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

boing
42

I actually don’t claim to be able to recognize that. The guy at the bar next to me ranting about how “Islamic immigrants had ruined Europe, it was all essentially uninhabitable for white people now” was OBVIOUSLY racist. Oh my god. And yes, I absolutely confronted this asshole about his fucked-up clearly wrong perspectives. This? Hell, even what happened at Starbucks with those two guys? It’s less clear to me. Very open to it, and very cognizant of more obvious racism. Also cognizant of how if most Starbucks most of the time don’t call out white people for hanging out but not buying anything, and then the time it happens that leads to an arrest, it’s black people, that’s absolutely a sign of societal racism playing out. But it still doesn’t mean specifically that the person who called the cops on those guys was a racist.

As I’ve said before — we live in a racist system, and as such, we all participate, at times, in that racist system. It’s not a good thing, we should work to change it.

And the reference to your career was because presumably, as a physicist, you’re quite used to working around a lot of fellow smart people. Some people are really fucking stupid. They’re more likely to have a job taking tickets, frankly, than probing the subatomic nature of physical reality.

43

Huh. Those people.

https://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/03/while-baptist-group-is-questioned-scientologists-are-praised-in-haiti/

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44

That was a reference to slavery, in particular the abduction and transport of Africans to the new world to work the plantations. The root of racism in America.

45

That’s fine, but it is clear to me, especially the Starbucks incident.

If they’d been there for a long time then I’d still think it was racist, but possibly not consciously so. The fact that the two black real estate agents were waiting for their friend for two minutes before it happened though removes any doubt the manager called the cops because they were black.

Very true. The difference is that some people circle wagons on their racial prejudices and others try to dismantle it. For the record, I consider you firmly in the latter category where I also try to live.

If the clerk were at issue, I would probably want more information and to hear their side. But the clerk isn’t at issue. The only real thing being tested here is the racial prejudice baked into many aspects of corporate culture. By holding companies accountable, they’re encouraged to take action and raise the bar a bit for their industry and society as a whole. So again, I see no reason to disbelieve the family.

Okay, but you’re also educated and as such you must be aware that being smart and/or educated in certain things isn’t a blank check at the intelligence bank, and that even the sharpest rationalists among us are going to be dumbasses about some things some times.

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46

Now now, don’t you try to lump me into that category! I try to be very clear that I’m not an objectivist nor materialist! :slight_smile:

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47

Adopting children that don’t have matching skin tones occasionally leads to officious absurdities, too. My family’s been very lucky for the most part.

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48

Perhaps you think whether “the person who called the cops on those guys was a racist” is unknowable. We weren’t there, we didn’t get to hear the rant at the bar, whoever it was did not deliberately and publicly identify himself as a racist white-power activist.

But we know they subjected their customers to a racist experience, right?

So maybe when other people say, “that guy is a racist,” what we mean is they’re subjecting people of color to racist experiences. What they THINK they’re doing inside their own heads? DGAF.

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49

Why is no one questioning the birth certificate policy? It’s just a piece of paper with three names, a date, and a location. Any baby of any ethnicity would match that ‘ID’ as long as they’re approximately the right age.

(ETA: accidentally replied to a comment instead of the thread in general)

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50

Oh, I think had I been there, I might have been able to figure it out.

But I’ll say this: Whenever I go into a Starbucks to use the restroom, I usually try to buy something, even dinky, because I know the restrooms are supposed to be for customers. I know they often don’t police it, but I still know it’s policy.

Now, sometimes I do sneak a leak, for lack of a better term, and when I do this, I am aware of the fact that I am breaking the rules.

The racism here is that because of white privilege, I have WAY less of a chance of being arrested by the police than a black person, each of those times I break the rules. Absolutely, that fact is due to the system of societal racism we live in. And yes, that absolutely makes what happened to the black guys who got arrested at Starbucks “racist,” just as it makes the inverse of me not really having to worry about that outcome “racist.”

But, in my view anyway, it still doesn’t mean that the person who called the cops was him or herself racist, and decided to call the cops in that one circumstance because of personal racism. It doesn’t make it less bad or excusable! It doesn’t make the whole circumstance anything other than an example of society’s racism. But there are nuances to these things, and I for one am not the type to sweet them under the rug. Because I feel that the only way to actually combat the phenomenon, is to be aware of how insidious it can often be.

