[sargun]

What ethnicity are you? I went through an airport -- and nobody else got screened except me. What was special about me? I was the only non-white person in the airport. Upon complaining, this was the response:

> Random selection by our screening technology prevents terrorists from attempting to defeat the security system by learning how it operates. Leaving out any one group, such as senior citizens, persons with disabilities, or children, would remove the random element from the system and undermine security. We simply cannot assume that all terrorists will fit a particular profile.

[chaboud]

I used to have a Sikh manager who wore a turban. Whenever we traveled together, he would get "randomly" stopped. While they were patting him down, he would inevitably chuckle and say something like "So what are the odds of being 'randomly' selected 27 times in a row?"

I don't know the specifics of the process for selection, but I can confidently say that the process is bigoted.

[diblasio]

Same thing used to happen to me when I had dreadlocks. Made the same joke too. "what are the odds I'd get randomly selected 100% of the time I go through a checkpoint..."

[defrost]

In proper English usage it would only be a bigoted

  (obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudiced against or antagonistic towards a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group)

check if it was unreasonable to suspect a Sikh of carrying a Kirpan.

The Rehat Maryada would suggest that is in no way whatsoever an unreasonable suspicion.

Sure, your manager likely didn't carry one on airplanes .. but that still falls short of being an unreasonable check.

[happymellon]

I used to work with a Kevin and a Mohammed.

Whenever we travelled to offsite offices Mohammed 100% of the time was picked for bag check, while Kevin was not picked once.

Mohammed was white, and Kevin was black.

It was completely racist, and never random.

[tass]

A person can get mistakenly (or not) flagged for special screening and get it over and over again - it happened to me many years ago.

I fixed it by filling out a form requesting a review, after which I received a “redress number” which could be entered into my booking information. It reliably stopped after that.

[parineum]

Not defending the practice but the Mohammed thing has a possible origin that isn't directly racist. The common names among Muslims and their propensity to appear on various watch lists lead to a lot of false alarms on those with those names.

It may be a racist result but there is a pretty reasonable and understandable reason it happens, ignoring the legality and morality of that kind of tracking as well.

[caseysoftware]

I'm brown, very brown. A Native American, in fact.

[BizarroLand]

Same. Every border crossing. Every flight. Every interaction with police. I always get checked. I always get flagged. I always have by bags opened and my car searched coming back from Canada with officers holding large powerful machine guns and rifles in case I twitch to hard.

I haven't so much as gotten a speeding ticket in nearly a decade but law enforcement and border guards break out the microscope every time they see me.

[wildzzz]

I am a white male and have TSA pre-check and after walking through the metal detector, maybe one out of several times I get randomly selected for the body scanner. I've never gotten the dreaded SSSS though. I've very rarely traveled alone not on a work trip and never alone on a one way ticket so maybe that helps.

[monksy]

I get it not infrequently when travelling from europe. It's annoying that they pretend that "oh this is random" .. I'm even going up to the airport employees at hte gate and telling them "I'm told I'm here to make new friends today"

[ZeWaka]

White male who always flies alone and on one-ways here, never gotten SSSS.

[noduerme]

It's screwed up that skin color is a marker that would lead an ignorant provincial quasi-cop to assume someone is of a particular ethnicity, and even more so that that ethnicity would lead them to believe an individual adheres to a belief system that might lead them to blow up an aircraft. Very poor set of assumptions and flawed tooling, to say the least.

[nashashmi]

I would never get randomly selected despite being brown. Then I grew out my beard. Now random selection loves to pick me.

[mlrtime]

When all you see is color, everything different is racism.

I'm the whitest white person you'll find, white bread and turkey sandwich. I get screened all the time. Most of the time the agents are not white, WTF would I blame the color of their skin?

[Ar-Curunir]

Are you seriously pretending that state-sponsored racism is not a thing? In today’s environment?

[int_19h]

Many ICE agents are Latino but it doesn't stop them racially profiling other Latinos.

When it comes to customs & border, it's more about being "ethnically terrorist", which is more so Middle Eastern than Black in US at this particular moment in time.

[cpburns2009]

Generic WASP checking in. I flew regularly for several years until covid and I'd get screened all the time too (about 50% of the time).

[array_key_first]

This just in, white person thinks racism isn't real. "Well, I've never experienced it", he says.

More at 11.

[mpeg]

I once found myself in the "random extra screening" waiting room in LHR before boarding an El Al flight to Tel Aviv, everyone else in the room was Muslim. Random indeed...

[seg_lol]

I had like a +7 random screening hit streak once. Old and comfortable and that melts away as you become the system.

[ada1981]

I was so confused last time I traveled as I watched this brown skinned family getting shaken down for ID by TSA and they literally just waived me past and said didn't need ID. Mind you I've never not been asked to show ID to TSA before this.

[ada1981]

Curious about the downvotes here, it's 100% relevant to the conversation and is personal experience. I imagine it's tone policing to ensure we don't criticize the techo-facist edgelord take over?