InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "whointhewhatnow?"

Willow (the_willow) wrote,
@ 2008-05-28 10:17:00

Current mood:	indescribable
Entry tags:	#race issues: general, about the world

huh..
Am I the only one who saw this comment on a post via Roungup about US laws allowing seizure and copying from electronic devices? The comment talks about asking for a supervisor and threatening to sue and claiming to have the individuals on camera.

And my first thought was - "Yeah, you can do that - if you're white."

Am I just jaded?

Cause seriously my first thought is, someone brown, or black, gold or red who's stopped in a US airport and has their phone, laptop or mp3 player demanded for sieizure (for copying, for looking, whatever) who then starts, while being polite and even toned, making trouble - their ass is grass.

Didn't they think a Hawaiian girl with an LED on her shirt was a suicide bomber? Didn't they point guns at her and pin her to the floor? Have we heard anything else about that MIT girl who got an up front and brutal look at how you get treated if you're brown and Airport Security pounces you?

Is it because I'm currently extra stressed about what I'll be doing/living/happening to me next month that I just found myself thinking ' - You and I live in two different Americas.

And yeah, I'm not commenting to the post because this is just me going 'Wow - my pov. Wow'. Not gonna start nothing so they won't be nothing. The OP's thoughts on having as clean as possible a laptop until things get sorted out with the law, make sense to me. And I also ponder the economic influences to something that could make people leave behind their Personal Media Players, Portable Game Players, MP3/4 players etc. And phones are becoming more and more multi-capable.

But the thread of conversation there just brought up the thought of Two Americas. And in mine, a sickly infant suffers complications and dies because he and his mother are brown. His mother's Samoan even though he's American. And air port security kept mother, infant and nurse in an unventilated hot room so someone with higher authority COULD show up to deal with them.

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yonmei
2008-05-28 10:01 am UTC (link)

And my first thought was - "Yeah, you can do that - if you're white."

And my first thought was - "Yeah, you can do that - if you're American".

Both true, of course. The US government has said explicitly that a non-US citizen has no rights whatsoever in their eyes until we've been allowed through Customs and Immigration and are legally inside the country - but the worst a white non-American non-person probably risks is being chained up without food or drink until they can be sent back to the country they came from: the worst that has happened to a brown non-American has been kidnapping, torture, and death.

Even before the Bush government, I was warned: if you want to get into the US, do exactly what they tell you and don't argue. If that includes surrendering all the data on my laptop? Well, in that case, I'm just not going to enter the US, not even in transit.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

the_willow
2008-05-28 10:12 am UTC (link)

This country I live in gets more and more frightening to me by the day. And the frustration I feel is huge, because I have no where else to go. It is amazing to me that even as rights erode, here is still a freer place to be than most. It reminds me of all those tourists stories about Americans realizing just exactly what it is they have at home, when someplace else treats them differently.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	shantih.livejournal.com 2008-05-28 02:45 pm UTC (link)
	I'd amend that to "if you're old and white." (Reply to this)

	dragovianknight 2008-05-30 06:17 pm UTC (link)
	And my first thought was - "Yeah, you can do that - if you're white." In this day and age, I wouldn't even try it as a white girl. But I suspect I'm jaded because I'm a poor white girl, middle aged, and not attractive enough for the TV cameras to care. (Reply to this)