NationStates Jolt Archive

We just had a debate in my government class about giving the United States government as much power as they needed to eradicate terrorism. Unfortunately 21 out of the 26 students felt that racial profiling was a perfectly acceptable thing to do, and that anyone from the Middle East should be searched before boarding a plane. They didn't seem to find any problem with it whatsoever, and didn't seem to think it was a racist action. They even attempted to make me feel guilty when I argued by asking me if I would feel responsible if an Arabic person boarded a plane, and that I (playing the role of security) in order to prevent racial profiling did not search him, or stop him, and he went on to blow up the plane and/or a building. Am I crazy, or do these people not know what racism is?

P.S. I thought you might want to know I am the only non-caucasion in the class.

Zee children of Amerika are teh evul!!!! Zee Boosh has influenced zem tooo mutch!!!!! :eek:

Seriously though, we've had a few stories like that on NSG now from people in US schools.

Is it just me or is the mainstream youth in the US generally tending towards fascism these days?

Did you explain to them that the terrorist coordinators know that there is a profile for their operatives, and that they are specifically using people who do not fit said profile. People like Jose Padilla, John Walker Lindh, Richard Reid, Lindsey Germaine, etc.

Is it just me or is the mainstream youth in the US generally tending towards fascism these days?

yup. In my gov't class when we did a project to create our own fake nations one group made a thinly-veiled clone of the third reich, knowing full well that there were jews present in the classroom.

Seems like all the kids in my school are wannabe fascists, communists, or anarchists.

as soon as we start profiling, they will start using people who don't fit the profile.

So, would you feel responsible, Nyongtema? If your love of civil rights led to further loss of life that could have been prevented by merely inconveniencing a certain group of people who are, in fact, statistically more likely to blow up a plane?

yup. In my gov't class when we did a project to create our own fake nations one group made a thinly-veiled clone of the third reich, knowing full well that there were jews present in the classroom.

Seems like all the kids in my school are wannabe fascists, communists, or anarchists.

In my hometown kids spraypainted Swastikas and told people they were Nazis

So, would you feel responsible, Nyongtema? If your love of civil rights led to further loss of life that could have been prevented by merely inconveniencing a certain group of people who are, in fact, statistically more likely to blow up a plane?

I would feel much less safe under a security system based on racial profiling.

So, would you feel responsible, Nyongtema? If your love of civil rights led to further loss of life that could have been prevented by merely inconveniencing a certain group of people who are, in fact, statistically more likely to blow up a plane?

Can't answer for him, but personally no I wouldn't, better to die staying true to our beliefs and ideals then live through sacrificing them for the cozy warmth of security.

Seems like all the kids in my school are wannabe fascists, communists, or anarchists.
Well, rather than a "wannabe" thing, I mean the much more worrying willingness to abandon all sorts of basic principles of democratic society because of terrorism.

Whether it's this profiling, or the whole not giving a fair trial to suspects, or wiretaps and so on...it worries me just a little bit that from the anecdotal evidence we're hearing here (and in the aforementioned previous similar threads), young people seem to not at all be worried about it and see it as perfectly understandable and necessary.

I mean, all those kids are gonna be voters in a few years.

I have no problem with profiling, I just think racial profiling is stupid.

Why inspect people of Middle Eastern heritage when one can inspect people who have visited various countries in the past 10 years ( Afghanistan and Pakistan inter alia) and have a much better chance of detecting terrorists, something which disprpotionately affects people of Midle Eastern heritage and has been decried as racist profiling?

Racial profiling is just foolish, and if someone in the US government were to seriously sugest they begin such a program they should be slapped silly.

We just had a debate in my government class about giving the United States government as much power as they needed to eradicate terrorism. Unfortunately 21 out of the 26 students felt that racial profiling was a perfectly acceptable thing to do, and that anyone from the Middle East should be searched before boarding a plane. They didn't seem to find any problem with it whatsoever, and didn't seem to think it was a racist action. They even attempted to make me feel guilty when I argued by asking me if I would feel responsible if an Arabic person boarded a plane, and that I (playing the role of security) in order to prevent racial profiling did not search him, or stop him, and he went on to blow up the plane and/or a building. Am I crazy, or do these people not know what racism is?

P.S. I thought you might want to know I am the only non-caucasion in the class.

Yeah, racial profiling is real bad, and, as people have pointed out, does not work, and in fact may work to the advantage of terrorists. I mean, if you are the leader of a terrorist organisation, and you know that people who look certain ways are more likely to get searched, whereas those who look different have a much smaller chance of being searched, who are you going to try to recruit?

Luckily, where I am, people in my classes seem over all to be more rational and leberal than the young fascist-leaning people...of course, it might just be a fluke.

Seriously though, we've had a few stories like that on NSG now from people in US schools.

Is it just me or is the mainstream youth in the US generally tending towards fascism these days?

Not exactly.

See, most kids these days are simply left to watch T.V. or play video games while rarely spending any time with their parents, even as early as one year old. As such, they are essentially raised by the media and occasionally by whatever political beliefs they hear espoused by their teachers and whatnot, thus creating the sheer number of kids who are too moronic to actually think about politics that just swallow whatever the administration says, for instance.

Unfortunately, most adults in the United States have this attitude towards politics as well. My parents are both idiots when it comes to the cost of gasoline and heating oil; they completely ignore common sense when it comes to supply and demand and state that the Republicans were directly altering prices to change the election and whatnot. They continue to hold this belief regardless of what I say against them. (Though there is a slight possibility that they don't and are merely acting as if they do to bug me. I wouldn't put it past them to do that kind of thing.)

Meh!

It happens to da ebil whitey too.

There is a town that is known for drugs and crime. If you are white and there after dark, the cops will pull you over.

Seriously though, we've had a few stories like that on NSG now from people in US schools.

Is it just me or is the mainstream youth in the US generally tending towards fascism these days?

It looks like it... and they're SO trendy too! :eek:

Really, this is sad. :(

We should racially profile the whole human race, regardless of color.

:p

We should racially profile the whole human race, regardless of color.

:p

Pfft. Been there, done that. It's all about DNA now. :p