Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Political Correctness and Racial Profiling

Apparently there were 32,000 stop and searches in London last year, a marked increase on the year before. No fewer than twenty per cent of the people stopped were of Asian background. This raises a number of questions about racial profiling, which is clearly being utilised.

A week or two ago I was in a car driven by a British Asian man. We encountered a security check along the Embankment. He was pulled over. After the Police had completed their checks I asked him if that happened regularly. He said it did, but he didn't mind at all. He said he was ashamed that people of his religion had made anyone with his skin colour a suspect and he felt he had to put up with this minor inconvenience.

He recognised that political correctness has to go out of the window when dealing with terrorism.

38 comments:

Anonymous said...

When some nit at the Met - around four years ago - gave orders that young black men shouldn't be stopped and searched because it was "racist", ordinary black people living in London were aghast and the editor of the largest black newspaper in London started a campaign to demand a return. The main victims of black crime in black neighbourhoods are black people. Duh.

The outcry was such that, if I recall correctly, the people managed to get it reinstated.

Anonymous said...

There must be a lot of merit in extending the argument further.

Such racial profiling at airports would make the journey so much easier for whites.

Only those who looked Asian would be inconvenienced then.

Not sure what we'd do about blacks, though. Search them to be on the safe side, I suppose.

Anonymous said...

Some of my black friends report being stopped and searched, in London, time and again. They don't much like it and sometimes resent the attitude of the police but I'm afraid it's preferable to the alternative.

In some ways, with so many knives and guns on the streets, the more people who are stopped and searched, the better.

Anonymous said...

I was taking pictures of the new congestion charge cameras last year. Within 60 seconds of deploying a long lens a diplomatic police transit swung around and police got out.

I was stopped because I was taking pictures 'outside Kensington Palace...what with terrorism and everything, sir'.

They couldn't have been nicer and didn't even seem to want to check I was a journalist. They just wanted to quickly fill in a form. In fact, 'if I didn't want a copy immediately I could go sraight away'.

I was left with the feeling that I was stopped because I was white. By which I mean, to keep the numbers more racially evenly balanced.

jailhouselawyer said...

That's not terrorism, that's honkyism.

Richard Edwards said...

Last time I looked Muslims didn't all have brown skins. Take this guy. Or this one. Are they brown? Profiling is based on the sort of crude stereotyping that requires legislative intervention in other contexts.

Kris said...

"This raises a number of questions about racial profiling, which is clearly being utilised".

That will be news to the met.

Ever consider it was random or their was some irregularity with your friend's (including that it may have been similar to someone they're keeping a look out for).

Bit of a leap of logic to assume that racial profiling is being used without bothering to look at the documentation behind the stops.

Anonymous said...

rohan - I don't know how Britain got it so confused, except political correctness married to ignorance. The British started referring to Arabs as black, which they're not. Pakistanis aren't black either. And there are plenty people among them with very pale skins. King Hussein of Jordan looked white (except for his nose), as does his son King Abudulla. And his wife Queen Rania is also white.

The British should stop referring to people of the sub-Continent and the Middle East as black and save themselves a lot of confusion.

Black in the rest of the world, including among black people themselves, refers to people with African ancestry.

I suspect that the confusion in Britain comes from socialist thought fascists as a tool of control.

Anonymous said...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7012698.stm

What an absolute moron.

Richard Edwards said...

Verity - Pakistanis are under the reporting criteria classed as Asians. But then so are the Chinese.

My point is in fact that as Muslims can be any colour so can Jihadi's. Stopping people whose ethnic origins lie in the Indian sub-continent because of 7/7 looks like a classic example of confirmation bias. Sure those murderers were 'Asian'. But the 21/7 were Somali. 9/11 were Saudi. Richard Reid the shoe bomber was of Caribbean extraction. And some of the alleged August 2006 plotters were white. They come in all sorts and sizes. The al Qaeda network is patient and adaptable. As both WTC bombings show. Crude stop and search powers are unlikely to catch them as Lord Carlyle QC (the chap who review counter terrorist laws for HMG) admits. Beating these people will be done by intelligence led policing. (BTW these powers can be exercised by those stalwarts of British policing community support officers)

As for political correctness. The Met is happy to use and justify these stop and search powers. Reading the bare stats it seems safe to assume that a lot of innocent people from ethnic minorities are subject to the indignity of these intrusive searches. However, the police will not take sniffer dogs to a Muslim house when executing a search warrant because it might offend the suspect. Now that is potty.

Anonymous said...

