¹ Cf.

As usual I arrived early for my flight out to go through the ritual of undressing my feet, shuffling my laptop and emptying my pockets. Even though my flight was sheduled [sic] to leave at 7:30 AM, I thought it would be prudent to arrive at the airport at 4:30 to leave enough time for this process. It turned out to be a good guess. The line stretched for some 400′ as it routed back on itself twice. There were two screeners checking IDs at the end of the line to disperse us into the security check equipment. After nearly 2 hours in this line, we came to the TSA screener who was looking at IDs and boarding passes. Each screener was working two lines. As we got closer to the screener, I noticed a curious thing about her station. She was sharing time between two lines, but the other line (the line I was not in) was for first class passengers. I looked back at my line to ensure it did not shrink – nope, some 400 people lined up behind me. The first class line had about 10. And worse, the screener would actually process more first class passengers at a time. That is, she would spend time issuing through three or four first class for each coach passenger. This means the line is not only shorter, but if you are in the longer line, you are treated as though there are four other lines shared with your screener. So, we asked, in the most polite way, how is it that we ended up waiting. Her response – “guess you got in the wrong line”…

I’ve seen this happening at airports I fly through, but when I read about grettadog’s experience I had an epiphany: why hasn’t this ever bothered me before? It is completely incomprehensible that, in a country whose leaders are obsessed with keeping the public in constant fear of a terrorist attack, certain people are given preferential treatment in the security screening that is intended to protect us from “the next attack” solely on the basis of their wealth. We are told that standing in line at airport security is a sacrifice we have to make for our protection, so how come some people don’t have to make that sacrifice? Sure, they have the money to pay, but don’t terrorists also have money? How else did they pay for their food, their lodgings, their flight lessons, their guns? How can the federal government justify preferential treatment while it’s telling us that everyone’s lives–rich and poor–are at stake?

Call me cynical, but there’s only possible justification I can think of. Creating one airport security for the rich and one airport security for the rest of us in the epitome of George W. Bush’s America. His agenda is, and always has been, to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. What better place to exemplify the increasing class divide than at the airport security line?

There’s already one group of Americans whose members are treated like third-class citizens at the airport–the evidence that the TSA engages in racial profiling is clear. So here’s a brain-buster for the TSA: what should they do if a man with dark skin or (gasp!) a turban ends up in the first-class line? Do they treat him like a first-class American passenger or a freedom-hating Islamofascist?

 International development minister Shahid Malik was returning to the UK yesterday morning after attending a series of meetings on tackling terrorism when was stopped and searched at Dulles Airport in Washington DC.

The MP for Dewsbury was detained by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – the same department whose representatives he had been meeting on his visit to the country.
…

Mr Malik said he was particularly annoyed, as a similar incident happened to him last year, when he was detained for an hour at JFK airport in New York by the DHS.

This was despite the fact he had been a keynote speaker at an event organised by the department, alongside the FBI and Muslim organisations in New York.

It doesn’t matter that Mr. Malik is a member of the British Cabinet. It doesn’t matter that he was in this country to meet with Homeland Security. It doesn’t matter that DHS had already made this mistake already. Mr. Malik was treated like a terrorist because he is a Muslim. 

Mr Malik said yesterday: “After a few minutes a couple of other people were also taken to one side. We were all Muslims – the other two were black Muslims, both with Muslim names.”

When is someone in Congress going to speak up about this government-sanctioned racial profiling? Is it legal to stop every dark-skinned person for the oh-so-suspicious action of being in an airport? Does it really make America safer to check every Muslim for bombs before they get on a plane?