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

[MADem]

135. I think the reason the wife wanted the guy to let it go is because she saw what he couldn't see.

This man wants us to be left with a perception that he's got this fuzzy-lovey-dovey family, but even in his essay he describes the teens as "ambivalent" when it came to his little photography project. And he also admits that he was fussing and taking his time. To someone looking in from outside, it may have looked like the girls were being coerced -- the HS guy (according to the father) pretty much said it looked "off" to him.

Everything that happened after the HS guy left is because the dad wanted to challenge this guy. He had the view that this guy didn't have the "right" to even check the situation out. And even though the guy APOLOGIZED, that wasn't enough for him. He just had to continue the conversation, and he didn't like what the guy told him. The HS man, after being confronted anew by the father, was telling him what HIS perceptions were, and he apologized that they were not being taken well by the father. The dad wasn't satisfied and kept arguing with him. There was plainly an "unproductive" back-and-forth between the two (the wife was right)--and what I found really odd is that he didn't like the guy's "tone"--I guess he wasn't sufficiently servile in manner, or something:

He agreed to consider everything I had said. But he didn’t sound very sincere. When I had questions about his observations, he deflected them, hoping to manage my reaction with simple apologies, except they weren’t simple at all: He apologized; he criticized; and he apologized again.

I can see this conversation happening--the HS guy, after being asked, gave his viewpoint, the photographer didn't like it, the HS guy said sorry, and the photographer went after him again, trying to get him to revise his POV. The guy wasn't changing his mind--and sometimes, people just don't agree. None of us were there, and who knows? If we were, we might have agreed with the HS guy that it looked "uncomfortable." Sometimes things don't look like what they are; sometimes things look "bad" that aren't. Or we might have sided with dad. It's impossible to know.

It bugs me that we don't know the race of the HS guy. This article-about-race is sort of hanging on a thin thread that it's the Asian-ness of the daughters that precipitated the questioning, not the whiteness/middle-aged-ness/aging hipster appearance of the fussy photographer dad (though the father does later allude that all of that might have come into play). I get the feeling that many of the people excoriating this HS guy think he's white. Now, let's just suppose that the HS guy was black or Puerto Rican, or Filipino, or southwest Asian. I wonder if that would change perceptions?

People who are unaccustomed to being profiled, unaccustomed to being challenged, as this white man apparently was, get very offended and hurt if this happens to them. He took it personally, instead of seeing the HS guy as someone worried about his children's safety. He should try being black or brown, and being followed through a department store by security, being given hard looks in the restaurant, having trouble even getting a table in that restaurant, never mind getting service. Imagine that being your life, every single damn day. You get inured to it. He does bring that up:

The world and its suspicions had intruded on our family’s vacation as we crossed Delaware Bay. Racial profiling became personal that day. And while our experience was minimal compared with the constant profiling experienced by others, it left a repugnant taste in my mouth.

He was racially profiled--he, a middle aged, fussy white guy, looked like HE didn't belong with those young girls. That caused him some upset; he's learning how the other half lives.

Look how long it took for someone to figure out that Elizabeth Smart, hiding in plain sight following along after her kidnappers, was that girl in that stupid costume, wandering around in public? It took forever for someone to notice, and see that something did not look right.

Remember this guy? He kidnapped a pretty teen, too: http://www.hlntv.com/article/2014/05/23/isidro-garcia-kidnapping-10-years-ideal-marriage

And this guy? http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/13/abigail-hernandez-abduction-teen/14000841/

Pretty teens DO get kidnapped, and they do get taken out in public and told to behave or else, too.

And, at the risk of excoriation, I have to say that the pic I have seen of this dad does look a little squirrely to me--I don't mean to be mean, but he looks like the type of person that central casting would choose to play the "killer photographer" who has an obsession with the young innocent waitress who wants to be a supermodel. He doesn't have an avuncular or Santa Claus look about him--not that THAT's any indication either (sometimes a creep hides behind an agreeable face), but if I am to be honest his looks don't help him.

I think the HS guy saw a couple of annoyed and frustrated girls, being ordered to hug each other for more than even a minute or three by a bossy, aging hipster, and for that reason his suspicions were raised.

Now, I don't mean to beat up the father--his feelings got hurt. On the one hand, that pissed him off that he was profiled as a possible pervert. On the other hand, he admitted that he had ambivalent feelings about the encounter, and was more annoyed with HOW the guy did it than that he did it at all.

And all the while I kept wondering: Had he overreached when he approached us, or was he just being a good citizen, looking out for the welfare of two young women? Perhaps he was doing what his professional training had taught him to do: Look for things that seem out of place, and act on those observations. But what is normal and what is not?

But what IS normal and what is not? That is a question we're going to have to sort out as a nation. At the end of the day, that should be the take-away; not that one party or the other was wrong to ask... or wrong to get offended.