Sikh student kicked off Amtrak for refusing to part with ceremonial dagger

Suddenly you have escalated the actions of one person to 60% of the planet who has some kind of spiritual beliefs.

... slooooow down. Deep breaths.

 

Good call by Amtrak. Safety first. There is no logical argument to be made otherwise

 

The counter argument is that the US Constitution does guarantee freedom of religion and Amtrak as a public entity should honor that.

I agree that public safety takes precedence but am still wondering if there is some sort of compromise that couldn't be reached.

 

I think the only viable thing is checking the knife. Someone else pointed out that if they made some sort of concession then it gives the opportunity for someone to pose as a Sikh and do a lot of harm. I'm all for people being able to express their religious beliefs but in this case we're dealing with something that is a weapon.

 

If you're wearing a turban and you want to carry a knife around, you're just begging to be harassed by security.

 

da1 your a ****ing idiot

 

*you're

 

da1 you're ****ing idiot

 

Good.

 

I have been living with religion my whole life. This is one of COUNTLESS incidents. I stand by my words.

 

I think and hope that would be true with or without the Turban part of the equation. Also I hope the wearing of a Turban wouldn't make anyone more or less likely to be harassed by security.

But carrying a knife should make anyone and everyone likely to be stopped by security.

 

The average Joe doesn't know the difference between the Turban and the Taliban. Let's be real. People and the TSA judge by appearance. If you have a long beard and a turban, they'll judge you.

 

Well, that's not only morally wrong, and discriminatory, it's poor policy as far as enforcing safety.

So if they do do that, they should be criticized, and every attempt to stop that should be made.

 

Oh get off your moral high horse. You know people are fearful and suspicious of things they don't understand. Turbans are just one of those subcontinental WTF's. If I were TSA and I saw a choice between a Sikh man and a blonde All American, by quick judgement I would search the bearded man with a towel wrapped around his head and hand on dagger.

 

Like I said it isn't just a moral high horse. It's a safety issue. Picking based on a man being bearded with a type of head dress on is ignorant as far as safety. You'd suck at keeping us safe.

They used to profile latino males for drug running. They just got blonde females to be the drug mules and it worked for them, until they stopped profiling because it wasn't effective. The same thing happened to Israel. Terrorists started dressing and appearing as religious Jews in order to get by the profiling, and it worked. Why use a form of profiling that isn't any good at keeping people safe?

As far as the moral angle there's nothing wrong with denouncing immoral principles. It's fine to strive for better morality. Sorry if that bothers you.

 

Profiling is one of the best ways to effectively detect risk in a field of numerous candidates. It finds likely characteristic based on past occurrence. And once blonde chicks and Orthodox Jews start hijacking planes, we'll include them in the parameters. Until then, all previous would be plane jackers look pretty subcontinental and beardy to me.

 

Right. The problem is that you're using what seems right to you rather than actual occurrences to base your security measures on.

People who looked like Orthodox Jews did start bombing Israel, blond females did start smuggling drugs. Those made the profiling ineffective. Luckily professional security people caught on and modified their techniques.

To have a desire to continue security procedures which have been shown to be ineffective based on what feels like a good idea to you isn't really the best thing to do as far as keeping people safe.

 

Freeways solve problems.

 

Ok wise guy. Give an alternative then. Search everyone? Or shall we just search all the most unlikely candidates because the baddies have reversed our thinking?

If you look like a terrorist, wear a beard like a terrorist and carry a knife like one, the TSA wholeheartedly deserves to search your a**.