Mar
22nd
Sun
22nd
Racial profiling is a large part of how surf lifesavers operate. It is hard to see the struggling swimmer when there are 300 people in the water. Much better to identify “customers” in advance. Many of our “customers” fit clichés – pasty English of both sexes*, drunken Irish men (but seldom their women), militant Germans, strapping men 6 foot tall who say to female lifesaver dressed in baggy figure-hiding clothing** that they are champion swimmers only to reveal they have never swum in the surf by picking the most dangerous part of the beach to swim, Slavic men who see big surf as a test of their machismo, hoards of Asian (especially Japanese) tourists, and Muslims whose modesty means that they often swim in so much clothing that they risk drowning when knocked over by a wave in waist-deep water. Racial profile here is mostly a short-hand for detecting inexperience in the surf. Race is fairly well correlated with competence.
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John Hempton: racial profiling at the beach
Volunteer lifeguard talking about how he pre-emptively trys to guess who might need saving.
