Southwest wouldn't let mixed-race family fly until mom "proved" parenthood

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/06/02/back-of-the-plane.html

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Fifty years after Loving v Virginia, and interracial couples are still running into this kind of crap. SMH.

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I (white) have flown with my 18mo son (white) and my wife (also white) 10 times now. No ID check from TSA or Delta any of those times. Not even a hint of it.

Hell, my son doesn’t even have any sort of government issued ID. TSA doesn’t require ID for people under 18 years old.

Stupid fucking racists.

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I suspect this is a collision of A) racism and B) the current panic over ‘human trafficking’ as vaguely defined. Guh.

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This appears to be B being used as cover for A.

nevermind that B was caused by A in the first place.

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So a Facebook post has the same validity as a Federal document?

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Also, A was caused by B. Well, except for the “current” part.

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I’ve flown Southwest with a lap child. They are really intense about this type of verification. They absolutely INSIST on a birth certificate even if the baby is 1 week old.

While the passport should have been enough, they do have a weird culture of “intense verification” of lap children(<2yo) which is not mirrored by TSA or any other airline. They usually require a birth certificate and the passport might have confused them.
I am not surprised this happened on Southwest and would not automatically assume racism.

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Rule #1 of Human Trafficing, ALWAYS take ‘captives’ on airplanes open to the public and fly within the country.

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I tend to agree that Southwest is over the top in general with lap children, and we’ve run into that as well. That said, it doesn’t also completely exclude at least a bit of microaggression (people do see white woman with dark kid and assume adoption at a minimum).

I wouldn’t be surprised if this does happen, although so far my wife (South Asian descent) and I (clearly European descent) and I haven’t had any issues yet with our daughter. My wife flies with her more often, and has had a little bit of an eyebrow raise here and there but nothing serious. Our daughter has my last name (wife kept her maiden name) and is a tiny bit darker than white 2 year olds, but doesn’t really look like any clear ancestry vs. her tan mother, so if it was going to happen, it’d happen with the two of them.

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Happens all the time with my spouse and our 3 kids. Stares. Glares. Looks. Questions.

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Honestly. The part that kills me here is “Facebook post”. As if social media is some sort of bench mark for ANYTHING.

So even if a law existed to prove the parentage of the child before flying that someone would think a Facebook post would be acceptable is fucking mind blowing to me.

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Note to human traffickers: up your social media game.

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But are they attempting to verify the age of the kid (“Is it okay for this kid to be on a lap for the flight?”) or the parentage of the kid (“How can this be your kid? You’re not even the same kind”)?

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Let’s just say she wasn’t the mom. Say an aunt, or a girlfriend or even just a friend. Who cares? How the fuck does this even matter?

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your project is that human trafficing causes racism?

weather:climate::a racist:racism

Happened all the time when I was growing up (white dad, I look very Asian), that is when people weren’t telling me to “go back where I came from” (you mean L.A. cabron?)

Having grown up with this, my wife and I (she didn’t change her name when we got married), deliberately gave the GirChild my last name as we figured she’d probably not look very Asian being only 1/4. She has my last name for ease of “proving” that we’re actually related.

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I’ve flown Southwest with my daughter as a lap child 4 times. We were asked for a birth certificate every time.

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Would they accept a video of the conception?

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This is becoming the new stock corporate answer.

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