Friday on my return from vacation during a layover in Toronto I seriously reconsidered my above position and statement. After going through a relatively smooth arrival in Toronto, baggage claim, customs, immigration, and baggage recheck I was to go back through security prior to my next flight. While my stuff was waiting on the conveyor to go through the scanner a young security guy (younger than me for sure) informed me I was "randomly" selected for further screening and made a note of it on some tracking sheet (presumably there is a quota on the number of "randoms" required per hour/day). I understand that I was wearing baggy jeans and sporting a pretty overgrown beard (my razor went home with the HyWy on a different flight...doh!), but interestingly there was a gentleman in front of me receiving the "special" treatment who was a clean cut business type. The similarity between both of us was that he was of a beige skin tone and I would classify myself as brown (or caramel:). Anyways once through the metal detector with my boarding pass securely in the security personnel's possession I was asked to step to one side where I was wanded. After the wanding I was frisked completely two times and so thorougly that in my mind I was only one step away from a strip search. During the frisking the inside of my pants waistband was checked and my wallet/passport rummaged through. Once this was complete my entire backpack was searched. All books were flipped through, the HyWy's spices were given a cursory look, and all the little pockets of my backpack emptied. Naturally the security guy was reasonably polite and attempted to repack everything. However, I couldn't help but feel humiliated through this. I wasn't humiliated because other people around me could see what I was going through, but rather because it occurred to me that the security personnel had total power in this situation. I knew that I could not express any frustration, anger, or negative emotion as they had me by the boarding pass. Finally the process ended and I was sent on my way.
The first thing I thought about as I walked off, fuming, was is there a better way to find the "bad" guys? Do other non brown/beige/caramel individuals experience things like this? Would I feel different if I found out that the profiling in my situation led to someone else on my flight being profiled and found with contraband and thus an incident was averted? My hesitation in answering the last question, to myself, tells me a lot.
No comments:
Post a Comment