Playing devil’s advocate here: it’s entirely possible that the couple wasn’t, in fact, racist. Another completely reasonable explanation for their behaviour is that they had a baby, and didn’t want ANYBODY sitting in the seat between them (it’s unclear if the plane was full or not). I have played that little trick when travelling with a baby before. Or that she didn’t want a big dude in full camo gear sitting next to her (which is more classist than racist, I have a big shaven-headed white friend who gets similar treatment of people being afraid of him because he goes around in full camo gear all the time). And then when the last person (coincidentally a white middle aged woman, but more importantly the last passenger to board the plane) got on the plane and the dude was still there, she realized that she had to do something to try to save face. And then when the guy called her out for being rude and a liar (which she was, but rude people hate being called rude), she understandably didn’t want this guy sitting next to them for the whole flight.
I’m not saying that’s what happened, but without any otherwise obviously racist behaviour from the couple, it’s a plausible alternate theory.
On top of that, the author is kind of an asshole for escalating to threats of violence, despite him saying that the husband “turned what were simply words into possibly a really bad situation.” The husband didn’t do that, the husband simply said “you need to shut your mouth” to a man that was arguing with his wife. It was the author, rather, who escalated things because the husband “would never talk to me like that under any other circumstances. Ever.” So the correct response to that is to put the little man in his place, by implying that when the flight was over he could easily kick the shit out of him?
Bleh. I don’t like any of the people involved in this story.
