Searches to Target Ethnic Groups

[Eugenius]

BBC

"We are very sensitive to the effects that that can have and it isn't an attack on particular communities."

I guess they've got to do what they've got to do

[assumedname]

piffle - they checked our passports thoroughly at Eurostar very recently. Lots of baggage checks etc. Reminded me of airline security.

[QueenOfQuotes]

assumed - I think she's refering to that fact that one of the suspected suicide bombers that has been arrested in Italy - left the UK on the train...

[piffle]

yes QoQ, despite posters of his face being plastered all over the terminal...

[Marina]

Regularly using public transport (trains, buses and tubes) in London and in and out of all sorts of publicly owned buildings at the mo.
Would be very happy to allow the extra time to be searched on a regular or "all in it together" randomised basis. Feel it reinforces a united British public if we are all equally willing and likely to be searched.
Ha ha, we are your opposites then batters. As a family we obviously look so nesh and gormless in all our years we have never been checked over. Despite the glint in dd's eye...

[Blu]

Actually, DP did travel by train recently (but before bombings) with DS's plastic axe sticking out of his rucsack - ds was not with him - and was not arrested - what is security coming to in this country!!

[Marina]

Ho, tell me about it Dino. That silly Not The Nine O'Clock News sketch from the 80s about being "in possession of thick lips" never seemed so true. The City Police do a really fantastic job much of the time IMO, but I saw this so many times from the upper decks of buses and it made me very sad

[motherinferior]

Marina, on the returning ferry from France just after the July bombings, Dd2 was the only one who caught the customs officer's eye.

Odd, that. And I don't think it was her winsome girlishness, either.

[OldieMum]

Long waits for DH while he waits in the non-EU passports queue at airports have given me the opportunity to see how passport control officers differentiate their treatment of people with white and brown skin. DH (white, Australian) sails through when he gets to the front of the queue. Almost all the people held up have brown skin.

A friend of mine, who originally came from India, lives in the US. She sometimes stops over in Britain to see me on her way to India and, until she got a US passport, she was regularly given a hard time at passport control. Basically, they wanted to know whether she was trying to immigrate into Britain illegally. Since she is a Professor at a major US university, with a Harvard PhD, this is unlikely, but did not impress our friends at passport control. 'Is your friend English', one of them once asked her? [no prizes for guessing the implications of this question.] 'No, she's Welsh', she replied. This didn't go down well and he exercised his discretion to charge her £50 for a short-stay visa.

My favourite passport control story relates to Prof. Amartya Sen, a Nobel-prize winning economist. He was stopped at passport control at Heathrow a few years ago. When he gave his address as 'The Master's Lodgings, Trinity College, Cambridge', they asked whether he was working there on the domestic staff. He had to explain that he IS the Master of Trinity.

[Marina]

LOL OldieMum, what a raft of interesting suppositions there.
Lord Dholakia of the Lib Dems was recently given a very thorough frisking on his way to a meeting with a journalist because of the "shape of his bag". It was because he was toting a carved crest of coat of arms off somewhere to be repaired/installed...

[QueenOfQuotes]

Old - I remember noticing that (delays for Non EU passport holders white/ethnic) when I arrived in the UK with DH. I was 4 months pg, and we'd had 2 changes - and a 18hr (total) trip from Zimbabwe to the UK on 3 different planes. I was exhausted.

He'd already got his visa in his passport to stay for one year (had to renew after 1yr when he got given indefinite leave to remain), which had been a lengthy, very expensive, and upsetting (the way the bloke at the British High Commision spoke to us was horrible) and yet it took about 20 minutes - from him arriving at the desk (was in the queue for nearly 1/2hr ) and lots of questioning before they'd let him through.

In the meantime several other White Zimbabweans (well they had Zimbabwean passports and white skin LOL) and other white people from other countries were there on average only 5-10 minutes.