Verity - as an Aussie immigrant I find it equally confusing that people from the sub-continent are referred to as Asian when this means the people of the countries to the east of there. It doesnt seem to bother the people described thus, who seem to have more important things to worry about than how Europeans choose to tag them. Near East, Middle East, Far East - it does all seem to suggest an outdated Eurocentric viewpoint though doesn't it?

Wrinkled Weasel said...

13.2% of the population of Greater London is Asian. Of course, that figure is an average and the figure is much higer in Ealing, Hounslow, Brent and Harrow. Given the nature of the present terrorist threat, and the proximity to Heathrow of high concentrations of Asians, I would say the figures show what you would hope to see; that is, a determined effort to monitor the racial group who is producing the murderers.

If the police are so deseperately caught up in political correctness that they must stop a few innocent photographers so be it. Asians can't really disguise themselves and they are obvious targets. It is as it should be, they are from immigrant stock and they have imported an ideology that runs contrary to everthing we believe in. Currently more than 1 in 8 Londoners are of Asian origin.

And now on to Muslims. Before I get accused of claiming synonymity I will only quote Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent Ali Desai, a Muslim, who, in an article on British opinion about Muslims says, "that he feared the xenophobia could lead to a new offence in Britain called "traveling whilst Asian." Note the word Asian. And let's not pretend that most Muslims are not Asian and few whites are not Muslims.

We have to reflect the perceived will of the people.

A recent YouGov poll made it overwhelmingly clear that British non-Asians feel that Muslims are a threat and should be monitored - 65 percent, said that security services should focus their intelligence gathering and anti-terrorism efforts on Muslims.

Still, even now, after all the disgusting carnage, the attempted bombings and the radicals who cannot be deported, the Politicians are chosing to talk about effing WINDFARMS and taxing car parks.

The Asians are dead against racial profiling. If you find yourself sitting next to three people on a bus, all of them with rucksacks, but one of them is Asian, which one is going to make you nervous?

Benny said...

We need to remember that Asian people are also victims of terrorism and crimes committed so I'm sure they have no objection that there seems to be less political correctness. A small inconvenience or being killed? I think it's obvious.

Anonymous said...

He recognised that political correctness has to go out of the window when dealing with terrorism.

That's rather silly Iain. Firstly there is never any proof that racial profiling works. Secondly, what about the people who get angery at constant police harassment and become more anti-establishment? Does that help the fight against terrorism?

Anonymous said...

Right you lot, listen in.

While people out there get their knickers in twist on behalf of a race they have very limited contact with, let me tell you a story about growing up in an immigrant Irish family.

My father came to the UK in 1955 and spent 50 years working on the roads. He once complained that a couple of IRA supporters were working in his gang.

He said they were always jumping out of the cutting and ranting on about the IRA. He couldn't understand why they hadn't been arrested. They - known by their nicknames - were eventually convicted of murdering an army member on the continent.

Overall, this extended proximity to bag carriers and active members had little effect on us as children, but when we were older, it hit us.

One brother went for an interview for a degree sponsorship at a well-known engineering company. The panel had rung his father's origin on the form, asked a lot about how often he went back and then booted him out. His friend from the same comp got sponsored on the same day.

Only a few years ago another brother completed a degree and went to apply for officer training at the local RAF office. The recruitment guy recommended him. He didn't hear anything for weeks, so went back. Sheepishly, the officer told him not to bother re-applying, though he might be let in at the bottom end.

The one time I went back to Ireland with my father, matey 'Police' were there to question you as you walked on board. I once encountered my father being pulled over by a traffic cop on patently thin grounds. I wondered how much of this he got over 50 years, and never said anything?

It mattered not that my father had no contact with the 'Irish' community outside work, never went to pubs and rarely went home. Even his sons were too much of risk to get security cleared in the most minor of areas.

After 9/11, I watched the infamous Question Time, with the audience of sullen, arm-folded Muslims. I laughed at their so-what attitude. Our family had a small taste of what was coming to them.

Still, there were no pressure groups jumping up and down for the Irish in Britain in the 1970s and 80s.

Perhaps we should have rioted.

I would recommend Muslims getting used to this treatment. It'll last for decades.

A measure of how bad things are is America's recent attempt to scrap the visa waver scheme for anybody who has visited Pakistan. The roof lifted off No10, so America suggested dropping it for everyone in the UK. What a measure of the devaluation of the British Passport.

There's more to come on this, I reckon.

Anonymous said...

Rohan notes: "My point is in fact that as Muslims can be any colour so can Jihadi's. Stopping people whose ethnic origins lie in the Indian sub-continent because of 7/7 looks like a classic example of confirmation bias. ...Sure those murderers were 'Asian'. But the 21/7 were Somali. 9/11 were Saudi."

