Come Fly the Fairer Skies: The TSA, Strip Searches, and You

SHUT THE FUCK UP AND FLY.

That's the message I'd like to send to all the people out there who have a problem with the methods the TSA is employing when searching passengers.  Just shut the hell up.

A common theme you'll find in this blog is my disdain for people and institutions that bitch and moan about 'rights' that do not exist, have little practical value, or are agitated for without any acknowledgement of their corresponding responsibilities.

The people still bellyaching about being searched at an airport are full of shit.  Just because some jackwad is chilling in first class doesn't mean that he isn't strapped with more than enough C4 to take out all the po' folks in coach.  You are not exempt just because you are in a hurry.  You should have planned ahead and walked out of your house with clean underwear.

None of these whiners gave a damn about Fatima's civil rights when she was getting strip-searched and finger-fucked in the terminal, with her two year-old watching in horror.  But some dude feels the need to yank off his little boy's T-shirt to prove he's not a Jr. Unibomber, and all of a sudden there's (yet another) call to arms to defend individual liberty?  Am I missing something here?  If little Mohammed can have a pipe bomb in his diaper bag, then why not little Timmy?

Last I checked, as with most things in America, the ability to use commercial aircraft to travel is a PRIVILEGE and not a right; it is an entity regulated by and at the discretion of the government.  When you buy an airline ticket, when you walk inside that terminal, you agree to their rules.  If you have a problem with any of those rules, then you are free to utilize any other form of transportation that suits your comfort.  Hell, you can motherfucking walk for all I care.  You don't have to fly.  But when you do, you have to play by the same rules as Fatima, Tyrone, El-Habib (hock, spit) Shabazz and everybody else you find suspect. 

Equal justice under the law.  What a concept.

You should know that it also pisses me off to see people misuse the Constitution in order to prop up their arguments.  Thus, for all you wannabe constitutional scholars out there, this is NOT a Fourth Amendment issue.  First, the amendment protects individuals against unreasonable search and seizures; that is correct.  However, in this day and age, it is not unreasonable anymore to assume that anybody can walk onboard a plane and light a fuse in his Florsheims. 

Second, the point of the amendment was that government can't stop you in the middle of the street and search you without cause (like in Arizona, if you look Hispanic enough), nor can they do so at your house.  But when you are in a public setting, where the safety of the majority outweighs the convenience of the few, probable cause is already inherent by precedent, so the provisions of the 4th don't apply.  It may apply if you were flying your own plane or driving your own car.  But when you're going Greyhound, not so much. 

And third, nothing in the Constitution precludes the government's prerogative to curtail the provisions of its amendments as it sees fit.  If you step inside a federal building, you can be searched.  Before you enter a military installation (without the proper credentials), you WILL be searched.  And they let you know from the jump that they couldn't care less about what you think your rights are (note those locked and loaded M-16 riles in your face) because, most likely, you don't have to be there.  And the people who aren't required to be there shouldn't feel entitled to less scrutiny than those who are.

Same thing with the airports.  National security trumps individual liberty every time.

So the way I see it, the people who cry the most about what the TSA is doing are the ones who think they're too good to be searched in the first place.  It's cool when someone who 'fits the description' goes through the ringer, but if an examiner 'touches my junk,' then there's hell to pay.  Boo fucking hoo, motherfucker.  Everybody who flies today and for the foreseeable future is a potential hijacker, terrorist, or assassin, and like it or not, we all fit the description.  You're not mad because your liberties are being trampled on; you're just pissed that you have to be lumped in with everybody else.   Grow up.  Better to endure a few moments of indignity than to have your family be told on the news that you got blown apart because someone missed that blue-haired grandma sitting next to you, as she took you and 200 others out by adjusting her pacemaker.

All the brouhaha about TSA searches is just another case of people calling some rule unfair simply because they don't like it.  Too bad.  Most of us are going to be inconvenienced at some point, and nobody wants to feel violated in any sense of the word.  But for the time being, we all have to live with these rules; not because the majority thinks they're fair, but because the people ultimately responsible for our collective safety believe those rules are RIGHT.  And if you're going to be among the thousands of people flying commercial aircraft everyday, then it stands to reason that at some point, you're gonna get poked and prodded. And be pissed off just like everyone else. 

And besides, it's only fair.

Affirmative Action is Never Going Away. Here's Why.

