Well in Seattle considering the minimum wave is $15/hr which is what most TSA agents get from what I understand then I would probably opt for fast food option.
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Oh no, it absolutely IS racist. White girl with braids would not be treated this old way. But I agree with @ejeffrey that education isn’t gonna help here. I’d be willing to bet that any additional knowledge about Native cultures or beliefs would just be more ammunition to degrade and humiliate indigenous people.
Fire the TSA officer, arrest her for assault.
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She’s a better person than I am. I would want this “officer” fired immediately and charged with assault.
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This was in St. Paul? Might not be the case there… same here in the ATL, where the TSA and Hartsfield-Jackson is a huge employer in Southwest part of the city (East Point, etc). These are still much better jobs than many of the working class alternatives. And even if fast food pays better, you don’t get any benefits, which you will with a government job.
But this is off-topic, whether or not working for a government agency is why people do racist, sexist things. I doubt the two are related, other than the employee feeling like she can more effectively get away with this, because she works for the TSA. It’s still racist bullshit, though, and I hope she is no longer doing this job after this.
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We still need the education, because there are people who aren’t aware that INTO the early 2000s Native children were being taken away from their families and cultures. But we’d have to have a society that is actively working to uproot racism in our institutions, and we’re not doing that right now. I think a more robust education on what racial minorities in America faced WOULD help in the long run, but that’s a long term project.
I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive, the woman who did this getting fired and there being better education.
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I don’t know what the deal is with MSP, but the only bad experiences my family has ever had with TSA were there. Minnesota nice, my ass. They’ve got a problem at that airport.
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Indeed. I am always amazed at how awful the TSA can be. Especially (at least to my pasty blinding white male self) to me as they have been totes cool with me every time. Even pointing out the mail it home kiosk twice for when I forgot I had my pocket knife with me then letting jump back in line where I was.
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What? No, that certainly isn’t what I meant. This was clearly a racist act.
My point was simply that understanding someones culture that is different from yours is nice but not generally necessary in order to know not to fucking assault them.
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What I’m arguing is that part of the reason why this woman was assaulted and the agent believe she could get away with it is because Native Americans are very much treated as second class citizens in our society, and that our society encourages said behavior. Let’s not forget that Native women were still being sterilized against their will into the 1970s, and Native children were still being adopted out to white families as late as 2003.
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Whether she has invested her hair w/ magical thinking is irrelevant. It’s unwanted and humiliating and, no doubt, a form of assault. The TSA is awful, will always be awful, and should be disbanded and the offender should be fired. But, none of that will happen.
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A couple of people have been a little shocked about the woman saying they didn’t want the officer to get in trouble but would rather see more education about the culture of tribes/bands in the state and region. I understand people reacting by saying that you don’t need cultural education to know you shouldn’t grab someone’s hair and tell them to giddyup. Quite right. It’s not like this is something non-Indigenous people do to one another all the time - that would be a cultural misunderstanding.
I imagine Houska is hoping that something more constructive can come out of the incident than just firing the “bad apple” and hoping that fixes the barrel. But then I also wonder, while we sit around and think non-Indigenous people already ought to know better than to do that, what has been Houska’s life experience that Houska maybe believes that we don’t know better?
It makes me think of just how shitty we must be as a collective.
I don’t know about America, but in Canada it’s basically still happening. The government policy to do so for the purpose of re-educating the “indian” out of them is gone, but child welfare agencies are hugely more likely to take kids away from Indigenous families than white families. There are more children who have been taken from their families now than there ever were under the official policy of residential schools. And of course some of those children do need intervention, but our system has a specific set of intervention steps that will never include working with the Indigenous community to find a solution. And some of those children need intervention because the government took and abused their parents when they were children, creating a cycle of intergenerational abuse.
It reminds me of a story from the beginning of The New Jim Crow about a black man in America who was the sixth generation of black men in a family that never got to vote. First is because black Americans weren’t allowed to vote. Then it was because the Klan guarded the polling stations, and now it’s because of felon disenfranchisement.
We white people sure find ways to carry on our abusive practices under new names and rationales. I wonder if that’s why Houska doesn’t think getting the individual agent in trouble would be helping.
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Not sure if you meant it this way, but that comes across as pretty damn dismissive of another person’s culture, which is very much uncool.
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Based on my average experience with TSA “agents?” Not a humongous surprise, even though it’s astonishingly awful. The grace of this woman, to try to lean into making this a teaching moment for the “agent” – well, I have to give her props.
I will say, TSA agents in some airports seem markedly better than others, and I always try to be friendly and civil to them regardless (it often seems to catch them off guard). TSA agents in Las Vegas however, I have almost universally found to be pleasant. Because guess what, LV understands that a huge percentage of their local economy is based on people having a fun time. Not sure why this has to be so region exclusive…
I wouldn’t be surprised if it still happens here too, I just know this was a date where it was firmly documented… There is still having to choose between assimilation or being marginalized.
Yep, I’d say so. Focusing on the specific does matter, but rooting out the underlying white supremacist is what finally needs to happen.
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I’m on the fence on if this was a racist act or not. I’m only speaking from a place of anecdotal experience but I worked with a guy who would, quite literally, go up to any person with a ponytail, raise up the ponytail and when they asked wtf he was doing, he would punchline, “I’m just trying to see where the horse’s ass is!” Then he would laugh so damn hard every time he did it. It was a mixed reaction whether the ponytail wearer thought it was hilarious or just walked away shaking their head. Didn’t matter if they were a frontline employee or an executive. He did it to all. I truly think his hearty laugh and back-slapping after were there only things that didn’t get him fired (although he eventually did get fired.)
In my mind I can picture the TSA agent being the same kind of character. Trying to make things “fun” but not having an understanding of boundaries.
Including my own, I think there’s a lot of assumptions in this thread about the TSA agent’s motivations that we don’t know. I’m not prepared to label them a racist yet.
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I saw this on Facebook just a day or two ago, and it really does sum up the idiocy of TSA in general:
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It’s a racist act, the intent is relatively irrelevant here.
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Is it? My grandma continues to wear a beehive hairdo and has her wig patted down every single time she flies. Some TSA agents have made quips and it’s all very fun and we go along our way.
If you were to convince me that the TSA agent was indeed performing a racist act I should expect that you have proof the Native American lady was the only person that they’ve ever done this too. To me this sounds like somebody that doesn’t have a full understanding of boundaries but regularly makes this same joke at BBQs, get-togethers, etc.
Intent or motivation doesn’t have any bearing on whether someone acts in a racist way.
We don’t need to know what they’re thinking or reasoning is whe we can see what they did.
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Making those same kind of jokes at bbqs and get together just makes them someone else’s racist friend/relative.
You don’t have to personally keep apologizing for the racist actions of someone you don’t even know.
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