nm. Posted before I saw the mod note.
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The flight attended is a racist, she saw someone with dark skin and figured that he must be a terrorist (this doesn’t explain, however, why she hasn’t called the cops on anybody else, but maybe this guy just represented a ‘perfect storm’).
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The flight attendant is a racist and an idiot, and it wasn’t so much the dark skin that threw her as it was the dark skin coupled with the beard. All terrorists have beards, after all.
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The flight attendant is simply an idiot. She saw a guy reading some sort of book about airplanes and got some sort of vibe from him when she asked him to move his luggage. Her “if you see something, say something!” sensors got tripped and out came the law enforcement officers.
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The flight attendant is both an idiot and a paranoid nut. Ever since 9/11 she’s been terrified of getting blown up and that day was particularly stressful on her lizard-brain, and so some guy reading a book on planes and even politely refusing to let her handle his luggage set her into Panic Mode.
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The flight attendant is an idiot, a paranoid, and a bigot and thinks that men in general, regardless of their skin color, are untrustworthy and disreputable if they have beards. Especially if they have slightly (or majorly) scraggly beards.
I stand by my first post in this thread. The incident is a Rorschach Blot. It may very well have been a case of simple racism, in which case the flight attendant should be fired. It may simply be that she’s an idiot, which makes it a bit more difficult to fire her because, let’s face it, the median intelligence level isn’t exactly a genius one and half the folks out there are even dumber than that. If we started firing people for stupidity we’d quickly find that most industries ground to a halt. Still, stick her in sensitivity training, or remedial classes, or whatever.
~shrugs~
It’s not a Rorschach test. Only one explanation is credible.
To all you of you who think there is a more likely explanation besides profiling, I ask you this. When the flight attendant was recounting her interaction with the man to whomever called the TSA, do you think she mentioned the guy’s appearance or assumed race/religion?
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
The flight attendant is most likely a racist on top of being a weapons-grade idiot, but the idiocy of calling the cops on a guy reading a history on World War II aircraft is the more telling part of this story.
Your response illustrates exactly why and how it’s a Rorschach Blot.
I think that there’s a* lot* more malice in the world than that saying acknowledges.
LHOD, I doubt I or anyone can present to you alternate plausible theories because “plausible” is in the eye of the beholder. In aný event, now that I see FA’s post, I’ll sign on to that–seems to cover it.
Also, I suspect that there was something else to the whole fanny pack incident than our faithful reporter is telling us–why else would he (1) mention twice in the letter that there was “no belligerence” and (2) recount the facts so clearly and in detail to the security guy. It could have been something as simple as the flight attendant absent-mindedly reaching for the fanny pack and the guy shoving it under the seat quickly, which somehow seemed to the stew like he was being all defensive and putting his precious in his hidey-hole.
The officer clearly asked for Gilbert to retrieve his book, he didn’t even ask to see his bag.
In Gilbert’s recounting of the events.
So far, we have exactly one description of the incident. All the information is filtered through the views of one person who was recalling the incident some time after it happened in a manner that played up his own hurt feelings.
I’m perfectly willing to believe that a bit of ethnic profiling affected part of the attendant’s behavior, (although that has not actually been demonstrated), but all the calls that his interpretation of events is the only plausible explanation and all the insistence that we have all the necessary facts are just puffery on the part of people who have already made up their minds and who seem to be incapable of examining the situation without employing their own preconceived notions.
If someone were to post that the situation could not possibly have involved ethnic profiling, I would note that they, too, were relying on their own prejudices while disregarding the facts. So far, however, only one side has taken a position in which they are willing to make judgments while relying on incomplete information.
Ah, tom, you are back. Care to explain your mischaracterization/misunderstanding of my post above?
These three are alternate explanations (#1 and #2 were the explanation others were offering). But I don’t think the’re plausible.
#3: The level of idiocy required for a flight attendant to see the book and decide, with nothing else, that it was a potential terrorist is so profound that I have trouble believing it. Would this guy–another heavyset, middle-aged guy with glasses–have been pulled from the plane, even if he’d been reading a book about aeronautics instead of a book about nihilism?
#4 is the same way: surely if you’ve been on an airplane before, you’ve seen passengers stuffing luggage under their seats, and surely you’ve seen passengers treating flight attendants with rudeness. It’s very, very difficult for me to believe that this occurrence is less than everyday for flight attendants.
As for #5, setting aside the fact that such an explanation still involves unacceptable profiling, it requires a world in which either she’s made such calls before, or a world in which she just doesn’t encounter dudes with beards in the course of her work. I’m not buying it.
