The FAA Fed Federal Administration has reported over 2,500 cases of Unruly passengers as opposed to the 179 or so normally reported annually.
Almost half of the recent cases are related to the issue of wearing masks and the over consumption of alcohol.
While I am sure there are some cases of people of color becoming unruly and being thrown off a plane, arrested, charged, and banned from that airline it is a in that the vast majority have been white people. And as is common within our judicial system people of color would get much harsher punishments than their white counterparts.
Over the months I have read and viewed the photos and videos of unruly passengers. And the ones I have seen or read about have all been white folks.
These unruly passengers refuse to wear masks properly, have pushed and punched airline staff. They yell and scream and get crazy like those folks we saw who stormed the capitol. The past white house administration allowed racism to flourish publicly as attacks against immigrants, Muslims, Jews, LGBTQ, Chinese and others became flagrantly public.
White folks these past four years have used 911 as their personal police phone number. 911 operators have gotten calls from outraged white citizens because a person of color was barbequing in a public park or that staff of a business were talking in a language other than English Cities should charge, fine, and perhaps incarcerate those who abuse this important public safety system.
People of color would catch as they say Holy hell! if they called 911 after seeing some white folks having a large picnic or something public with loud music.
White privilege has deep roots and its branches spread out to every aspect of our society.
As a young man I had to ride the public bus systems and they would not tolerate unruly passengers. I saw people dumped out in the middle of nowhere because they were drunk and abusive. Today there are in certain parts of the country economic bus systems that will not allow their customers to get strange and endanger others. I never saw a person of color in those days thrown off a bus.
My thesis is that these outlandish airline passenger incidents have deep roots in White privilege. If people of color were as a group being unruly it would be on the front page of the newspapers and the hot topic for right wing media.
Cruise ship lines are now setting rules to accept only vaccinated travelers, while some airlines are creating new alcohol consumption rules. And all are developing stricter policies to protect the staff and other passengers.
If people do not want to follow the airline rules, they should take a train or bus or perhaps get in their cars and drive to their desired destination.
White Privilege at 30,000 feet makes it unsafe for us all.
