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<h1><font size=4><b>If the Airport is a Police State, What is the
Ghetto?</b></font></h1><font size=3>Tue, 11/23/2010 - 22:33 Glen
Ford<br><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><b>A Black Agenda Radio
commentary by Glen Ford<br>
<a href="http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/if-airport-police-state-what-ghetto" eudora="autourl">
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/if-airport-police-state-what-ghetto<br>
<br>
</a></b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>It is right to howl
at the indignities inflicted on airline passengers – but hypocritical, if
the howls come from folks who applaud or remain silent while police in
big cities across the country subject hundreds of thousands of Black and
Latino males to arbitrary stop and frisks. “As a Black male who is often
perceived as Latino or Middle-Eastern, I expect to get stopped and
questioned, pulled from the crowd and patted down.”<br><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4 color="#280099"><b>If the
Airport is a Police State, What is the Ghetto?<br><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>A Black Agenda Radio
commentary by Glen Ford<br><br>
</b></font><div align="center"><font size=3 color="#2323DC">“</font>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3 color="#2323DC"><i>The police state
has long been in effect in Black America – so long, it is experienced as
routine.”<br><br>
</i></font></div>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>Critics of the Obama
administration’s escalating intrusions on the dignity and violations of
the privacy of air travelers are certainly correct in raising holy hell
with the voyeurs and bullies that run the homeland’s security apparatus.
The president’s men are a nasty little bunch, who seem to respond to
every hint of danger by shouting “strip!” and fondling everyone within
reach. But I must admit that I’m not personally overly upset at the
government’s deployment of machinery that electronically renders one
naked, or the prospect of more frequent and intrusive pat-downs.
<br><br>
As a Black male who is often perceived as Latino or Middle-Eastern, I
expect to get stopped and questioned, pulled from the crowd and patted
down. My teenage and young adult years coincided with the frequent
hijacking of flights to Cuba. I fit the profile. That coincided with the
war on drugs that never ended, a war that treated me like an enemy
combatant, and still does. A pair of narcotics detectives used to stop me
without fail, among thousands of other train passengers, each week, same
time, same day, as I passed through Union Station commuting from New York
to Washington. <br><br>
</font><font size=3>“</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>La
Migra,” the immigration authorities, have challenged me in DC, all
dressed up for an expensive business lunch at nigh noon on K Street,
demanding to know if I was a citizen. I’ve been pulled off a bus full of
other journalists on the tarmac at the airport in Vienna, Austria, by
machinegun-toting police, for no other reason than my physical type. My
hometown neighborhood is a designated drug zone – like every Black
neighborhood in Jersey City, New Jersey – where anyone can be stopped and
questioned about their reasons for being in the area; where one is
presumed guilty until the police decide you might not be.<br><br>
</font><div align="center"><font size=3 color="#2323DC">“</font>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3 color="#2323DC"><i>If Philly were
New York-sized, the cops would be stopping and frisking 1.2 million
people on the streets each year.”<br><br>
</i></font></div>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>I spend much of my time in New York
City, where about 600,000 pedestrians, the vast majority of them Black or
Latino and male, will be accosted by cops, by the end of this year. There
is an eight-block area in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where 50,000
stops were made over two years, many if not most involving the same
Black, male neighborhood residents over and over again. <br><br>
But it gets worse. In Philadelphia, a city one-sixth the size of New
York, at least 200,000 mostly Black, male pedestrians are
</font>
<a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33230464/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts">
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2 color="#0000FF"><u>stopped each
year</a></u></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>. That means, if
Philly were New York-sized, the cops would be stopping and frisking 1.2
million people on the streets each year, twice as many as in the Big
Apple. This is stop-and-frisk gone wild, used as a weapon of racial
bullying and control, and as an intake valve for Black mass
incarceration, sending huge proportions of Black makes into institutions
where they don't render you naked electronically, but up close and
personal, at any and all times the prison authorities see fit, and where
visiting family members are subject to have their bodily orifices
explored.<br><br>
So, Yes – federal search policies at airports are a sign of a growing
police state. But the police state has long been in effect in Black
America – so long, it is experienced as routine. I fear that some of
those who recoil at heightened airport security also believe that the
people in the Bed-Stuys of America get what they deserve. <br><br>
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to
</font><a href="http://www.BlackAgendaReport.com/">
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2 color="#0000FF"><u>
www.BlackAgendaReport.com</a></u></font>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>.<br><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2 color="#280099"><i>BAR
executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at
</i></font><a href="mailto:Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com">
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2 color="#0000FF"><u>
Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com</a></u></font>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2 color="#280099"><i>.<br><br>
<br><br>
</i></font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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