A certain United Church of Bitchitude and Latter Day Drunks devotee has made an offereing of…well…decongestants. Damn, my congregation knows how to touch my cold shriveled bitchy heart! Darling, a bitch adores you and will be dropping by to visit the best drug store in town next week…
Two Medi-phedrine (Jesus…they are real!! Glory be to The Devine One!!!), a HUGE cup of java, 2 Excedrin, 1 Claritin and several cigs…
Needless to say, a bitch is beyond disturbed by the announcement yesterday that NYC commuters will be subjected to random searches when they ride the subway. In the face of the London tube attacks this kind of security upgrade seems reasonable. However…
People, and the prejudices they carry within, are the problem.
As a very black bitch, my ass is more than familiar with “security” and “random searches”. My first experience came when I was a wee bitch of ten years old. My mother dragged my reluctant ass to Saks here in St. Louis to shop for neckties and dress shirts for my father. She was trying to match the neckties and shirts to a couple of suits she had purchased from Saks previously. We entered the store, two black bitches and a Saks garment bag, and were immediately tagged by two obvious looking security goons. We were approached over 20 times with offers of assistance. The security goons followed us the entire time we were in the store. A bitch’s mother was not able to find what she was looking for and we exited the store, at which time we were immediately confronted by the security goons who insisted that my mother had put something into the garment bag.
Now, my mother is insane and very bitchy, but she’s no thief. Being crazy, tired, frustrated with her shopping experience and fucking pissed off, my mother proceeded to cuss the guards out…loudly…at the entrance to Saks. A wee ABB was both embarrassed and impressed. The manager was called out and also received a fierce cussing out. My ass will never forget what he said as my mother called him every sort of motherfucker one could imagine…
“Our security does not target black people. Our security is based on observed behavior.”
My mother shot him a certain finger, asked him to observe it then sit on it and spin and marched off.
Random security is bullshit. Security, like advertising, is based on stereotypes and assumed behavior. This bitch has been followed through more stores and suburban neighborhoods than you could imagine. That’s not based on observed behavior. I’m not a thief and like most women of color my ass has been trained from a very young age to shop with care, not touch my handbag while next to anything and move about with caution. Not because The Man is right, but because going off on assholes is time consuming and a bitch has places to go!
I’ve had car doors locked as I walk by. A bitch’s sister has been singled out for full body pat-downs at the airport so many times she has begun to question whether she looks Chechnyan.
This sort of bullshit is insulting and discriminatory. But the worst part is that they ignore the prissy assed sorority bitch across the store pocketing $150 worth of bras. Racial profiling has simply allowed drug dealers to acquire a 20ish blond, put her into a Honda Civic and run heroin from Maine to Texas without a care in the world.
A bitch knows what will happen in New York. Brown people, women in scarves and other ethnic minorities will get hassled. I’ve got $50 for the first blond, blue-eyed faux-Burberry suit wearing Paris Hilton wanna-be bitch that gets asked to open her Kate Spade on the way into the subway.
This shit is intrusive and will not make you safer. Terrorists used airplanes…we increased air security…they switched to busses and trains…we’ll increase security and they will move on to the next huge target our government isn’t watching.
A bitch’s ancestors fought too hard to gain the few civil rights my ass has for me to have them taken away on the pretense that its for my own fucking good!
Fuck them.
This bitch plans to carry a zip lock baggie full of Betsey the sorta-beagle’s shit the next time I’m in New York.
A bitch figures that someone should find WMD…Betsey’s shit is toxic… and you get what you deserve when you dip into a bitch’s bag…!
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18 comments:
The Jumping Bean (a three-and a half-foot tall, auburn-haired, green-eyed rugmonkey) was not only thoroughly searched, but reduced to TEARS when the TSAssholes did their thing back in June. Fuckery knows no bounds.
What pisses me off is the illusion that victimizing ordinary travelers is making everyone "safe." My ASS.
Security is a joke -- at least in Philadelphia. We had a girl raped in BROAD daylight at a subway station earlier in the week.
A bitch forgot about the Jumping Bean being searched! Brown people, women in scarves, ethnic minorities and their friends(Miz Nemebabe), and babies! Yeah...my ass feels so much safer! Jesus!
just rememeber not to end up hating nyc, but the people who have caused us to now live this way.
I'm originally from Gotham and family still lives in Harlem (they gonna be the last black family to leave). Back in the 80s I remember my father got arrested in one of the sweeps they were doing in the subways. Supposedly for not paying fare. Bullshit tactics was declared unconstitutional as they were arresting everyone but the rats. I see times have changed but the song remains the same.
