I'm not sure why you repeated your above strawmen. But again, you've jumped to conclusions about other people's internal thoughts without basis, and called them racist.

I've seen no one in this thread denying racism exists. It could have been a factor here with the deplaned passengers. But no one here knows with certainty, and definitely not enough certainty to label those passengers as racist based on the information provided.

The initial presumption is that the flyer was doing nothing different than any other traveler. Selfies and photos of crew and cabin probably not. Throwing a sim card down the toilet and "bizarre antics" after being refused access to the cockpit would be more troubling than just being escorted off in handcuffs.

Did someone go into the bathroom with the "scary" passenger to watch what him do whatver he supposedly did in the bathroom?

During boarding it's not unheard of for a passenger to ask to have a peak at the cockpit while the cockpit door is open and still on the ground.

:rolleyes:

Mind-reading isn't required to determine that an individual or some group of individuals have behaved in a racist way. Racism can be evidenced by behavior/behavioral differences.

"Do you really believe a seventeen year old girl of only ethnic European appearance in the same circumstances as this guy would have had the same passengers and crew freaking out?"

What is your answer to that question? It's not a strawman.

Actually it is. You can see that they acted in a negative way to a "person of color" but you can *not* say that they did it because of the color of his skin.

Actually it is not required for proper determination.

That is not true. Answer the following:

"Do you really believe a seventeen year old girl of only ethnic European appearance in the same circumstances as this guy would have had the same passengers and crew freaking out?"

Then we know the truth about who can and cannot say racism was the driver in this situation.

Reportedly at least one flight attendant also behaved as if the cleared passenger was a terrorist. ;)

Do you really believe a seventeen year old girl of only ethnic European appearance in the same circumstances as this guy would have had the FA freaking out in the same way?

Racist - man of African American decent gets on plane, passengers as to leave because he is on plane.

Not Racist - man of African American decent gets on plane, takes pictures, takes out sim card, snaps in half, throws it in toilet, scuffles, people see him leaving in handcuffs. Likely poor communication and explanation to passengers who are left to weigh risks of continuing on a flight that has seen at least one incident already. For all I know passengers saw him talking with three other pale faced men with large clown shoes.

Racist - baiting others by using language such as brown, white and sun-burned, scary brown men. I don't know that certain passengers on the flight were or were not racist as there really isn't enough information on their thoughts and actions however it is clear who is racist in reading through this thread.

African, not African-American, according to one article.

Do you believe a seventeen year old girl of only ethnic European appearance in the same circumstances as this guy would have had the same passengers and crew freaking out in the same way? The hysterical minority on the flight behaved as if there was a terrorist on board. Do you think that the hysteria would be the same if the passenger were not a "scary dark male" and was a teenager of ethnic majority background?

It really isn't so hard to answer these questions. Try. ;)

It's a simple fact: An Arabic or black african male taking photos on an airplane will not be broadly viewed by the public at large in the same manner as a caucasian teenage female doing the same thing.

Now the other fact is, there was a disturbance - which itself justifies removing the man from the flight. We don't really know what caused the disturbance - was it the result of the passenger's failure to comply with reasonable requests of the flight crew, or was it that the man, while taking an innocent selfie, was confronted by paranoid racially profiling passengers or crew and took umbrage at that? Unless this question is answered, we simply can't make a judgment on the specifics of this case.

It's so tedious reading all the rants of people pretending that racism causes bad things when it's quite clear it's the individual who causes the bad things.

The man that was removed from the flight was released and cleared to fly. Ultimately, it seems as if the pilot decided that the passenger's being removed from the flight wasn't justified; and the governmental authorities released and cleared him. The pilot decided to fly the passenger. If the removal was justified in the mind of the pilot, it didn't show in the results of waiting for the passenger to be cleared and flying the passenger on the flight as usual.

Hopefully this is one of those pilots who has the moral compass to protect individuals' civil liberties even when faced with a paranoid vocal mob that would deny the liberties and humanity of "the other". Either way, I am pleased by the pilot's action of flying cleared passengers.

Racism causes bad things. No pretending involved. Do some here believe that racism doesn't cause bad things? Who knows. What is known is that some people fancy some sort of racism, as is evidenced by the pro-racist profiling mob.

Individuals commit individual bad acts, but it's certainly plausible that racism served as the underlying motive for individuals to cause bad acts in this case as well as in others - such as the killing of Treyvon Martin for walking in a white neighborhood carrying skittles and a soft drink.

It was acutally skittles and arizona tea, two ingredients for purple dank and while it is certainly possible racism was or was not a motive it is also certainly possible that it was or wasn't intended for dank.

How is that clear?

Perhaps take a look at the previous incident of racist morons on this exact same route?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5270500.stm

" It was a return holiday flight, full of people in flip-flops and shorts. "

So in other words, there were 198 sunburned Mancunians returning home from their bargain holiday, many still drunk on cheap Spanish beer and liquor.

"There were just two people in the whole crowd who looked like they didn't belong there."

And then there were two people who don't participate in this culture of booze and skin cancer and were travelling perhaps for family or employment reasons.

And the way the unrest on that occasion started?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/5269106.stm

"Our daughter noticed a couple of guys that were perhaps acting a bit strange. They went to the front of the queue, went to the back of the queue, and then they went and sat down by themselves."

This is how I, as a white person not typically subject to racial profiling, quite often behave, when boarding a flight. I think 'I'll get on first', and then I change my mind and say 'Actually no, I don't want to be stuck on a plane any longer than I have to', and go and sit down and wait till the very end.

'A few rumours went round, it was a little bit like Chinese whispers, and then "ome more people decided they were getting off."

So basically people said 'those guys looks a bit swarthy, we don't want to go on the plane with them"

This directly followed reports on the news about bombing plots (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_tr..._aircraft_plot)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...s-removed.html

"Some of the older children, who had seen the terror alert on television, were starting to mutter things like, 'Those two look like they're bombers."

And following this disgraceful racism from everyone else on board, the men were alleged to have joked about it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/5276504.stm

"David Wearden, 42, from Chester, said it was reports that the pair had been overheard claiming they had 30 minutes left to live which led to concerns.

It was then, he said, that his wife Susanne began talking to another passenger who said she had sat next to the two men.

"She said she had heard them saying it was the last 30 minutes of their lives," said Mr Wearden.

"It may well be that the two simply thought they were being funny, but it perhaps better explains the passenger reaction.""


Even if it was true, again as a white person mercifully largely insulated from negative profiling, I would imagine that if a bunch of idiot rednecks decided that because of the colour of my skin I was a danger, I might well mock their inbred idiocy (quite another matter from mocking the security personnel who are at least (hopefully) trained to assess security threats), mob rule, at least in England, not being in effect.



It seems clear to me, given that the man in this present case was allowed to reboard the flight, that he had done nothing wrong, and it was the fellow passengers who had caused the disturbance, because airlines will deplane people on the slightest pretext, so they would have done so here had they had any valid reason to dos.

I'm not going to wade in on the OT nature of this thread, though I did think the title was interesting.

Travelling while brown...does he change colour like a chameleon when he's not travelling? ;)

Your apparent attempt at a comparison doesn't quite fly, why aren't you comparing a scary light skinned "European" male that ranted, took pictures, tried to get into the cockpit, got in a Scuffle and was escorted off the plane in handcuffs and then came back to continue on the flight.

Or are you just attempting to justify your opinions with an unrealistic comparison??

Because yes if it was a seventeen year old female either European or African ethnicity less people would have freaked out.