Edit: Having watched the video at following link, it does seem that maybe the racism of the Starbucks incident was more outright – this based on the fact that another (non-black) customer had been there, allegedly, “for hours” without buying anything, and not getting kicked out. If (white) people lounging at the same location regularly was a thing, without this happening, then yes, it is highly suspicious. I really do try to avoid Starbucks however much possible, so I am not frankly too aware of how much “lounging” tends to go on. I would never longe at a Starbucks without buying anything, or the very few times I make a very brief pee stop, so my own knowledge base is quite limited.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/17/us/philadelphia-starbucks-911-call/index.html

51

Uh. I didn’t adopt anyone.

52

Agreed, I’m not excusing this particular gate agent’s behavior, but Southwest in particular is very hardcore about verifying kids. Not sure why they train for this, specifically.

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53

They seem to be attempting to prove the parentage of the child(I flew with a newborn and they insisted on a birth certificate).
Also, no other airline has this policy, as far as I know. American and United did not care.

This may be a case of a corporate policy to verify age that the desk employees have decided is actually for anti-trafficking and have become Nazis about it. Or perhaps corporate sold it to them with “this might also prevent trafficking”.
Either way, the check-in workers are obsessed with the idea that this is a “parent verification system”

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54

You clearly missed my point. While the policy seems to be to verify age, they use it in situations where age verification is ridiculous(newborn). They also have no leniency on this policy.
They are clearly trying to use it as some kind of check on trafficking. Now, this seems to be some internal Southwest policy. Not saying it is good/bad, just saying as a parent with no chance of racism being perpetrated against me, they have harassed me with this policy.
Fortunately, I just kept a copy of my child’s birthday certificate after the first time.

55

Me too, but the problem is that I want to use the washroom first.

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56

No, they ask for a birth certificate because it lists birth parents

A passport contains no info on parents. As a white parent of white kids who has flown Southwest a lot, I would fully expect them to do the same thing to me.
I don’t think it is right and I think it is a dumb policy, but that is irrelevant.

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57

Right, but I did :).

When you are a big ugly white guy and you show up at 4am at the hospital holding a nine day old black baby with severe apnea and absolutely no paperwork - nothing - to prove that’s your child, well, it’s pretty terrifying. We didn’t even have a birth certificate yet, all that was still in process.

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58

but not RACIST nazis

59

I’m sure you’re not ugly. Maybe ruggedly handsome?

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60

The more I’ve learned about Medievalist, the more I think he’s very decent netizen.
And handsome as a rough hewn log to boot!

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61

I flew once with my step children without either legal guardian. No one challenged anything.

I always think about this. My husband and his ex always gave each other letters saying they grant permission to move about the country in an airplane with the two youths. But if they were with us, they easily could be our children and no one would ask. My husband would volunteer this information and present the letter but how did these desk agents know who really wrote and signed the letter?

I went to Puerto Rico ten years ago with my husband, who is Asian, and my two step children whose mother is white, as am I. When we landed in Philadelphia on our return, I presented my passport and was asked for other ID. My husband was not. The kids were 9 and 11 and were not asked for additional ID.

I was annoyed but Philly TSA have had some highly problematic interactions, including arresting people for no damn reason, so I remained silent. It honestly never occurred to any of us that it was a racial thing. Maybe it wasn’t but now I wonder.

It definitely was NOT to prevent human trafficking because my ID didn’t prove or disprove that I could walk out of the airport with my husband and my stepchildren. Back then they didn’t record what documents you presented, just inspect and move along unless detained so if someone later alleged that an Asian man and two children were trafficked into Philly by a white woman from PR, the airline has a record of passengers and seat assignments that would have been more useful than the TSA agent who challenged my passport.

The thing with white privilege is not whether someone DID discriminate against you, it’s that you aren’t likely to ever think that your experience may have happened to you due to your privilege. If you are not white, male, hetero, upper class, life presents an awful lot of opportunities that make you wonder if what happened took place because of your race, gender, orientation, class…

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