Thursday, June 28, 2007

Man told to prove filial bond - at Wal-Mart

This shit is just insane. Just a few weeks after my post "Don't Go Walking With your Daughter," in which a Toronto man is called in by a "concerned citizen" and practically thrown in jail after going for a walk with his daughter, and just days after a Virginia poster showing a father holding his daughter's hands and the words "It doesn't feel right when I see them together", we have this:

Is she your daughter? Man asked to prove it at Wal-Mart.

This is a sickening story. A man is out with his daughter, doing some shopping, and is harassed by two security guards wanting him to prove that she is his daughter. The security guard first asks the daughter, then the father, then another man comes out and wants to know, and then the police come along. How wonderful is that.

Pretty soon just daring to appear in public will give some "concerned citizen" busybody cause to call you in and have you spread out on the concrete with a knee in your back.

Is there a reason behind this hysteria? I mean, that's three incidents in such a short time, what could be behind this sudden push to get fathers criminalized?

'This is my daddy'

Man charges racism after he, daughter are confronted by guards at Wal-Mart

June 24, 2007

BY MARY MITCHELL Sun-Times Columnist

"What did he say?" Ed Lino asked his 7-year-old daughter, Destiny, as they walked out of the Wal-Mart.

"That man wants to know if you are my daddy," the little girl told her father.

Maybe it would have been a legitimate question had the girl been screaming bloody murder, or there was an Amber Alert that fit Lino and his daughter's description. After all, children have been abducted from department stores.

» Click to enlarge image

Ed Lino and his daughter Destiny, shown at one of their favorite parks on Wednesday.
(Michael McArdle/STNG)

» Click to enlarge image

Ed Lino showed security guards at Wal-Mart a keychain that had pictures of his daughter Destiny when she was little to try and convince them he had custody of the girl.

But Lino -- who is white -- thinks someone looked at him, looked at the dark-skinned girl, and assumed the worst. He's tired of this kind of drama, but it hasn't stopped him from taking care of his daughter on a daily basis since last June, or from taking her shopping and to the park to skate.

Still, some people look at the father and daughter like he could be be a sexual predator -- which is what Lino thinks happened earlier this month when he went shopping at the Wal-Mart at 167th and Torrence.

"We went into the store; we walked around looking for school supplies she needed; we stood in line; we paid. There was no problem. There was no reason for a security guard to ask her if I'm her daddy," he said.

So Lino walked back into Wal-Mart and approached the uniformed security guard.

"He was an older black gentleman, and he asked me: 'Is this your child?' I said: 'Yes, this is my daughter,' and I showed him my key chain with her picture on it."

'This was blatant racism'

Lino said he and his daughter walked back out of the store and went to his car. Just as he opened the door, another black man whom he assumed was a Wal-Mart employee approached him and asked the same question, explaining that a "question concerning the child had come up."

"I told him the same thing. I even showed him the key chain and a medical card with her name on it," Lino said. "When I started to get back in the car, the man said I had to show some identification."

Lino refused.

"I told him I'm not going to give you anything," Lino said. "This was blatant racism. The child was not crying when he walked up, and there was no sign of any struggle. There was no problem until he walked up, and then she started crying: 'This is my daddy. Leave him alone,' " the father said.

At this point, the white father put his dark-skinned daughter into the car and drove off.

Twenty minutes later, a Lynwood police officer was pounding on the door of Lino's south suburban home.

"They had gotten a call that I had taken a child from the Wal-Mart," Lino said.

"I told them, 'I took a child all right. She is right here. Here is her grandmother,' " Lino said, pointing to an older black woman. "The police officer apologized and started laughing."

But Lino didn't see anything funny.

He called Wal-Mart and complained to a manager.

"I wanted to know what was this all about and why did I have to go through this harassment. My daughter wasn't crying in the store. She wasn't being pulled by me or anything like that."

'That's just a lie'

Mia Masten, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman for the Chicago region, told a slightly different version of the same story, carefully pointing out that the security guard involved was employed by a third party. She also denied that the man in the "white shirt and tie" was associated with Wal-Mart.

"One of our security guards was approached by a customer who was concerned about the safety of the child," Masten said, but she did not identify the customer or say why the customer thought there was a safety issue.

"We don't know. But the customer approached the guard, who was acting in response to the customer's concern," she said. "The guard accompanied the customer outside the store, where the customer approached Mr. Lino and his daughter. To our knowledge, no Wal-Mart associate was involved," Masten said.

Lino vehemently disagrees with this version of the facts.

"That's just a lie," he told me.

Masten also claimed that it was the unidentified customer who took a photograph of Lino's license plate and called police. She said a store manager apologized to Lino over the phone because Wal-Mart wants all of its customers to have a "pleasant experience."

Lino said he isn't satisfied with Wal-Mart's response.

"The store manager promised me that she would check with the security guard and look at the tape to find out what reason he had to question us. It's been over a week, and I haven't heard from them. My daughter doesn't want to go back to a Wal-Mart because she thinks I'm going to be arrested," he said. "It was outrageous."

