Meus Renaissance
Member
Next time I'm in the US, I will purposefully find opportunities to speak Arabic in front of people. I'll record any exchanges I might have with Law Enforcement and post it here on GAF.
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Arabic student removed from Southwest flight, "why were you speaking Arabic?"
- Thread starter Smellycat
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This is ludicrous for many reasons. But one thing that I always find funny is that even if you buy into the mindset that every Arab is a terrorist, why would a real terrorist "expose" himself by speaking Arabic loudly, looking particularly devout, and so on. Just like with the "more patrols in Muslim neighborhoods" nonsense, where policemen are apparently supposed to detect terrorists by looking for "terrorist inside" signs on houses, all these reactions make no fucking sense, even if you'd accept the already silly premise.
shinobi602
Member
"Sorry sir, you're not allowed to speak your native language on this flight."
"Sir, I'm gonna have to ask you to stop that...sir, SIR!"
"Sir, I'm gonna have to ask you to stop that...sir, SIR!"
don't get shot
Are you fucking serious?
i understand the comments i'm reading and i'm concerned..
but let's look at it from the other side of the coin..
there are issue with terrorism? yes..
a random (stupid) joe sees someone from middle east speaking in arab, he cannot understand what's going on, the only thing he can do is one of the following:
1) be a bigot (like the passenger did)
2) be oblivious to everything
3) pray that it's only your pessimism projecting an unrealistic scenario in your mind..
I'm not saying that the passenger did the right thing, far from it, but as it stands now, from a purely practical point of view the terrorism is winning, in making us concerned towards other individual that have not done us any harm and in most case (in pretty much 99,999999999999% or add even some more) are not going to do us any harm.. but they are fearful (stupid, bigot, but ultimately simply fearful) and will try to weasel out of a (unbelievably low chance) problematic situation...
this is depressing because this won't harm the western citizen (i mean, statistically speaking the sheer number of dead due to terrorist attack is so minuscule compared to potential target, that if you were to be a cinic it would be negligible numerically speaking.. being instead a rational human being, even one innocent death is always one death too many), but will only increase the "distance" between western culture and middle-eastern citizen in general that will not be able to continue the (hard and slow) path to a real integration in the western community (and i mean a "civil" integration, not a religious one.. for all i care, if you're a decent human being, you can even be a pastafarian worshipper of the spaghetti god, and i won't be fazed.. what you choose to believe is up to you)...
Thing is, if the racist lady (and the Southwest employee) REALLY thought this guy was a risk to the safety of the flight, they wouldn't have just taken him off and let the flight go on its merry way.
If racist lady wasn't racist and was worried about a true threat, she would have been the first one off that plane.
If Southwest guy wasn't racist and was worried about a true threat, he would have removed everyone from the plane and had the plane and all of the baggage searched.
The fact that they didn't do any checking of the plane heavily leans towards racism rather than true threat assessment.
What?
American is not a language btw
you're a smart one
FloatingDivider
Member
That was the joke man, lol. Sometimes I feel like the internet just needs huge sarcasm warnings around sarcastic statements. Maybe he should have put in a smilie or something.
orthodoxy1095
Banned
LMAO. My Palestinian friends, Muslim and Christian, say Inshallah (or allahu akbar) all the time. Have fun trying to profile literally near anyone who speaks Arabic.
America is such a ignorant cesspit. Especially in regards to language. Holy crap.
It's a particular hilarious notion because the conservatives who cry that everyone must speak American can barely comprehend the language themselves! With how much of their platform, particularly the social side of it, relies on a destitute lack of understanding of how language functions, what exactly a word is - a semantic handle as opposed to a magic spell that can warp reality at will just by using dishonest connotations, and the mechanics of schema construction and categorization, it is truly ridiculous for them to cry about others being unable to speak English when they themselves appear to be recreating the Chinese Room thought experiment. Maybe a bilingual perspective would help them actually understand language. If I hear one more argument by definition that isn't make a meta point about how pointless arguing by definition is, I'm going to be mildly upset and moderately disappointed.
Granted the inability to understand language and its functionality is not an exclusively conservative phenomenon, but their platform relies on it to a worrying extent.
tkscz
Member
Is this also a joke to the joke or did the joke fly over your head?
Seriously though, I blame the security more than the lady. Of course some chicken shit is going to assume he has a bomb because he spoke Arabic, but security should've handled that better. Question the lady first.
orthodoxy1095
Banned
Wasn't there a story a few years ago about some morons in an American airport who got freaked out because they heard a bunch of Arab-speaking dudes yelling yalla (i.e. HURRY UP) at each other?
