ubertuber, I was in the process of adding to my post when you posted your reaction. I'm sorry that I couldn't lay it out all at once.
My personal experience in NYC was anecdotal. I agree that there is no substitute for the security measures that you described. On the one hand, currently there are only, as there were back in 1993, ten female, black members of congress.
The purpose of the exemption of congressmen from magnetometer screening is presumably to defer to their VIP status, and for their convenience. A truly "earnest" effort to secure the Capitol building would not include exempting individuals from the screening that all other people must submit to, simply because they display a lapel pin.
McKinney, via the doumentation that I've offered, has put up with a lifetime of BS, including the decade of challenges at the entrances to official buildings in DC, that white males in suits, serving in the same elected office that she has attained, never experience. Why can't Mckinney receive equal treatment, at age 51. I submit that she has never enjoyed equal treatment, though she has tried, more than most, to rise to a position where equal treatment should be a "given".
When Mckinney was a girl. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/06/25/maddox.dead/">Lester Maddox</a> was arming his exclusively white customers in his "Pickrick" Atlanta restaurant with pick axe handles to chase away any would be black customer. Imagine living through an era when you couldn't sit at an all white, lunch counter, and transitioning to a time when you are an elected member of the U.S. congress, and you're still experiencing difficulty because white men still challenge you at the door, while other white men, and women, routinely walk past, unchallenged. She isn't right, in this instance, but her reaction is understandable, since she is still finding herself challenged like she was as a youth in segregated Georgia.
Show me some documentation that establishes that Cynthia's white male colleagues routinely and consistantly wear their lapel pins as they enter buildings policed by the Capitol dept.
Tell me why middle aged and older black Americans have to be less affected by their own life experiences than other Americans. Tell me why Mckinney gets less empathy than say....Tom Delay does, this week. Delay is loud and angry, as is Mckinney. He's undoubtedly a criminal, and he gets a pass in a lot of the media. Has Mckinney ever gotten a "pass"?