an apology to seven Iraqi men who were passengers on a plane scheduled to fly from San Diego to Chicago on Tuesday night. Robbins was also on the plane but was so terrified the men might be terrorists that she demanded to get off, causing a delay that prompted the airline to postpone the flight until the next morning.

The Iraqis, as it turned out, were consultants working with Marines at Camp Pendleton. They say they were humiliated when airport security, reacting to Robbins’ concerns, took them aside and questioned them. They have hired a lawyer.

“I know they’re upset, and they have every right to be,” said Robbins, 35, a Richmond, Va., homemaker. She said she was traveling with her two young sons that night and decided to err on the side of caution. “How can you overreact when it’s your children?” she said…

In an interview yesterday, Robbins said she was sitting in the back of the plane with her children, awaiting the departure from the gate, when one of the Iraqis walked by to use the restroom.

She heard him “clunking around” inside the bathroom. When he came out, he had a suspicious look on his face, she said.

“He looked so mean, the way he was looking at everyone,” Robbins said. “It was very frightening, like something out of a movie.”…Meanwhile, airport security officers questioned the seven Iraqis and determined that they posed no threat.

One of the men, David Al Watan, 30, of Dearborn, Mich., said the experience was mortifying because they were singled out for questioning based on their appearance. He and the other Iraqis are employed by an Alaska-based defense contractor that works with the U.S. military. Watan, who fled Iraq in 1991 and said his mother was killed by Saddam Hussein’s regime, wants an apology from American Airlines.

“While they sit in their air conditioning, I was out in the desert helping to save Marines’ lives,” Watan said. “I am an American. I love this country. I would die for it.”

First of all I hope these men win whatever judgment they are seeking.

No one would dispute the racism of the following, were it to be the lead paragraph of the article:

…yesterday, Leigh Robbins offered an apology to seven black men who were passengers on a plane scheduled to fly from San Diego to Chicago on Tuesday night. Robbins was also on the plane but was so terrified the men might be criminals that she demanded to get off, causing a delay…

For some reason, when it’s Arabs, it’s understandable.

It’s justifiable. It’s “what could I do?”

The reason this irritates me so is because of the course of events: untrained, inexperienced Ms. Robbins jumped to a conclusion that was proven wrong by trained personnel. Untrained, inexperienced, terrified Ms. Robbins — judging solely on ethnicity and “the way he was looking at people” — was way out of line and this can not be justified by the age of her children.

Give our airport security personnel a little credit. You think they want another 9/11? You don’t think they have some racial profiling going on in their heads? But they are trained to know what to look for and these guys didn’t have it. Whatever “it” is (because many of us have been “pulled to the side” in airport security, especially when traveling to and from Israel).

So what if their last names included “al-Watan”. Security personnel laughed at her when she first brought it up to them. These Iraqi men went through the same security lines she did, they took off their shoes, they “put it in the bin.” There was no reason to fear. The X-rays, metal detectors, and security people all agreed: these people posed no risk.

She was suffering from paranoia driven by racism, pure and simple. Ms. Robbins said:

“If people want to put me down, that’s their right.”

I don’t want to put her down, I want people to use their intellects (seichel) — and I want an end to fiascos like this so security guards don’t beat me down.