NAACP warns African Americans against travel on American Airlines
Associated Press
October 25, 2017 8:05 am
The NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
www.naacp.org ] is warning African Americans that if they fly on American Airlines they could be subject to discrimination or even unsafe conditions.
American's chief executive said Wednesday that he was disappointed by the announcement and that American wants to discuss the matter with the civil rights group.
The NAACP said that and other recent incidents involving African Americans “suggest a corporate culture of racial insensitivity and possible racial bias on the part of American Airlines.”
The NAACP highlighted four recent incidents in which African American passengers said they were treated in a discriminatory way.
One involved the head of the North Carolina NAACP, the Rev. William Barber, who sued American after being removed from a flight last year.
Barber said police were called and removed him from the plane after he asked a flight attendant to tell a white passenger behind him to quiet down.
Barber accused the other passenger of making a comment about having a problem with “those people.”
An incident last week involved Tamika Mallory, an organizer of the Women's March on Washington in January. Mallory had changed her seat at an airport kiosk, only to be told at the gate that the seat had been assigned to another customer.
Mallory said she was treated disrespectfully by the gate agent — another African American woman — and was outraged when a white male pilot asked if she could control herself while on the flight.
After being told she was being kicked off the plane, Mallory called the pilot a racist in a profanity-laced exchange.