Weekend edition: racial profiling at the beach
Regular readers will know that I double as a surf lifesaver at Bronte Beach. I was on patrol today.
It was relatively calm, warm without being hot and 21 centigrade (70 Fahrenheit in the water).
Bliss.
The patrol captain (Johnson) wandered by – said you should keep an eye on (he points) those three guys… then shouts “I am going in”.
I went in after him.
Two of the three made it back to the sandbar but the third guy – a Japanese tourist was pretty close to drowning. Johnson was holding him up – but it was tough. The extra person made it easier. We waived to the shore for more assistance (a board) and with some effort we got our victim onto the board. Five minutes later (and after I had swum in against the rip) he told me we saved his life. I confirmed we knew that.
Like most people rescued he disappeared pretty quickly – I suspect a mixture of shock and embarrassment.
How did Johnson know? Well the victim was Japanese and pretty clearly a tourist. Maybe it was racial profiling – but there are a fair few Asian Australians. Maybe it was just fashion profiling (the tourists dress differently). But Johnson was watching from before the victim got in the water.
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.
Racial profiling doesn’t work at all on a really hot day because then the Australians who go to the beach only once a year (and are as inexperienced as the pasty Poms) get in the water. They need rescuing too – and we find it hard to tell who they are in advance. Fortunately on those days the beach is so crowded that other swimmers do most the initial rescue. Anyway on really hot days the correlation between race and competence breaks down.
I don’t think our Japanese tourist today – safe back in his backpackers’ hostel rather than being shipped back to Japan in a body bag – is unhappy about our racial profiling. I would prefer a better method for doing this – but frankly we don’t have one.
John
*The pasty English needing rescues include a fair number of younger female backpackers whose idea of an adventure on their holiday is to seduce a Bondi surf lifesaver. I have seen more than one deliberately get themselves in a position that they needed to be rescued.
**The female lifesaver hiding behind the baggy (sun protective) clothing is an Olympic triathlete and is generally amused at what the German guys think passes for good swimming. By contrast I know what good swimming looks like - and it is not and never will be something I can do...
PS. Investmentgardener's comment below - is I think an accurate appraisal of this...
Stereotyping is a method that allows our brain to make split-second decisions based on a 'shortcut' reasoning. It doesn't matter that you're wrong sometimes, as long as you are right when a split-second reaction is needed. Nevertheless the 'shortcut' is not a rational way of reasoning. There is no rational reason why someone who looks like a pasty pom (and very well may be one) would be more likely to drown than his olympic swimmer girlfriend. At least not on an individual level. Stereotyping and generalisations are good, as long as you don't confuse them with reality.
It pays to use stereotypes - especially in split-second decision making like life-saving - and it pays to be absolutely conscious of how wrong they can be when making complex decisions...
Now the goal is to get good at both the split-second and the long-term decision making...