“People Are Nicer To Daddy Because He’s White”
by Guest Contributor Paula, originally published at Heart, Mind, and Seoul
Just last month I was on a flight where I was on the receiving end of blatant racism. I have no doubt in my mind that the manner in which this particular airline employee (a white woman) spoke to me and treated me was a direct result of the color of my skin. As I am wont to do when it comes to processing the acts of racism that I am subjected to, I felt the immediate pull to name and claim my own responsibility in the situation. I know this undoubtedly is the result of being socialized from the collective culture who repeatedly and authoritatively tells me and other people of color that our experiences with racism actually have nothing to do with race at all and it’s a notion that I find imposed upon me on an all too regular basis.
Luckily, I had the good fortune of traveling with a friend who helped keep my perspective in check. My gut knew that this flight attendant’s behavior was racist, but I still found myself trying to make excuses for her. I was pissed. Both at her, and at myself for not calling her out right then and there. Then again, she did threaten to take my bag off the plane if I didn’t do what she said (although my friend heard that it was me the employee was threatening to remove from the plane), so I promptly obliged and sat down in my seat.
With a highly critical letter already half composed in my brain (which I did write when I got home), I looked across the aisle to my friend and said “Gee, I’m thinkin’ she would have never treated or spoken to S. (my husband, who is white) that way.”
Fast forward to the following month. Last week my family and I were on a return flight finding ourselves in the same predicament that I was in just several weeks before: trying to position and accommodate our airline approved carry-on luggage in the already crammed overhead compartments. Like my flight a month before, it was full and the overhead space was at a premium. Even though my husband’s luggage didn’t fit (just like mine didn’t quite fit when I was on my flight), he didn’t find himself on the receiving end of yelling, scolding and condescending behavior. Rather, two flight attendants made triple the amount of attempts on behalf of him and his luggage that I made with my mine – attempts mind you which were met with hostility and a threat to have my suitcase (or me, as the case may be) removed from the plane.
Admittedly, these events were not truly identical in that not only did we have different flight attendants, but that my family was on a completely different airline than the one I flew on last month. I get that. But that doesn’t change the facts of how I was treated and how my husband was treated. I wish I could tell you that these events happened in isolation and that our family has never experienced another situation similar to these. But of course we all know that not to be the case. I am aware of it. My husband is aware of it and our kids, ages 9 and (nearly) 7 years are fully aware of it as well.
After my incident on the plane several weeks ago, my husband and our kids had numerous discussions about it. My kids outright admitted that they didn’t think that their dad would have been treated as poorly as I was and using their own language, both were able to identify sexism and racism as part of the equation.
When this most recent event took place on our flight last week, both of my kids were quick to comment. My son especially is an astute observer of the particular behaviors people around him exhibit. Without any prompting, he matter-of-factly remarked to me that “people are nicer to daddy because he’s white and that people like to help him more. You have brown skin and people don’t like that as much as they like white skin”. My son’s daily lexicon does not include the phrase white privilege, but he witnesses it on a daily basis and is intimately familiar with the weight that it carries. (I would argue that we all bear witness to white privilege on a daily basis – some are just more adept at identifying it for what it is.)
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