[Marina]

The LOL was about Amartya Sen specifically ...remember travelling to and from France with several students from Eire via London in the 80s. French customs, no problem. British customs...Irish friends pulled over and grilled without fail

[mismatch]

The bombers that have hit London are not white skinned. Therefore suspicion and therefore bag searching etc will be focused on these ethnic groups.

I'm not saying its nice or pleasant, but it is justified in light of recent events. As for my white man with blue hair comment I was just trying to make a point, batters.

[happymerryberries]

I remember talking to two while South Africans in the days before Apartheid fell. They said thaht they were always grilled for ages at customs etc wherever they went

[motherinferior]

Mismatch, come on, you can't somehow claim that searching non-white people is 'the same' as searching white people with blue hair. We're talking about a background of racist assumptions - not to speak, obviously, of racist attacks.

I love the Sen story, in an outraged way of course. My partner has had at least one incident of standing in various official queues, chatting in his posh RP voice to a bloke...who then looked up, clocked his brown skin, and immediately asked to check his passport.

[mismatch]

I wasn't claiming it was the same. Just that The bombers were not white, therefore anyone that looks suspicious, especially those of the profile of a suicide bomber will obviously come under more suspicion.

Thats just the way it is however upsetting it may be for some people, and yes it must be horrible to be searched all the time.

I'm not suggesting for one moment that its a good situation for this country to be in, but the police need to be seen to be acting as some sort of deterrent to potential bombers and all the commuters that I know say it makes them feel a tiny bit safer to travel on the tube knowing that something is being done.

[motherinferior]

Friend of mine with a rucksack was searched yesterday and that does reassure me; but fgs, do I have to keep pointing out that some black people are already not frightfully keen on the police and that just possibly this policy might not make things a whole lot better?

[Blu]

Mismatch, i hope that the police are ACTUALLY acting as some sort of deterrent, and doinmg things for real, not just 'to be seen' to do something! It is illogical and dangerous (as people have shown in different ways) to simply target one 'ethinic-looking' - and if this was done simply for show, that would be downright racist!

[QueenOfQuotes]

"especially those of the profile of a suicide bomber "

And what exactly "is" the profile of a suicide bomber. Ok the VERY small number we've had in the UK have been asian or black - and the shoe bomber was mixed race. BUT - there have been reports in Iraq of some of the foreign insurgents carrying out sucide attacks being white, some countries have female suicide bombers, and a white American felt strongly enough to go and fight FOR the Taleban in Afghanistan - there's nothing to say that, given the chance, he may have been willingly to kill himself in order to 'better' a cause which he evidently believed in.

And what about those Eastern European countries which are predominantly Muslim, there's nothing stopping them from coming to the UK to live and work (as many are members of the EU) and at first glance it's can be quite difficult to tell an Eastern European from any other Caucasian person.

[mismatch]

I obviously seem to be wording things wrongly and no MI you don't have to keep telling us that black people are already not the polices greatest fans - but what are we meant to do? Sit back on our arses and not do a thing so as not to 'offend' any ethnic groups??????

I can't be the only one to think like this can I?? I keep saying its unpleasant and unfortunate - but so is having our buses and trains blown up.

[QueenOfQuotes]

"Sit back on our arses and not do a thing so as not to 'offend' any ethnic groups?????? "

Don't you see that the more we 'offend' these ethnic groups the more likely they are to "turn" against us, already many ethnic groups feel so polarised by the police that they won't go to them with vital information (not just talking terrorist attacks, talking in general) about crimes. By ONLY searching them it can only serve to widen what is, sadly, a growing "gap" between some ethnic minorities and the White/Police.

[Blu]

mismatch - no-one thinks there should be no security and no searches of anyone, but your 'point' is not particularly sharp!

It's as much about effective procedures as 'offending people' - but offending people is important too, if it is part of making people feel marginalised and disaffected in the first place.

[Blu]

The white syrian terrorist MI talks about below, and the shooting of a Brazilian last week because according to eye witnesses he was 'Asian looking' in the spur of the moment show how meaningless picking people out on the basis of skin colour is.