[happymellon]

I used to work with a Kevin and a Mohammed.

Whenever we travelled to offsite offices Mohammed 100% of the time was picked for bag check, while Kevin was not picked once.

Mohammed was white, and Kevin was black.

It was completely racist, and never random.

[tass]

A person can get mistakenly (or not) flagged for special screening and get it over and over again - it happened to me many years ago.

I fixed it by filling out a form requesting a review, after which I received a “redress number” which could be entered into my booking information. It reliably stopped after that.

[parineum]

Not defending the practice but the Mohammed thing has a possible origin that isn't directly racist. The common names among Muslims and their propensity to appear on various watch lists lead to a lot of false alarms on those with those names.

It may be a racist result but there is a pretty reasonable and understandable reason it happens, ignoring the legality and morality of that kind of tracking as well.

[johnisgood]

I hope you extend this understanding to other patterns people recognize and act upon. :)