Southwest Airlines surrenders to racists, refuses boarding to Arab-American passengers

boing
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That would be great :smiley:

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I’m kind of surprised that Southwest did this - they’re usually so laid back and low key.

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“Random Capitalization worthy of a Serial Killer” profiling a PR employee on an article about profiling.

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Fair enough. And I owe you an apology for it. I know a guy with a clearance who’s not like that.

It would be more accurate to say that that’s kind of the ideal that the people deciding who to give clearances to have in mind, and that there are a whole more things that would disqualify fairly normal people who come from some other divisions of American society from getting a clearance than people who come from that one.

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I worked in network security for a company that had DoD contracts. I can guarantee several people would not have made it through the process if being a racist asshole was a requirement, or even part of the screening for that matter. #NotAllGovernmentEmployees (Is that how you do it? I don’t twitter.)

ETA:

It would be more accurate to say that that’s kind of the ideal that the people deciding who to give clearances to have in mind

I really don’t think that’s the mindset at the level of people who do the investigations. Honestly, it looks a lot more like “can you be blackmailed” than anything else.

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You do know about the difference between anecdote and data, right?

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Nope. I’m just a Texan that isn’t fooled by the fact that a few liberal minded people gathered and adopted the “Keep Xcity/townX weird” marketing in a university town with a major annual music festival.

Austin is in Texas, shares all of it’s problems in equal amount, houses the lovely legislative body that regularly makes Texans collectively a laughingstock and has violent cops like every other place in Texas and the rest of the nation.

That’s not a knock on Austin, it’s acknowledging actual anecdote that lets people rag on the rest of the state and call the centre of it all it’s saving grace. I mean really, the “good” (people that agree with you) are spread fairly evenly about, FFS Wendy Davis reps Ft. Worth, Houston boasts an LGTBQ mayor (for now), some of the best Texans on earth rescue immigrants in the panhandle and on and on.

Austin is fine, but it’s as much smoke and mirrors as anything else it is. I thought the signs at the Hilton Austin warning me not to leave the grounds on foot except at my own peril were charming, in the heart of downtown. When the cops bring out the riot gear damn near every night 6th street is in biz it makes me remember so fondly the strike of the batons when Whitmire ordered the crackdown on Westheimer back in Houston. When a black man goes to jail for walking in Austin it just makes you chuckle and wave and ask “Were you walking while black again in Texas!?, Oh you!” When the average Austinite greets a cyclist with the customary flung bottle it makes me proud how far the town has come.

You want to talk anecdote and data? Get real brah. It doesn’t matter which metric you bother looking up, Austin is just another city in Texas whether it’s crime & punishment, racial profiling, corporatist piracy, per capita income, wage gaps, food security, poverty and all it entails and basic human decency. It rates an “N” for “Needs improvement” across the board, as do so many others.

No offence, but bubbles are for bursting. I prefer an honest reckoning of home.

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