A White mother who said she was questioned about human trafficking while traveling with her biracial daughter has filed a lawsuit against Southwest Airlines, accusing the company of “blatant racism.”

  • feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Had the same when travelling with my ex-girlfriend who was small and East Asian. Yeah, kind of racist of them, but whatever.

    • El Barto@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If I’m honest, I’m kinda okay if that happened to me, because if their methods are helping to stop actual human trafficking, then it’s worth it.

      I remember me at the beach with my girlfriend once. She was 22 at the time, but looked younger than that - 16 or 17. I looked like, well, the 23 year old dude I was. She fell at some point and I crouched to assist her. A lifeguard walked up to us and the whole time he was addressing her: “are you okay? do you feel safe?” Etc. My girlfriend answered all his questions and then he went away. He probably thought I was some pervert trying to take advantage of the situation. And I was like “I get it.” If she was an actual minor and I was some pervert stranger, I’m glad someone was paying attention to the situation.

      • Academician@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        If stopping Arabic-looking people stopped actual terrorist attacks, would it be worth it?

        • MagicShel@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          I gave this question far more thought than it probably deserves and the answer is no.

          The only world in which this is possible is one where you define terrorism by appearance (which already hits pretty damn close to home). So I’d want the same mechanism applied to all people to catch the violent extremists of all appearances.

        • El Barto@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Fair point, but that’s a different context, and I agree with you with that sentiment.

          The 9/11 terrorists didn’t even have beards. They tried to blend in as much as possible. So, you’re right. Harassing people with, say, beards and turbans is bullshit.

          • Academician@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            I hope this is a bad attempt at a joke, because I feel like it should be obvious.

            But let’s imagine you’re one of those Arabic-looking people. Would you okay with being strip-searched every time you went through airport security if it was in the name of stopping terrorism, while people of other races went through relatively unmolested?

            • scorpious@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I think you’re forgetting that the premise was “stopping” Arabic people (not ‘strip searching’), and that it “stopped actual terrorist attacks.”

              I take “stopping” #1 as the familiar, “please step aside” + thorough search of belongings, and “stopping” #2 as…actually stopping attacks.

              • Academician@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                Okay. How about, you, an Arabic-looking person, get pulled aside at the airport, EVERY time you travel. Your whole family does, and your children, by people carrying guns. While a stream of white people walks through unmolested.

                Every time, for your whole life, you and everyone else that merely resembles you in some way are singled out for your appearance - regardless of who you are, what you’ve done, the danger you actually pose to society. Just because somewhere, sometime, it might catch a bad person.

                And let’s not pretend that random strip searches don’t exist. If you travel a lot, the likelihood of one happening to you increases.

                Most of us these days wouldn’t think that kind of racist fascism was okay. Because world history has shown the danger of profiling by race for human rights. But, whatever, I’m not you I guess.

        • SamboT@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          How often would it stop terrorist attacks for each person stopped? We are talking about saving lives versus saving people from being offended correct?

          • Unaware7013@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            The TSA can’t even prevent weapons from going through security checkpoints, and they have real equipment and guidelines for their security checks and still fail to find contraband over 80-90% of the time when they do internal audits of TSA security checkpoints.

            The TSA is a joke as is, and the last thing we need is to give them more of a reason to harass people while failing to do their actual job.