Security FAIL!

Why racial profiling fails?

In July of this year a Harvard University professor and eminent black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested by a white police officer for trying to enter into his own house in Cambridge Massachusetts. A great debate ensued that incident and eventually even president Obama was caught in the controversy when he --in a moment of unguarded candor-- uttered a sentence of support for his friend professor Gates at a press conference. All hell broke loose as the American press, as expected, picked up the story of such great 'national interest', and it was a media circus for a few days where professor Gates and Obama's quote was repeated again and again. Eventually Obama had to defuse the situation by inviting the good professor and the arresting officer to the white house for a so called 'Beer Summit'. Read the full story here.

More recently there was an utter failure of racial profiling. This happened at, of all the places in the world, at the most securest of them all, --the White House in Washington. The occasion was the state dinner hosted by the US president in honor of the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his entourage. Background checks were performed on all guests even before they were put on the guest list. As anyone can imagine all the 800+ people on the guest list including the diplomats, dignitaries, and other VIPs had to go through a number of checks before they were allowed to get even in the same room as the president and the Indian prime minister.

However, apparently all that security was not enough as everyone and their babysitter found out, from, of all places the 'Facebook' website, where a couple posted their pictures with the US resident Obama, the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the vice president Joe Biden, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and even a bunch of beaming US Marines in their smart ceremonial uniforms. There was nothing wrong with the pictures however, what the problem was that Mr. and Mrs. Tareq Salahi were not on the guest list, they didn't have an invitation, in short, they were the party crashers at nothing less than the state dinner in Washington, DC.

So, why does racial profiling mostly fail? Because in today's post 9/11 world, everyone is looking for dark-skinned-bearded-wild-eyed-middle-eastern-looking people. What they wear does not matter, as was evident in the case of the White House party crashers, where Mrs. Salahi was wearing an Indian bright red dress with traditional Indian/Pakistani bangles. While the Secret Service was busy looking for such middle eastern looking people, the Salahis had no trouble literally waltzing into the White House.

This also made me wonder, if the Birthers have doubts about president Obama's constitutional eligibility to be the president of the United States, they should know that in America, where the local police doesn't even let a black man enter his own house (professor Gates), how could the Secret Service let a non-citizen into the White House? But then again, I guess President Barack Hussein Obama II doesn't look Middle Eastern.