Vigilance! No logic!
I'd assume incidents like what happened to the student here are severely under-reported. Similar to other forms of harassment and discrimination.
You jest, but this is the reason why people get all hand-wavy about various forms of profiling and why they allow it to continue. A brown person speaking a language other than English being enough to raise suspicion is absolutely ridiculous. Might as well entertain concerns about a gremlin sighted on the left wing.
Instead of enabling this behaviour, it should be standard procedure for the cabin crew to ridicule a nosy "concerned" passenger. Sometimes you need to mock the stupid out of people.
I'd assume incidents like what happened to the student here are severely under-reported. Similar to other forms of harassment and discrimination.
You jest, but this is the reason why people get all hand-wavy about various forms of profiling and why they allow it to continue. A brown person speaking a language other than English being enough to raise suspicion is absolutely ridiculous. Might as well entertain concerns about a gremlin sighted on the left wing.
Instead of enabling this behaviour, it should be standard procedure for the cabin crew to ridicule a nosy "concerned" passenger. Sometimes you need to mock the stupid out of people.
lol
[...]
From the TSA webpage:
You have to take of your shoes during security? The more you know...
is this a common thing in the US? also wouldn't that like prolong the whole procedure? I mean, security checks are already a nuisance but this...?
make sure you don't get sho....
too late
Acerac
Banned
My Christian Mother legitimately believes we should bomb the middle east until there is nothing left.
I refuse to talk politics with her at this point.
Wow, worse than Hitler. Literally. At least his goal was only 30-40 million Jews or so.
Mr Waluigi
Banned
Well, I'm French and my girlfriend is American, and her parents don't want us together anymore (after 5 years together) because since I'm a Christian and most of my family is Muslim, I might convert and as such harm my girlfriend by abusing her or selling her as a sex slave.
They're politically left-wing by the way.
Acerac
Banned
She watches Fox News every day before work, so it's not like she just thought it up herself.
It's frustrating watching it happen, but there's not much I can really do. I just ask her to change the channel when I visit. =/
Do you live in America or France?
Mr Waluigi
Banned
France.
shanshan310
Member
I mean, I feel like it would be more likely to happen in the states than anywhere else unfortunately.
JinjoUnchained
Member
Wanna get away?
The anti-Muslim rhetoric is nothing new in North America. I remember Stephen Harper made eliminating the niqab at naturalization ceremonies part of the cornerstone of his political campaign.
But you'd be surprised how a mixture of ignorance & misinformation can make the most rational individual irrational.
You'll most likely be kicked off for causing a scene regardless of what you're screaming.
from the op
He was kicked of a plane because the current climate allows people to be racist assholes.
I get the whole talking to him while the plane was still on the tarmac for clarification because other customers were concerned, but kicking him off the plane after the explanation is fucking brutal
That was such crap from Harper. What pissed me off the most is they made it seem they just wanted to be able to verify the person's identity and it was total bullshit. I am so glad the court struck it down.
ClayKavalier
Banned
Yeah well that's too bad and all, but did you hear they ain't puttin Merry Christmas on the Starbucks cups any more? That's what we SHOULD be talking about.
Among the other idiotic stunts he was trying to pull during his time in office, that one in particular pissed me off the most.
Thankfully he didn't learn when the PQ tried the same stunts and like them it probably cost him his win
TAJ
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Because someone who bothered to learn Arabic (for purposes other than military) is soooooo likely to profile someone for speaking Arabic.
If she knew what he was saying, then she wouldn't have been bothered by what he said....
orthodoxy1095
Banned
Lol. I have a bunch of Eritreans at my local church. I guess to an uneducated moron, of which there are unfortunately many, Tigrinya might sound similar to Arabic. That must suck.
So what you're saying is that Arabs can't talk about ISIS?
Of course there's no way anyone on that plane knew what he was talking about, but we'll ignore that minor point for the sake of discussion.
That would make them extremely liberal democrats.
What you're describing sounds like right wing religious conservatives (like Tea Party style).
Really? This is what society has become? The terrorists have won then, if they don't even need to do anything to make you fear. Gimme a fucking break.
That's unfair for a lot of reasons, but also because they play nothing but CNN in airports. ISIL and the derogative term for them is going to be on people's minds.
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