Ideas@TheCentre
Men of my appearance the usual suspects
US authorities have introduced a range of tighter security measures in response to the ‘underpants bomb’ attack thwarted on Christmas Day aboard a plane arriving at Detroit.
All passengers on US bound flights are now required to undergo intrusive luggage searches and endure full body pat-downs.
Some see this as political correctness gone mad. Suicide bombers indoctrinated by the ideology of the al-Qaeda are drawn from an identifiable subset of the population: young men of middle-Eastern or Asian (as the Brits say) appearance.
It makes no sense to force passengers of all ages and sexes to remove their footwear so a security screener can inspect the soles of their feet. Passengers will soon have to face further indignity in the form of full body screenings.
Critics suggest that security measures should be targeted – be based on race – rather than waste an extraordinary amount of time and money poring over the possessions and personages of those who pose no threat at all.
The kinder view of political correctness is that it is principally about good manners and managing the diversity that is part and parcel of modern immigrant nations like Australia. You can’t invite people of all creeds and colours to be citizens and then single out and insult them.
A formal security policy that blatantly discriminated – one line for men of middle-Eastern appearance and one for the rest – is not viable.
Yet as a man of swarthy appearance (shall we say), I am certain that racial profiling is already standard practice.
I always shave before flying. But most of the times I have travelled in the last eight years, I have been stopped after going through the X-ray machine to have my bag swabbed and tested for explosives.
It does annoy me that I keep being singled out. But from a security perspective, who is most likely to pose a threat – someone who looks like me or the 80-year-old grandmother who came through after me?
An informal ‘stop and search’ policy that targets the most likely suspects is the correct policy. It minimises the inevitable offence while getting a difficult job done.
Universal screening is just a veneer of politically correctness – a pointless mad dance of loosened belts, untied shoes, and frisking hands – that fails to obscure the hard realities of the post 9/11 world.
Dr Jeremy Sammut is a Research Fellow at the Centre.
