minds eye

Picture a terrorist.

What you see depends upon context of course. If you're over a certain age, and you live in the British Isles, or Spain, you might have in mind someone in paramilitary garb, planting nail bombs in the litterbins of London and Madrid.

But it's more likely that you pictured someone with a beard and a Koran.

This certainly is what you get when you do a google image search for "terrorist"

What brought this to mind was a post I read somewhere. The poster had arrived at a UK airport, and was dismayed to find the person manning the security checkpoint was a Muslim.

"I had an altercation with a bloke at Luton airport going through security who quite frankly looked like he could have been a member of Isis , why is it in England we employ people on security and passport control who look far more likely to be a terrorist than any normal person ??? ....anyway apparently I had committed the cardinal sin of having a re sealable plastic bag that was bigger than the dimension allowed.....had I wanted to blow up the plane however...looking at the state of him I am sure that would have been fine." 

Standard issue bigotry of course, but it did get me wondering.

Google images is a repository not just of image data but of cultural prejudice. The link above makes that very clear.

So what else could I look for?

Well how about "Rapist"?

The most obvious defining feature of a rapist is facial hair. Well, being male then having facial hair. A high proportion of black people in there too. Obviously, black males with facial hair should not be allowed to take jobs where they could end up alone with other people. Like Driving Instructor for example.

"Paedophile"?

Paedophiles are almost without exception male, white, middle aged, connected in some way to show business, and have odd hairstyles.

Women, such as "Gemma", "Lisa", "Sarah", "Tanya" etc. generally don't wear much in the way of clothing. They can also be found pouting provocatively while leaning forwards to show off their heaving bosoms to best effect.

Anyway, back to terrorism. It's surprisingly difficult to define. I found a good article about it here: http://people.howstuffworks.com/terrorism.htm

Well worth a read.

driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?