>she behaves as a privileged white woman when she:
[continued below]
I can't help but think that two separate issues are being confused here. First, if the unfortunate passenger was only being ill-treated by accident, so to speak, then yes, it's fair to say that it would hold up radicals to ridicule to cry wolf. Have we heard anything that says this is definitely the case? In all the traffic under this thread I might have missed it.
But no it's obviously just childish (is that rude enough) to say that because people are harassed on grounds of racial profiling, that harassment on grounds of political belief should be ignored.
Two separate issues. Not to be confused one with the other.
>
>1. writes a press release outraged at being searched and detained
>without ever making one single gesture at the fact that this kind of
>thing happens all the time to people of color
>
>2. simultaneously cops an outraged attitude at being mistreated for
>engaging in civil disobedience while bragging to McCullagh about it.
>well, duh, engaging in civil disobedience is supposed to get the guys
>with guns pissed off. failure to recognize how awkward that looks is
>privilege, plain and simple. any black person in her shoes would think
>twice about exaggerating for fear of what it would make her or his
>people look like.
>
>3. when she and others leap to the unwarranted conclusion that it must
>be her politics, not her ticket purchasing habits that got her searched
>and subsequent behavior that got her detained for questioning. anyone
>who's been at all hassled by the cops knows that half of it is about
>stopping you for the slightest pretense and then getting in your face
>so you screw up and give them a reason to arrest you. which is exactly
>why i said i wished she'd just have let the story rest on its merits:
>what a better opportunity for showing how intimidation by the police
>state works.
>
>as i said, the situation--getting searched is bad enough as it is--but
>writing a press release that suggests that she got searched at gun
>point, got detained at gun point, and that it was because of her
>politics was and remains an embarrassment to the left. she clearly
>states that she was marked for a search and then offered a flight at
>four. what kind of ignorant people does she think she's dealing with
>when she suggests that her right to travel was impeded because of her
>politics.
>
>
>kelley
>
-- James Heartfield