It doesn't help that Lino's estranged African-American wife, Diane Maxwell, now calls Lino a "father figure" and not the girl's biological father, even though she was born during their marriage and he is listed as the father on the hospital's announcement of birth.

"As far as I know, she's my daughter," Lino told me. "I love her."

Forty years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws banning interracial unions, Lino's love means that when in public, he almost has to hang a sign around his daughter's neck that says: "It's OK. He's my daddy."

The lying cunt representing Wal-Mart can go take a bath in boiling oil. Its perfectly clear that there were probably no "concerned citizens" involved, just sexism and sexist pedophile hysteria.

Make no mistake, this has nothing to do with racism.

How come?

Just ask yourself - would they do the same thing to a woman with a black child?

11 comments:

  1. The song Smile of Lily Allen shows brutal violence against men.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZyTOROlo9E

    http://lyrics.songtext.name/Lily%20Allen/Smile-94026.html


    She lets him be beaten up for money, destroys his home and poisons him.

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  2. You're absolutely right. It's not racism, it's sexism. However sexism 'simply can't' be against a man!

    At least by claiming it was racism people might actually pay attention, sadly.

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  3. What's the outrage here? When I actually saw the picture, I "got it." If a black child was leaving with a white adult, I would consider that unusual. Not immoral, not criminal, just unusual. It's not every day that you see that. And if there's a chance that an abduction is happening (and they do happen), why not at least look into it? We can elevate tolerance above security, but at what cost? When we're too afraid to even investigate the possibility that a child could be abducted, when we don't even want to ask about it, I feel we're going down a dangerous road. If you care about fathers, imagine that there really was a child abduction, and how the real father would have felt.

    Compare the tragedy of a parent losing their child, compared to a parent under temporary scrutiny. I don't see what is so terrible about subjecting someone to temporary scrutiny, especially when the racial difference between father and daughter is the reason.

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  4. While I see the point you are trying to make, what you need to digest is what Pete said in the original post:

    "Just ask yourself - would they do the same thing to a (white) woman with a black child?"

    And therin lies the sexism.

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  5. If our main problem is with a double standard that demonizes men of a different race than the child (while excusing women of a different race than the child), then I would say we have a legitimate gripe. But wait until a news item comes out which reveals that this happened, where the adult was a woman and the child was a different race from the adult. Wait until that news item comes out, then cry sexism. This news item has not illustrated the sexism (although in my gut, I believe the sexism exists). We cannot claim to the world that this news story illustrates such sexism; it does not.

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  6. John, I see your point but I don't agree with it. There is no reason to "wait" for a similar report to come out as we all know that sexism exists at every level in society today, from personal to institutional. And that sexism is usually set up to discriminate against men.

    Your point is also invalid that we should wait, because how can you wait for something that will never happen? Every day, thousands of women go to wal-mart and other stores with children of a different race, and none of them are accosted and asked to produce verification.

    If something like this happens to a woman, that will prove that it is racism, not sexism to blame.

    But since nothing like that will happen to a woman, waiting for a report to prove sexism is searching for the wrong answer to the right question.

    The absence of such reports proves sexism, not the presence of such reports. The presence would prove racism.

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  7. Good point, Pete!

    Of course it is sexism.

    This is the exact reason I am trying to spend as much of my life in Mexico as I can. Why would anyone live in a country where he is hated? I don't get it. Even the most ignorant, primitive black slave knew enough to go to Canada if he/she could.

    And, anyone who knows anything about kids can tell in a second by body language if a child is with a familiar person as opposed to a stranger.

    This is a flashback to the 80's when the femis had a big campaign that hundreds of thousands of kids were stolen by strangers each year. They put pictures on milk cartons etc. The FBI kept saying, 300! 300! 300!

    This is also more of the "any price to security" of the Great American Chicken. "It's okay to grossly violate the civil rights of millions of people each year, if it makes kids microscopically safer."

    I know a lot of 'mulatto' kids. My best friend's step kids are mulatto, and this kid does not exactly look like a recent mixture. For his sake, I hope they never order DNA testing.

    Anonymous age 65

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  8. Anon 65, this man's ex-wife was a cheating slut. I'm guessing she had the kid with another black man.

    It doesn't help that Lino's estranged African-American wife, Diane Maxwell, now calls Lino a "father figure" and not the girl's biological father, even though she was born during their marriage and he is listed as the father on the hospital's announcement of birth.

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  9. Yeah this is sexism alright.

    @anon 65 & pete

    I also doubt that he and the child are biologically related. Hell even his ex admits it by calling him only a "father figure".

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  10. Biological or not, he sees her as his daughter and that's enough. There's no doubt in my mind he'd lay down his life for that little girl. The whole incident stinks to high heaven and should not be tolerated.

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  11. Anon 2:38, exactly.

    You can count on the same people who bring up the difference in race now (present company excluded) would be the first to cry 'racist abuser' if he even mentioned that his little girl is black and not his in any other circumstance. Especially relating to child support.

    Just imagine - if he were to try to contest paternity based on his daughter's race, can you imagine how soon the accusations of "RACIST" would fly!

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