Today I was reminded of a Texas legislator who, some years back, tried to push a bill that eliminated racial preferences for athletes (football players, specifically) at state-supported schools like the University of Texas and Texas A&M.  Yeah, you know that thing didn't have a chance.  He probably did, too.  I'm wagering that its passage wasn't the point.  More importantly, I think what he was trying to do (and if I'm correct, he was truly ahead of his time) was to point out a dirty little secret whites will never cop to about Affirmative Action.

Remember the passage in Ellison's Invisible Man, where the protagonist was working at Liberty Paints?  Remember the irony that came out of the firm's whitest white paint?  (For the uninitiated, it took ten drops of black paint in order to create it.)  The genius of it was, though it alluded to the hypocrisy of Jim Crow, that same passage almost seamlessly fits into the Affirmative Action debate. 

It's funny how some people will fight heaven and hell to deny others something close to the same opportunities they had, except when it suits their selfish interests.  And too often, those interests lie in their pocketbooks and wallets.

Stop groaning.  You knew what this thread was about the minute you saw the title.  Yes, I know you're already tired of the debate, regardless of what side you're on.  But have you ever thought that maybe it's because each side keeps saying the same damn thing?  Have we lost the ability to take the opposing view and flip the script?  I mean, for me I can accept that some people feel that everything is a zero-sum equation, and that every break little Jamaal or Maria gets comes at the expense of their little snots.  But why do they seem to get away with the institutional racism that allows them to be seen as victims of a PC-crazy, meritless society while their oppressors are getting fat off undeserved entitlements? Why does it always appear that the biggest whiners of Affirmative Action seem to be amongst the most prosperous in this struggling economy?

Allow me to let you in on a little secret:  the war against Affirmative Action is a farce.  It's not going anywhere, and white people won't allow it to.  You read that right.  Minority-based preferences and set asides are here to stay, and all us black folks can thank Whitey for it.  Contrary to what you hear on Fox News or read from the Southern Heritage Newsletter, white people love Affirmative Action.  More accurately put, they need those preferences and set-asides to remain in place more than we do.

This deserves an explanation.  It's a well-known fact (should be, anyway) that the biggest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action policies are white women, who overwhelmingly marry white men, who in turn have white children (obviously, though many adopt interracially), about half of which are males.  And yet the biggest complainers of preference policies, the ones most likely to vehemently preach of reverse racism in the practice, are white men.  Ironic, no?  The demographic who collectively gains the most from race-based policies are the very ones who are most threatened by them.

At first blush, it is kinda hard to figure.  But if you look at it another way, it's certainly understandable. See, beneath all the vitriol and empty logic about preferences, there's a white noise (pun intended) speaking another unacknowledged truth.  You hear it at schools like FAMU and Bethune-Cookman (white baseball and golf teams), Fayetteville (NC) State (a model of an integrated university:  military, whites, out-of-staters) and the venerable Morehouse College (white valedictorian).  You hear it when applicants employ nepotism and alumni connections to pave a better path to the corner suite.  You hear it when Essence magazine defends its choice of a white fashion editor. That sound you hear is perhaps the dirtiest little secret of the debate:  white people get as much from preferences and set-asides as they feel they had taken away.  The institutional racism that perpetuates the intended beneficiaries as less-than-stellar, while those supposedly left out collectively profit exponentially, will not allow it.

See, the white middle class was built on preferences, preferences afforded to veterans (via the GI Bill), college students (affordable student loans), the indingent (WIC, AFDC, etc.), and, yes, preferences based on race (Jim Crow).  If  those set-asides were taken away from them tomorrow, if we all compete fairly, and thus are forced to compete equally, then it stands to reason that whites would be disproportionally affected; and with the increased competition and scarcity of resources from a more meritocratic union, the tiping point would be the largest transfer of wealth in this nation's history since the Manifest Destiny, far more than any teabagger's fearmongering misspelled on a placard would proclaim.

So the next time you hear some hack whine about Affirmative Action (or immigration, for that matter), remind yourself that the game still favors them; the more that's supposedly taken away, the more it's really given back.  In other words, don't be fooled by the rhetoric, and don't be ashamed to take advantage of something we as a people were long overdue, and that far too many were stepped on for us to have. 

Because like at Liberty Paints, its enemies of getting theirs, too.