Michaele Salahi: Did Racial Profiling Actually Help?

Updated Dec. 1: Here's a new twist on the saga of Michaele and Tareq Salahi: MyFoxDC.com is reporting that the couple also crashed a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation awards dinner in September by sneaking in the entrance meant for bus boys and caterers. They had their photos snapped with Sen. Roland Burris, Star Jones, and other luminaries. When they were discovered sitting at a table reserved for someone else, they were given the heave-ho, said a CBCF communications official.

Who knew it would be so easy to crash a White House state dinner?

Throw on a red sari, show up without an invitation, and before you know it, you're shaking hands with the president and posing for photos with the vice president. When it's all done, post the photos on Facebook, and then ask for $500,000 to tell the media how you did it.

At least that's how easy it was for Michaele and Tareq Salahi (shown above with President Barack Obama), former vineyard owners from Virginia who have been angling for a spot on Bravo TV's upcoming reality show "Real Housewives of DC."

They literally talked their way in to Obama's first state dinner, which was thrown for Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh and his wife, Gursharan Kaur, on Nov. 24. Oh, and before that they talked their way in to free hair styling for Michaele and a Bravo TV crew to film their preparations for the big night. Both the stylist and Bravo have said they were unaware that the couple had not been invited to the state dinner.

That couple really does have the gift of gab. Think that gift could have gotten them past the Secret Service if they were black? That's they question that TheGrio.com's Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III poses in his op-ed, "White House Party Crashers Prove Racial Profiling Goes Both Ways." Says Leon:

This is the latest example of the privilege and expectations of privilege that comes with white skin. Had the Salahis been African-American, or any other ethnicity with a darker skin tone, the Secret Service agent or Marine on duty would have never allowed this couple on the White House grounds simply based upon a "...what do you mean our names are not on the guest list...this is a travesty...obviously your list is not up to date...blah, blah, blah..." or some other self-righteous retort.

He continues:

For people of color, profiling works against them as they are targeted by those in positions of power and authority based upon a mistaken belief that they (particularly African-Americans) are more inclined to be involved in criminal behavior in non-suspect-specific situations. For people of European descent or with white skin, profiling can work to their benefit, as they are given favorable consideration and deference based upon the assumption that they pose no threat in a particular circumstance. White people get access; black people get arrested. SOURCE: TheGrio

Leon concludes that the positive racial profiling that whites enjoy poses a real threat to President Obama, because it demonstrates how easy it is for individuals to slip past security protocols and literally touch the president if security personnel believe they look like they belong. Really, how hard would it be for al Qaeda or a white supremacist group to recruit a fashionable-looking blond to attack Obama at another White House event?

Perhaps this was on the mind of Congressman Edolphus Towns (D, New York), a black lawmaker who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on Nov. 28 when he called for a review of Secret Service practices and asked for a briefing this week.

There is one element of racial profiling, however, that undercuts Leon's argument: Tareq Salahi is of Palestinian descent (his father immigrated to the United States from Jersalem in the 1940s). It almost goes without saying that Arab-Americans are affected by negative racial profiling in the post-September 11th world. One could argue racial profiling would have prevented the Salahis from getting in if it had happened.

So did the Salahis get past the Secret Service because of positive racial profiling or because of an absence of negative racial profiling? It's hard to say, and the issue is further complicated by the fact that the Virginia couple did make regular rounds of the D.C. social circuit and had even met the president before.

What is for certain is that security around the president needs to tighten up - and fast.

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Sheryl Huggins Salomon is contributing editor of Black Voices, where she writes about politics and society. She is co-editor of the 'Nia Guide for Black Women' series of self-improvement books and the former publisher of Shade magazine. Follow her on Twitter or contact her at BVCEditor@aol.com.

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