You prove my point about British thought-fascist reverse prejudice.

Sunny - probably a very clever nomme de guerre for Sunni - writes: "That's rather silly Iain. Firstly there is never any proof that racial profiling works."

Really?

And you would know this how?

Do you know how many people have been refused permission to board flights worldwide? Tell us if you know, with your sources.

"Secondly, what about the people who get angery at constant police harassment and become more anti-establishment? Does that help the fight against terrorism?"

Yes.

James Higham said...

Political correctness has to go out of the window when dealing with anything.

Anonymous said...

johnny pragmatic - why stop there ?

Why not bin human and civil rights altogether and bring back racial segregation, nay full scale apartheid ?

Moron..

Unknown said...

No fewer than 20%? - if you weight this for age (i.e. younger people more likely to be stopped), that seems pretty much in line with the London population - maybe even a bit low. Doesn't really tally with a British Asian man saying that it happens regularly. Maybe he's an exception.

Anonymous said...

Sunny is spot on. Racial profiling is surely an inefficient way of policing and the damage done in psychological terms - ever wonder why some brown people don't feel British? - outweighs any supposed advantage.

When I was once pulled over, the way my white girlfriend was treated versus me, the brown male, was humiliating and only made me feel less a part of this country than I should (as a British citizen).

Anonymous said...

It might not sound pretty, but looking for Ismlamic Terrorists means we know two things - links to Islam and links to terrorism. One takes a lot of time and effort, the other is much easier, of course the police have to focus on Asian and in particular Muslim people.
Taking it to an extreme does anyone argue that men and women should be equally targetted in a rape enquiry? Of course not, its common sense.

Anonymous said...

"Secondly, what about the people who get angery at constant police harassment and become more anti-establishment? Does that help the fight against terrorism?"

Yes."

and you know this how? You tool, on the one hand you have a go at Sunny for asserting something and demand proof, on the other you spuriously assert nonsense without giving proof. You got any clue?

Racial profiling is discrimination based upon ethnicity, something which undermines the basic human rights every person is entitled to.

Wrinkled Weasel said...

Brown male. You have a simplistic view of the world.

The only time I was ever nearly mugged in London was by a "brown male". The recent spate of inner city shootings is among "brown males". The Saint Paul's area of Bristol is a hotspot of drug and gun crime (mostly imported from Jamaica) and is full of "brown males". "brown males" under perform educationally and represent a higher proportion of the prison poplulation. Need I go on?

You presumably think that the police should be going after little old ladies, brown or white, in order to make you fell better?

You have to face up to the fact that you come from a group that produces a higher proportion of scallies than the rest of us.

You should feel sorry for me! I am English,white, male, old, middle class and straight, practically the only group that pays its way, does not ask for special treatment, get subsidies, parliaments, or dedicated "help" lines. "brown males" on the other hand are the recipients of numerous government "initiatives" on urban regeneration, education and various airy fairy ideas, paid for by tax payers.

Do me a favour.

Anonymous said...

What Sunny and friends don't understand is that terrorism is a problem of social harmony rather a security problem -- yes it's bad when an attack works out, but in the sum of things, it's more like an an trying to strangle an elephant, the country isn't going to collapse because of it, moreover, it's impossible and impractical to stop attacks like that.

So, why does the police bother with a lost cause?

Because initially, terrorism and religious bigotry and supremacy sows hatred between people, and if it continues unchecked, it easily creates a situation that brings civil war, that's why.

You can restrain 10 people, 100, maybe even a 1000. You can sort of get incompatible communities to be functionally civil to each other, with enough legislation and enforcement thereof, but only whilst the problem is small.

But when thousands of people decide to be unreasonable to each other and become open enemies, then you have a problem far larger than any terrorist attack could bring.

As for racial profiling -- it's religious profiling that we need, Islam is a political religion not a race.

Anonymous said...

Benny writes:"We need to remember that Asian people are also victims of terrorism."

First, they're not "Asian", which is used as a synonym for the dread word "Pakistani" which everyone in Britain has been bullied into not saying. In the British context, we are talking of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis here. And now a smattering of Somalis, who are black Africans, not "Asian".

Second, how many of them are victims of terrorism and why? Because the odd one or two were on the wrong seat in London Transport? The intended victims of terrorism are non-muslims. If the islamics don't want to be incidental "victims of terrorism", a really, really good idea would be to report young terrorists and bloodthirsty preachers to the police. But,except for a very brave few, they stay schtum.

Why?

