T.S.A.
Off with the wristwatch, the Reeboks, the belt.
My laptop's in a bin.
I dig out the keys from my jeans and do
my best Midwestern grin.
At O'Hare, at Atlanta, at Dallas/Fort Worth,
it happens every trip,
at LaGuardia, Logan, and Washington Dulles,
the customary strip
is never enough for a young brown male
whose name comes up at random.
Lest the randomness of it be doubted, observe
how Myrtle's searched in tandem,
how Doris's six-pack of Boost has been seized
and Ethel gets the wand.
How polite of the screeners to sham paranoia
when what they really want
is to pick out the swarthiest, scruffiest of us
and pat us top to toe,
my fellow Ahmeds and my alien Alis,
Mohammed alias Mo—
my buddies from med school, my doubles partners,
my dark unshaven brothers
whose names overlap with the crazies and God fiends,
ourselves the goateed other.
What's sad is that a lot of my friends and family completely agree with racial profiling. Profiling is natural and probably primarily subconscious.
ReplyDeleteI heard an idea recently that race stereotypes are learned and not innate since race is too new on the evolutionary spectrum. Also I've heard people make claims that there are not different races. Clearly there are because we create them, but it makes me hopeful because something learned can be unlearned.
I hope it can be unlearned, but it's hard to believe. Profiling is a societal problem. And a lot of people can even fix their own individual problems. I have always had mind that the Self must come before the society will change, but maybe here in america it is the other way around for a lot of people.
ReplyDeleteDogs don't discriminate like we do- they like other nice dogs and aren't fond of mean dogs. Sometimes, nice dogs can even make mean dogs nice....