There are several catchphrases that have caught up in our surveillance culture. “If you see something, say something” is up there with “Nothing to hide, nothing to fear” and “There is no liberty without security”.

But I find the first one to be the most scary and dangerous. How have we all have come to understand what “something” means? What was in the mind of the policy-maker who approved the campaign? How do I read it? How do my friends read it? What do others make of it?

For one, I find the sentence cowardly: the policy-maker is not saying what he/she thinks, and it is so indeterminate that it invites us to let our lower instincts go wild. Whatever it leads us to think or be suspicious about, we all tend to feel part of the do-gooders of the community. We are the ok ones. The ones who look at what others do and judge its appropriateness. The ones who, when we see something, run to the cops. Of course, “say something” means tell a police officer. Who in their right mind could fail to get that? Duh!

But the worst thing is what the sentence is telling us not to see and not to talk about. And that is everything else. Nice things, for one. But also all those things we would find worrisome before we were engulfed by the security mantra. Like inequality. Like racism.

That is why reading this piece in the NYT, a harsh reminder of how racism still informs how many people behave to others, was like a breath of fresh air: there are still people out there who remember how to look, and whose gaze goes beyond the smoke screen of scapegoating.

If you see racism, shout racism.