Racial profiling: Is it worth removing one's shoes?

I am not writing this to criticize Katherine Reilly '05's Jan. 8 column nor to respond to it. She was evidently bothered enough by what she saw to write the column and with good reason, but I feel compelled to try and ease her strong reaction.

Like Reilly, I recently traveled with my family over the Christmas holiday. There I was in line at security. I was asked to step aside and remove my shoes, which were dabbed with some sort of chemical and sent through the X-ray machine. I was poked and prodded with a handheld metal detector and asked to turn my belt over while my family looked on. I told the security guard to be careful while examining my shoes. She asked why, and I responded that I had a funky toe fungus that they hadn't quite identified yet. She smiled, and we shared a laugh. It had obviously been a stressful day for her.

I rejoined my family and we joked about the matter. I playfully commentated that it was a good thing I hadn't worn my turban. I really didn't think much about the whole thing, but it kept on happening. The shoes came off and the prodding recommenced again in Dallas and once more in Los Angeles. On the return trip home, security at Maui's airport again sequestered my footwear while the handheld metal detector again made an appearance. I was never annoyed, but I am a little bit of a smart ass and could not restrain my comments. I remember saying that "you had better wash that metal detector or the next guy you prod with it might sue me." I even warned the security folks in Dallas on the return trip that it would be a very bad idea to ask me to take my pants off, as I had been on vacation for a week and had run out of clean underwear.

Despite the increased security measures now in effect, a relatively small percentage of passengers received the same royal treatment lavished upon my person by the security services of four different airports. I am sure my old statistics professor at Princeton would do the sums and declare me a statistical oddity — several standard deviations from the norm.

The funny thing about this whole affair is that I am white. Actually I am Scottish, so my appropriate skin classification is more of a pale blue. I have blue eyes and my hair is brownish red. Plop a blonde wig on me, and my square-jawed visage could double for an SS recruiting poster from Nazi Germany.

I hope this lengthy anecdote will put those concerned with racial profiling somewhat at ease. George W. Bush was recently quoted as saying he was "madder than heck" that an Arab-American member of the Secret Service had been booted from a flight in Dallas. Furthermore it should be noted that Attorney General John Ashcroft became an opponent of racial profiling after he was moved by testimony from an African-American man and his 12-year-old son recounting how their car had been disassembled by the highway patrol.

The problem with the supposed racial profiling that Reilly witnessed is that there is a tendency to look at skin color and stop right there. Her reaction was not a mistake on her part but rather a gut reaction, which I myself have often felt.

I frequently travel home to the United Kingdom to see my family. A few years ago, I arrived at Heathrow, flipped my British passport and responded to the agent's usual "Welcome home, sir" with my customary "It's good to back" in my habitual Midwestern, Bob Dolesque monotone — punctuated with a long dormant Kentish accent mingled with a dribbling of thick highland dialect resurrected by a few too many gin and tonics on the flight over. I walked through passport control and collected my bags a few minutes later — I know Newark takes forever, but the boys at Heathrow really know their business. As I pushed my cart through customs, I halted and stared in amazement. Her Majesty's customs agents were busy tearing through the luggage of dozens of passengers, and the passengers were all brown! "This can't be!" I thought. This is Great Britain — a country with a higher percentage of interracial marriages than any other in the Western world. A country steeped in tradition but complete with dozens of minority members of Parliament and even minority members of the exclusive House of Lords. The leading contender to become the next Archbishop of Canterbury is an immigrant of Pakistani birth. Hell, a man named Nasser Hussein captains the England's cricket team.

Deeply troubled, I met my grandfather. On the drive home I asked him, "Granddad, do you have trouble with racial profiling in this country?" "No, not really," he responded. "Well, it's a big deal right now in the States, and customs seemed only interested in searching brown people — even those with British passports."

My grandfather looked over and began to explain. "It may seem like that on the surface," he said. "Your flight from Newark arrived at the same time as the daily flight from Karachi. Most of the people on it are Pakistani nationals visiting relatives in Britain, or British subjects of Pakistani origin returning from seeing their extended families. Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan produce most of the world's heroin. Drug smugglers favor the flight from Karachi. Customs has a list of every person on the flight, and they are always searched. The flight is always full of people of Pakistani descent, and that is why you saw so many brown people being searched. It is not racial profiling — if you want to see white people searched, you should see how customs tears into bags of Britons and Europeans coming off the plane from Amsterdam."

It all made perfect sense. I am afraid that Reilly probably witnessed a poor Indian gentleman whose number happened to come up; much like mine was called, and that of the blue-eyed, blonde-haired, 16-year-old girl who was thoroughly searched next to me at Mid-Continent Airport. We may think we see racial profiling, but we as passengers never have all the facts.

While I, like many, am concerned about racial profiling and will defend my liberties and those of others to the death, I am willing to remove my shoes and would even face a dreaded rubber glove to ensure the safety of my countrymen and my fellow Princetonians. Alastair Walling is from Wichita, Ks. He can be reached at alduck194406967@cs.com.