Originally published at: Southwest Airlines accused her of trafficking her daughter. She filed a lawsuit. | Boing Boing
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OFFS! This BS again?!
Waiting for someone with brown hair being accused of trafficking because their kid is a red-head. (But not holding my breath.)
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What makes it even more bizarre is that they totally look related. There’s quite a resemblance.
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With all the personal info you’re required to provide to airlines just to set foot on a plane (name, address, DOB) you’d figure the authorities would’ve cross-checked the info provided for the mother and daughter without having to bother them personally.
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Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?
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i have a white friend with a biracial kid, and – not that it should matter – except for skin color, they look just like each other. a frequent first question by (white) strangers, especially in the baby years, was: where’s she from?
i can’t imagine how you wouldn’t start shouting: from my @#$! womb.
people can really suck sometimes.
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I’m happy they didn’t tackle the mother and immediately lock her up. Now, if she had looked to be Black and the child looked to be White…
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There’s no strict ID requirement for accompanied minors; which presumably opens the system to a sliver of lowish effort evasion(just use the correct details for a different child; with it being rather easier to obtain that information than that information plus a reasonably plausible fake ID); but that seems pretty niche; especially when motor vehicle passengers are less scrutinized and most domestic flights are to places that are potentially inconvenient but not outright prohibitive to drive to.
There’s also the major factor that trying to identify trafficked children by non-relatedness means turning a blind eye to the substantial majority of actual cases. Something north of 75% of child kidnappings are the non-custodial parent taking matters into their own hands; and it wouldn’t be terribly surprising if the percentage is even higher for kidnappings that include air travel rather than staying local or trying to avoid the heavy security presence and CCTV coverage implied by airports.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t strangers running around with abducted children, that is a thing; but it’s not the main thing.
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And what if the child is an adopted child? I mean, no difference, but a lot of scope for “official confusion” damn them.
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I noticed the jawline first. Then the nose and the eyes.
But you can’t notice the resemblance if you assume that they can’t be related.
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The flight attendant told police she flagged the family as suspicious because they were the last to board the plane and asked other passengers to change seats so they could sit together.
That’s got to happen, what, every flight?
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Our family could not look more different. This has been one of my ongoing fears. We’re a whole rainbow of colors. If you decide to group in our parents and all of the siblings, you’ll find even a bigger range. Heck, I can think of one of my inlaws who is fairly dark, has a lighter wife, has a super dark son, a coffee colored son, and an almost albino white with blonde hair (yes, his natural kid, genes are neat) daughter. Take away the color and their faces are practically identical.
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Or step-parents. I have a friend who had some fortunately minor issues a couple of times driving his biracial stepdaughters out to various after school programs.
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This, and that’s been well-known for a long time. Biological relatedness doesn’t disprove abduction; in fact it’s a strong correlate.
Every time I go through an airport I see these dumb signs up about “report human trafficking” and I’m thinking… what? Yeah if I see some child screaming, “help me, I’m being kidnapped”, I would report that, but I would report that to 911 or airport security personnel, not to some human trafficking hotline. And in all other cases, really, I’m going to call some hotline and say, “I just thought that child didn’t belong with that guy, can you check it out?”
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I wouldn’t be surprised if this incident started with someone who saw one of those “Report Human Trafficking!” signs then noticed this mother/daughter and decided to report it. Pre-pandemic, I know someone who got reported once by a fellow passenger on a SWA flight for examining some latches, the ones that hold the cupboards closed or some such, while waiting to be seated during boarding. At the destination airport, they got pulled aside by some airline official who questioned what they were doing, asking if it was true they were messing with the aircraft, with a cop standing behind him, like they were gonna start some shit. They told him they didn’t know what he was talking about, but sure, they said, I promise not to touch stuff again. Freakin’ Mrs Kravitz.
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Typically if someone is going to hijack a plane, they don’t start with the latches on the luggage compartments.
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{ begin sardonic faux french accent , or , well , fake continental accent at least }
AND how would you know THAT , eh ?
{ end sardonic faux french accent , or , well , fake continental accent at least }
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