Учебно-методическое пособие по работе с темой "COUNTRY PROFILE". Дедова С.А. - 27 стр.

AIRLINE SECURITY: DISHONEST WORDS ON RACIAL PROFILING                              shows. Furthermore the whole discussion is handicapped, from the Presi-
          MUDDY DEBATE ON AIRLINE SECURITY                                         dent down, by a fundamental dishonesty about the issues in play.
                                                                                          It is a fact that Arab-Americans and people with Muslim names have
        It was a scene that a Hollywood scriptwriter might have dreamt up          been subjected to much more scrutiny than fellow passengers on flights
for one of those earnest television dramas that explore contemporary issues.       since September 11. There have been multiple cases of people being left off
But in this real-life scenario there has been no sex or romance.                   planes because the flight crew and the passengers felt queasy about their
        It is Christmas Day, three months after the trauma of September 11,        Middle Eastern appearance. A commercial airline pilot I know told me in
and a planeload of exhausted, slightly nervous passengers are heading              blunt terms that one of the key items on the «new security» checklist is
home at the last minute for the holidays, on American Airlines flight 363          scanning the passenger manifest for Islamic names. American Airlines'
from Baltimore Washington International airport to Dallas-Fort Worth. As           claim that Shater's Arab-American identity and his book on Arab history
has happened on many commercial flights since the terrorist attacks, an            had nothing to do with the pilot's decision looks dubious, to say the least. It
Arab-American undergoes scrutiny.                                                  is hard to imagine the same situation arising with a blond secret serviceman
        He objects, but is ultimately left at the gate. Such situations have be-   possessing a book about the American civil war, but the airline insists it
come a fact of life on domestic flights in the United States, but this time it     would have acted in an identical manner.
is different. It turns out that the Arab-American, Walied Shater, is a secret             So, because ethnicity is supposed to have nothing to do with the in-
serviceman on his way to guard President George Bush at the «Western               cident, the airline has resorted to pushing out damaging accounts of the
White House» in Crawford, Texas. Big trouble ensues.                               secret serviceman's behaviour, possibly endangering his career prospects. It
        The Christmas incident was doomed to degenerate into a rhetoric-           is a recipe for anger. The refusal to acknowledge the issue of ethnicity has
laden mess as soon as the first lawyer or television pundit used the two           just driven it underground, with the result that neither the effectiveness of
words «racial profiling» – one of the hottest of hot-button issues in con-         ethnic screening nor its civil rights implications can be properly addressed.
temporary America. The President himself threatened he would be «mad-                     The fact that all 19 of the hijackers involved in the September 11 at-
der than heck» if it turned out that Shater was a victim of such a practice, in    tacks were Muslim Arabs has inevitably had an effect on the perceptions of
which citizens are picked out for special attention because of skin colour,        airline pilots and crews. It would be extraordinary if it had not. The over-
name or religion. American Airlines denied Shater had been kicked off the          whelming majority of trainees who went through al-Qaida's Afghan camps
flight because of his Arab-American identity. Instead, the troubled airline        were Muslims from the Middle East or South Asia. It is possible to argue,
(which lost two planes on September 11) published critical accounts of his         then, that there might be a significant security benefit in giving particular
behaviour, describing him as irate and confrontational. He had filled in a         attention to passengers who fit that profile. On the other hand, the role of a
form allowing government security officers to carry guns on planes, but            Briton, Richard Reid, a Muslim with a non-Muslim name, in the shoe-
had filled it in wrongly twice. His identity was eventually confirmed by the       bomb attempt on an
Secret Service, but he had become so truculent by then it was judged best                 American Airlines flight before Christmas was a clear reminder that
to leave him behind.                                                               the assailants in the next attack may not conform to the stereotype. Al-
        Shater has hired lawyers to demand an apology and force a change           Qaida has shown itself adept at varying its line of attack. This is a debate
in the airline's security measures. The lawyers have gone on television to         worth having. If it was decided that there was a significant benefit to using
deny the claims that the presidential bodyguard had behaved unprofession-          elements of ethnic profiling in security screening, there could be further
ally. It was the pilot, the lawyers insist, who was confrontational. They say      discussion of how to minimise the trade-off between security and the civil
that there had been no problem with the gun-carrying forms until the pilot         rights of those targeted. For example, confirming that a passenger was a
became aware of the passenger's Arab-American identity and a flight atten-         secret serviceman with one of the highest security levels in the land should
dant discovered a book on Arab history among his possessions. It looks like        have been more than sufficient to outweigh the fact that he was of Arab
one of those simmering affairs that will run and run on the radio talk-            descent. These issues are currently being ducked because the phrase «racial

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