Because they agree with the concept that the world has to worship their god and if we won't go willingly, we must be forced to convert (or, in their stupid term "revert" as they believe everyone is born a muslim) at the point of a sword.

So don't say they are also victims of terrorism, because they are terrorism enablers.

I'd like to see the definition of islam "reverted" from religion to dangerous cult. Mohammad was the L Ron Hubbard fo his day.

Anonymous said...

Brown male - so far as I know, colour doesn't count as a race. Perhaps, having been motivated to post, you could fill in the blanks of this mystery by telling us what race you are.

Anonymous said...

Barry Day - You are correct to point out that people getting "angery" doesn't necessarily further the fight against terrorism committed by islamic nutjobs.

Their anger is irrelevant. If they don't want to be stopped and questioned, they should inform the police when they hear of frothing imams or groups of young men carrying mysterious bags of chemicals into their garages. The overwhelming majority do not.

You ask if I "got any clue?". Yes. Terrorism has to be defeated and we will only succeed in the fight for our civilisation by targetting people in enemy groups.

You say - somewhat inexplicably, given the problem - "Racial profiling is discrimination based upon ethnicity, something which undermines the basic human rights every person is entitled to."

Incorrect. The basic human rights of the British to live safely in their own homes, their own streets and their own public transport is paramount. People essaying to take these ancient rights away have to be dealt with and we know that the overwhelming number of these aggressors come from one immigrant ethnic group. Now there are a smattering of Somalis, as well, so that is another immigrant ethnic group that has to be watched with an eagle eye.

Madasafish said...

>Verity
I entirely agree with your last post.
(Is this a record?)

Wolfie said...

Being a Londoner the first thing my [Spanish] wife pointed out on that news was that Asians were the majority in London now as it is. Well it feels like that these days.

Yak40 said...

Firstly there is never any proof that racial profiling works.

What proof do you need ? Islam is a religion not a race anyway.

Profiling works well, look at El Al's track record.

Anonymous said...

Winkled Weasel - Extraordinary entry and I am putting it down to the fact that you are not a serious person and you are just getting involved in this blog because you just want to stir things up. But even I accept what you say at face value, do you not see a correlation between that kind of language/classification and ethnic minorities retreating into their 'communities'?

Verity - well, in truth, I would prefer to just call myself British. But, within the context of this discussion, I am Indian. Does it matter in particular?

Anonymous said...

Brown male - Yes, in today's murderous climate, it matters. Northern Indians share some facial characteristics with Pakistanis, as you know. I am certain you were not stopped because of the colour of your skin, but because you looked as though you might be Pakistani and thus muslim.

Yak40 - Good point about El Al. Profiling works.

Interesting that muslims have developed such a keen interest in "human rights", given their behaviour to other human beings. Bombing London Transport was against a whole lot of people's human rights - and I include the people who were blinded and lost limbs in the explosions and had their lives blighted forever - as well as the ones who died. The planters of the bombs in the nightclub in Bali, the railway station in Madrid, the WTC and other places didn't seem to be that passionate about "human rights",either. So I don't think we want to listen to your opinions.

We developed the concept of human rights and we're running the show.

Anonymous said...

In some areas of criminal detection 'profiling' is considered a very useful tool. It can tell you what sort of individual you are looking for.

Suppose your profiling exercise tells you that the person you are looking for is likely to be a young black male, or a young Muslim. What do you do? Stop and search old ladies bicycling to Holy Communion?

Wrinkled Weasel said...

Brown male. So you are Indian. Yes it does put a different, ahem, complexion on it.

Every Indian I have ever met and lived with has treated me with courtesy and respect, and I them. Sadly though, you are still an obvious target and you will be for the foreseeable. Better get used to it.

And by the way, I am serious, and committed to making a serious contribution to this blog. It is just that I don't always believe what I say. That is not the same as being provocative for the sake of it.

Anonymous said...

WW- Like you, I am a committed fan of Indians and India. I am mad for that country. If it weren't for their stupid law forbidding foreign ownership of a dwelling, I would be living in India now.

Anonymous said...

Excellent idea. Why leave it there? Why not bash the nig-nogs a bit too, preferably round the head. After all, we don't have to worry about brain damage because the animals have no brains...

Good to see that you love your country and aim to keep it white.

Terrorist=non-white, am I correct?

WHAT A PIECE OF SCUM YOU ARE

Anonymous said...

The New World Order moonbats seem to come flapping out in the early hours.

Stake, string of garlic, silver bullet. Was there something about also holding up a mirror, because if they see their own face they go mad?

Louis said...

If this is the case why weren't white people disproportionately stopped and searched when the IRA were bombing this country?