The key thing, of course, is the pattern. Since 9/11, we’ve had instance after instance (cites available if folks really need them) of folks who are, or look, Middle-Eastern being called out on airplanes for things that their non-Middle-Eastern-looking co-fliers never get called out for. Perhaps this is confirmation bias; perhaps white people get called out for reading aeronautics books, or for talking in a foreign language, or for wearing religious shirts, or whatever, but they don’t make a stink about it. I see no evidence that that’s the case.
I do appreciate the effort you made to offer some alternative explanations, Finn: I just don’t think any of them pass the sniff test.
Edit: and here’s the last piece. I could be wrong, but surely this isn’t the judgment call of a single flight attendant. From the story, it sounds as though several employees consulted before the police were called. Were all of them paranoid nuts who hate beards? Or is it likelier that all of them have Arab Panic Syndrome?
All of this supposes the veracity of the OP story. If we’re going to question that story, the alternate explanations are infinite: perhaps, for example, instead of holding a book about aeronautics, he was holding a gun.
Those same objections apply to 1) dark skinned men 2) with beards 3) who don’t want their luggage fussed with. If it was simply a matter of racism, why is this the first time this woman’s been in the news? It may very well be the case, but you’re effectively hoisted by your own petard when you discard certain glosses out of hand.
Or, did the conversation go something like
“The guy in 3F is a terrorist!!!”
“Suzie… are you serious?”
“He’s reading a book on planes, he wouldn’t let us touch his bag, he’s going to blow us all up!”
“Suzie, did you forget to take your meds today?”
“A terrorist!”
"You realize, Suzie, that company policy/regulations/my conscience/whatever-the-fuck states that if one of my flight crew makes that sort of accusation, that we need to get it checked out, and it may waste many people’s time and attention?
“A terrorist!!!”
“I hate you.”
I’m not sure I “get” this issue. Obviously the stewardess thought something idiotic. No issue. Is there any particular reason that it should matter whether the idiotic thought in question was racist, or just generally stupid? Further, given that there will always be stupid stewards and stewardesses in this world, what would we hope would happen? That the security authorities come, realize the steward/ess is being stupid, apologize and let people go about their business.
In short, the only thing that went wrong in this situation was one person being stupid, and now we’re having a heated debate about what precisely went wrong in the aforementioned person’s head, as if it mattered. I’m not trying to threadshit, but I really think the best response to this is “meh”.
(And as I write this, I see FinnAgain’s latest post —fair enough, three people’s defective heads.)
How will we know whether to watch for racism, terrorist paranoia, or plain moronitude? In what proportions?
No, that’s not true. The objections don’t apply. It’s quite possible that she’s never dealt with a man who appears Arabic who’s reading a book on airplanes and who keeps a bag away from her before. It could require the trifecta.
Race is so weird. When I was younger, I had long hair and no beard, and sometimes when I was washing my hands in a public restroom, guys would come in, stare at me, duck back out of the bathroom, look at the door’s sign, and come back in. Even though we can’t read minds, of course we can conclude that they mistakenly thought I was a woman, based on that information. But when confronted with situations in which someone just as obviously made a mistaken racial impression, people contort themselves in bizarre fashions to avoid the likeliest conclusion. I really don’t understand why.
Yes, yes: the dude coming in the bathroom might have mistaken me for an employee of the establishment and been checking to see if there was an “employees only” sign on the door. Anything’s possible. But why waste our time on such unlikely scenarios, when there’s one scenario that’s backed up by historical events and is so much more likely?
Because in this situation it seems that idiocy and paranoia are also likely explanations and I personally do not find your requirement for a ‘trifecta’ to be persuasive. A true racist would have had a problem with Arab-looking passengers long before one just happened to have a book-about-planes and a bag he didn’t want to hand over, IMO.
I assume that neither of us will convince the other on this issue. I’m happy to admit that racism is a possible factor, even a probable one. But I reject the assertion that it is the only probable analysis of the situation.
LHOD, your exact attitude is the reason this country will never get over racism. There will always and forever have been racism in the past. And that is the only criteria you use to determine whether an incident today involves racism. So, it could be the case that not a single person alive at some point in the future thinks anyone is inherently and irredeemably inferior because of their race, but because of your attitude you will still see racism everywhere.
Indeed. My attitude–and not the attitude of the people pulling Arab-appearing men off planes for looking Arab–is what’s wrong with our country. You’re very astute.
Yes, I must agree–you are being much more astute here. The way you zero in on your favorite boogey man, armed only with the evidence of the history of this country, is quite astute indeed.