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No. Let's see what happens if this same story is told without the racism. Bob is on the phone with his mother and said he will have a "salad" tonight. Sally acr
by yifanlu 10y ago
No. Let's see what happens if this same story is told without the racism. Bob is on the phone with his mother and said he will have a "salad" tonight. Sally across the aisle heard it as "suicide" and reports him. The attendant promptly calls security, has him evicted, and the FBI is called. Does that sound reasonable to you?
So no. Many people did lots of things wrong that day. The passenger who obviously doesn't know arabic mishears a word and reports him out of prejudice. The staff who took the complaint seriously because of his race. The security and FBI who harassed him for a long time as a result.
Do you really think a white man uttering Allah (where that's the only word heard by another passenger) would be subjected to the same treatment? And also, even if the man WAS a terrorist, do you really think he would go on the phone and talk about his terrorist plots in the open? Even if this guy said "martyr", that still does not warrant the treatment he received. Just like if Bob actually said "suicide," literally it's just a word that's sometimes used in a bad context. He wasn't misheard as saying "I will blow up this plane." So it took many layers of prejudice for this to happen.
- vixen99 10y agoEasy to rationalize after the event. Perforce because of our partial knowledge, we use prejudice (and faulty logic in the heat of the moment) everyday. It's also known as pre-judgement and it often gets things wrong. I don't know anybody these days who doesn't look round at his or her fellow-passengers on a flight, and wonder.
- ZanyProgrammer 10y agoI don't-no one has successfully hijacked an American airliner after 9/11. The odds of it happening probably aren't that great.
- mindslight 10y agoDiscerning motivations and monday morning quarterbacking whether they were justified or not is a quagmire of futility. Really, the victim just needs to be made whole - force these organizations to stop creating externalities out of their self-created costs. To me, it sounds like the victim in this case is owed an automatic payment of at least several thousand dollars for the lost day, emotional distress, etc. The civil damages in a general kidnapping/wrongful imprisonment case are also a good reference point. He really should sue - free apologies don't reform bad incentives. Southwest should have also removed the reporting woman from the plane so the victim could face his accuser, and also to reduce frivolous complaints. If she really thinks he was a t'rist, she should be wanting to get off that plane regardless.
- yazaddaruvala 10y agoI think this is reasonable deterrence. The accuser should be asked to get off the plane, and remain with the authorities, till such a time as the accused is allowed to leave or is taken into custody.
- im3w1l 10y agoYou are responding as if the reporting woman could have, should have, expected this outcome. For all she knew, the report could have just resulted in an extra-thorough search.
- mindslight 10y agoThey had already boarded the plane. The only possible outcomes were nothing, or his removal from that flight. It seems reasonable, and incentive-aligning, for both of them to be removed from the plane.
- im3w1l 10y agoSo take him off the plane, search, and let back on? Delay the departure 15 min. Maybe the policies don't work like that though.
- mindslight 10y agoYeah - policies, logistics, police, pilots, and economics don't work like that.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]