Originally Posted by Andy Big Bear

Well, first of all when you say Arab you need to be specific. That's like calling everyone from the pacific rim "occidental" or "asian." I have met Lebanese TSA agents, Kuwaitii's, and even one Sikh originally from the UAE who wore his turban at work. That being said, they never seem to last very long. When I've spoken to them, they like to see themselves as a buffer to their colleagues. They see cultural understanding as an asset.

That being said, I don't think the racial and ethnic biases of the TSA are systemic. They seem to be more localized. As one of their policy wonks in DC who I met at a mixer told me, "smart people in the TSA rise very fast after a year in service, the ones that make a career at the gates, they aren't too bright." So I think we are dealing with individual biases, and being the forward facing part of the TSA, it's easy to see them as the whole.

The biases I see as "scattered but pervasive." Of course, you have the Sikh's who created the TSA complaint application, because the TSA agents don't understand they aren't Muslims and in most cases aren't even from any part of the globe that's considered Arabia (UAE being the exception). You also had a supervisor at Logan who was targeting blacks simply because he thought them more likely to be carrying drugs, who he could turn over to local police to score quid pro quo points. Of course, that backfired when the local police turned back on the TSA and told them that they were wasting time and personnel from more pressing criminal matters to chase after worthless leads. I've witnessed multiple times TSA agents doing random checks only on passengers who were only guilty of "flying while brown." If there are a hundred people at a gate, and you only stop to random check people who aren't white, the bias is pretty apparent.