So even the white 'liberal' media here in London is starting to support a reintroduction of our archaic SUS laws - you remember, Search On Suspicion, the rancid legislation we had in the 1980s that allowed any black guy who didn't look like he had a Harvard degree and a job in the square mile to be apprehended by the cops and forced to prove his innocence. Jesus Christ - they yak on about how disgraceful it is that in the US juries don't appertain to the privacy we have here (viz the Michael Jackson case) while talking about protection and freedom of speech. Freedom of whose speech? On the radio we already had dumbass cranks describing how they'd think twice and reconsider where they were sitting if an asian or black person of a certain age was in their carriage. That's freedom of speech in a time of crisis alright. 25 years or so since Linton Kwesi Johnson's poem about the SUS laws brought it all home and how far have we really come? Any day now we'll have Sky News (our version of Fox) reporting with the Clash's 'London's Burning' like some sort of OC soundtrack. I say stay vigilant - but stay angry.
Glad you liked your medicine.
But if you come to my pharmacy, we're going to search your bags.
Just kidding!
Love you!
I love the name of your blog.
AMEN!!
Halleluah!!
Preach on sister ABB....preach on.
Yet another stunningly well-written post, ABB. Kudos to you! And I add my heartfelt apologies to you and ABB Sr., on your unfortunate Sak's experience.
Being a New Yawhker (by marriage, not by birth), I agree with everything everyone else has said, and will add to that, that the searches are nothing more than a knee-jerk publicity stunt by the mayor's office as an outward sign of doing something, when as is evidenced by London being hit, YET AGAIN, and now Egypt (sympathies all around to your international readership), there is nothing anyone can actually *DO* to prevent this kind of nonsense. And although I do see the searches as being an *attempt* at doing something, sadly it does nothing more than just slow down everyone else in the process, as well as give some crack pot MoFo transit cop with a hard-on for anything non-Caucasian license to harrass.
Power corrupts.
"crack pot MoFo transit cop with a hard-on for anything non-Caucasian license to harrass"
ooooh nugget, i know what i'm using for my new email siggy :)
I think some of it is class profiling too. I get followed around most of the stores I go in and I'm a cracker. I think it's because I look like the poor grad student I am. The other day, I got so sick of being followed around Chapters Books that I handed the security dick the books I was planning to buy and stormed out. If you're middle-aged, white and in a suit, they won't bug you. Otherwise, they just don't want your business. Fuck 'em. I hope they all go broke.
We all might as well wipe our collective asses with the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. I'm sure Ben Franklin et al are all spinning in their graves.
Glad to see you're still blogging away...
ABA, Grrrrl talk that talk. One of the best posts evah ! Here in Boston, we are not having random searches on our transit system in Boston, because given away 5000 keys to people so what's the point. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/07/25/mbta_admits_master_keys_tough_to_track/.
i was slightly disturbed to read this by another comment poster...
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"ABB, I'm a reg reader and fan. And I agree with most all of what you've written above, except I need to point out -- it's happening to us angry white bitches, too."
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firstly, i was bothered by the word "except" in that comment. abb's post reflects her experiences with so-called random searches, and the very real devestation of racial profiling. you agree with all of it, "except" she didn't list that angry white bitches get searched too? is it abb's job to be all-race inclusive in her writing? excuse me, but there is just no wiggle room to say you agree with her post, EXCEPT, it's happening to angry white bitches too. list your experience, dear woman, but please note your experience of being searched, however awful, is not because of your race. until you have lived in another's skin, the experience is not the same.
i don't wish to down-play madgerino's very obvious sexual harassment ("search") at the airport, because that in itself is very traumatic and should not go un-checked. it just seemed more like a case of defending whiteness.
the duty of ending racism (even in it's most subtle forms) is not the task of folks of color. most big cities offer free workshops for white folks to start making a difference.
We were being watched in a prominent Chicago restaurant and a white couple slipped out without paying. We said that is what they get. Most of the time, it is not Blacks who will do things, but those who can blend in need to be watched.
A bitch agrees that the problem is "our" problem and that folks need to unify to address it. But my ass does feel that "suspects" are all too often minorities, which I think Monkey was trying to clarify.
We are in a world of shit and we are in it together...you watch my back Madgerino and I'll watch yours...
i appreciate that we can comment and turn things into a mini-forum. knowledge is power and with so many bright and passionate folks here, i know my ass is put on the school bus daily.
madgerino, i am sorry that you were fearful of replies to your comment. i was confused as to your wording, though i understand the content. thanks for the clarification.
what is happening here is something positive, even if we do have to work out some kinks to better understand one another.
it truly is all "our" problem. every time i get that itch to go back to the 'old country', i know i have to put salve on, and not scratch. i can't make a difference if i haul my pissed off ass out of here.
i'm right behind you, watching your back too, in faith that you are watching mine...
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