I was taking pictures of my daughters. A stranger thought I was exploiting them.

[MADem]

42. Those girls were NOT being judged. Their caucasian father was being profiled as a pervert and

the article is all about how little he liked it. Those girls were being categorized as potential VICTIMS of abuse, not "judged" as sex workers. As the caucasian man being profiled said Racial profiling became personal that day.

If you wanted to take this a step beyond, you could file it under "White privilege" as well, in a "How dare that Homeland Security guy accuse MEEEEE of being a pervert?" The writer shifted this story onto his children, but that HS guy wasn't worried about those young girls doing something wrong, he was worried about that white guy spending fifteen minutes taking pictures that looked like they were destined for an Asian Girl Dating/Escort site. The HS guy might -- as I have said, repeatedly -- been ham-handed in his approach, but he wasn't judging those girls--he was judging their DAD. Their white, camera toting DAD.

This white man also saw the whole conundrum in the profiling issue. See, this shit never existed before, in the Leave It To Beaver era, anyway, because we only very rarely had "blended families." If you were black, your parents were usually black, too...and there was one of each gender, to boot. If you were Asian, your parents were "supposed" to be Asian as well.

Read, again, this white man's words:

A week later, on the ferry ride home, as my oldest and I were walking on deck, I suggested that we imagine the other passengers through this man’s eyes. She grimaced but agreed. It was so easy to project suspicious stories onto the white woman trying to grab a black child — instead of seeing a mother running after her son. Or to suppose that an old man was taking inappropriate photos of a young girl — instead of seeing a grandfather capturing a special moment with his granddaughter. We talked about this as we walked around the deck.

This is a complex issue and anyone coming from a multi-racial, multi-cultural environment HAS experienced it before. It's not news to me, certainly. It is news to this white guy, who has never before this instance been a profiling victim. Well, he just woke up and joined the club. His membership card is in the mail!

Like I will repeat, I think INTENT is a big piece of the pie. That HS guy was clumsy and poorly trained. I don't think his INTENT was nefarious, but his judgment in how he ascertained that there wasn't a problem, and this wasn't some pervy white man who just bought two Chinese victims from a human trafficker out of a container in the port in Delaware or something, stunk on ice.

Maybe the HS people will see this article and work on that piece in their training. Maybe this HS guy will take a lesson, too. And maybe this white guy with his Chinese daughters will have a shade more empathy for the black guy who gets harassed just for being the wrong shade in a given neighborhood.

There's good to come out of these discussions, but that only happens if we HAVE them.