March 18, 2005
Home Insecurity: Persistent Threat Levels
I thought this color-coded panic orchestration left the scene with Tom Ridge. Seen yesterday at the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina airport, where I had an hour's layover on my way back from Austin. Now I know that I'm still supposed to be scared yellow.
Alex, in Austin, mentioned how uneasy he gets now going through security at airports, because when you step into that line, you could just disappear into the extra-judicial gray zone of Transportation Safety Administration authority.
I had to admit--to myself, it didn't seem worth saying aloud, which must be why it seems UTTERLY VITAL to blog it now--that what with being white, fair-skinned, and female, I've gone through airport security with just about as little personal concern as ever since 9/11, perhaps with a crispy-baked thought or two on how all this fuss with the computers and the shoes was unlikely to result in the foiling of any plot to blow up my plane.
Stories I've heard from friends and families with olive complexions since 9/11, about tense moments at airports, conveniently leave my mind at these moments.
Alex's comments came back to me yesterday at the Austin airport, where one of the TSA guards looked about 12 years old. In fact, I thought he was the grandson of the older couple in front of me, until they moved forward and he asked me for my ID and ticket.
It was thoroughly unsettling to hand them over, and watch this man, who looked more like my friend's young teenage son than a grown-up federal employee with the authority to send me to a back room for interrogation, scrutinize my New York State driver's license, and then scrawl on one boarding pass illegibly in pencil and send me--and my carefully stoic face--on through the metal detectors.
And taking that photograph in Raleigh-Durham, with my ever-stealthy Palm Zire 71 camera, getting very busy with the stylus like I was checking my date book when I thought a guard from over by the security station had noticed what I was doing.
I wonder if this is a shade of what it feels like to drive up to some checkpoint in Columbia and hand over your credentials and passport to a teenage guerrilla with a machine gun, not quite knowing what will happen next as you let the papers leave your hand.
Posted by Emily at March 18, 2005 11:07 AM