From: charlie
Date: 9/26/01
Time: 10:46:51 AM
Jasper, Of course you are correct about this.
What I was referring to specifically though was the charges that investigating "questionable" people at all---which was called racist by some.
The accusation of being a racist has been used in such ways in recent years that good common sense has gone out the window.
I think that many didn't voice their concerns about thousands of young men from the Terror countries coming to our country and involving themselves in "questionable" activities just because it was too UnPC to do so.
Besides the ODD things as wanting to learn to steer a plane but not take off and land. Or having over 1/2 the class (as I heard of the other day) of a class designed for police and fire fighters having to do with learning about bombs and how to handle emergencies, etc. being non-citizen, non-emergency related men from the MId-East. A local man told of that. Our Eastern Ky. University near here has a large college for law enforcement and fire fighters. He said he never got a satisfactory answer as to why the classes were filled with Mid-Eastern men who were not citizens and had no connection to either law enforcement or fire fighters. He was made to feel "uncomfortable" for questioning it.
There IS such a thing as cutting off your nose to spite your face. I think we went through a lengthy period of time where we allowed things to go on, policies to go on, that were even to the most casual but logical observer NOT in the best interest of our country.
I personally believe that the reason that actor James Woods was blown off by both the airlines and the airport when he tried to report the strange and bizarre behavior of a group of Arabs on THE SAME cross-country flight that ended up being hijacked later and crashed into the WTC was Because he was attempting to "report" a racial group or cultural group nobody wanted to touch it with a 10 foot pole.
Racism is horrific. But we have gone so far to be so PC that many times logical, reasoned and studied concerns that just might happen to concern a group of people not from the US (whether it be Hispanics, Arabs, or whomever) are AUTOMATICALLY blown off and the reporting person is accused of being a racist.
This is the attitude that I was responding to in particular.
I can give you a personal example that I know of. We have a Hispanic woman who comes into the store where I work with her two ill-behaved children. She has been observed letting her children reek havoc in the store while she is socking away small items of product and shop lifting it. Do the police get called? No! One of the employees is assigned to "follow her around" or to make sure there is an employee "working" in each aise she is in. Why aren't the police called? The store is too afraid because she is Hispanic. They are trying to avoid charges of "racism" or "racial profiling". That is not the case at all. She has been observed taking things...and using the ill-behaved children (running the aisles, pulling down things from the shelves, being loud, etc.) being in Other aisles from where she is shopping.
I am just suggesting that this attitude of having certain groups of people or rather individuals from those groups being "off limits" JUST because of their race, nationality, etc. has got to cease.
That can prove to be just as detrimental to our national security as the opposite attitude would be.
charlie