Author Archive Send to a Friend E-Mail Author <% dim printurl printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%> Version

June 5, 2002 5:35 p.m. Flying While Arab A little chillin’ is in order.

ashington is in its third week of self-flagellation over why the U.S. government couldn't prevent the Sept. 11 hijackers from commandeering four planes and slamming them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Meanwhile, with no sense of irony, the ACLU, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and some other groups are launching five separate lawsuits over cases of men being removed from airplanes. The ACLU is party to three of the suits.

Edgardo Cureg is a plaintiff in an ACLU lawsuit against Continental Airlines. In an ACLU press release he declared:

Even though I made it safely to my destination that day, I will never again feel free to travel in the future, because my basic right to travel free from discrimination has been grossly violated. The plane I was booked on left without me, and it was 11:30 p.m. before I arrived home. I spent the saddest New Year's Eve of my life alone, exhausted and depressed, with a bitter taste in my mouth that lingers in my soul to this day.

Would someone please get this man some Tums to alleviate that bitter taste lingering in his soul?

Sorry, I don't mean to make light of his ethereal acid reflux — okay, I do — but this guy needs to get over himself. I don't mean he doesn't deserve to be bitter. But, when it comes to domestic aviation, bitterness is a widely held commodity these days. Indeed, you could pick up bitterness on the cheap even before Sept. 11 (See "Airsick"). Since then, airports are handing it out the way they used to give away peanuts before the .001 percent of people who have allergies to peanuts but are too stupid to keep themselves from eating them anyway ruined things for the rest of us.

Across the United States, security precautions are forcing people to miss connecting flights and miss additional work due to earlier check-ins. People are being subjected to searches, random and targeted. They are being exposed to the worst side of the American character, which only comes out after enduring lots of hurry-up-and-waiting, long lines, incessant confrontations with airport logic — which only bears a superficial resemblance to Earth logic — and airport "courtesy," which bears more than a superficial resemblance to the way rabid wolverines treat mewling kittens.

We should also note that, as a percentage of their remaining years alive, the elderly are being particularly mistreated. Mr. Cureg, for example, is only 34 years old. He may have lost a few more hours out of his life, but the delays accrued because of his removal from the plane probably robbed some 85-year-old man of a comparatively huge fraction of his remaining years or months on this earth — not to mention the additional physical stress he may have incurred, which may even have reduced his life expectancy by days. Mr. Cureg didn't do anything wrong, of course, but neither did some oldster who might have missed his grandson's baptism. In the grand scheme of things, who was treated more unfairly? Which "disparate impact" is more cruel?

Okay, you might think this is a silly illustration, even if I don't (serious economists do this sort of analysis all the time), but the point is rock-solid: Unfairness is not uniformly distributed throughout domestic aviation (or, for that matter, the known universe). Statistically speaking, old women, people in wheelchairs, nuns, priests, the blind, etc., etc. have more reason to complain than even the most harassed Muslim men — because old women and the handicapped, to name two, are virtually never terrorists but do get consistently inconvenienced without even the flimsiest justification. The fact that the inconvenience is distributed across the system — as, for example, we are all told to arrive an extra hour earlier — doesn't make it any less unfair. In fact, it makes it "systemic" — and we're always being told that "systemic discrimination" is especially unfair.

The unwarranted removal of Muslim or "Middle-Eastern-looking" men from airplanes is actually not systemic. If it were, I think I would have seen it or heard about it. I've done a lot of flying since 9/11 and I've seen a lot of Arab-looking people on planes. None of them have been yanked from the plane. In fact, nobody I know has seen this sort of thing happen. Of course, this is anecdotal, so let's go to the data.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee — which is participating in three of these suits — reports that they've received 60 reports amounting to 100 "Arab-looking" passengers men being pulled off of planes since Sept. 11. Yes, being pulled off a plane is a much bigger inconvenience than what I've been talking about, but 60 complaints in 9 months is hardly an epidemic. The average number of "enplanements" — people getting on planes — every day is 1.7 million. So let's see what Very Bad Math Guy can figure out. Nine months is roughly 270 days amounting to, again roughly, 459 million opportunities for Arab-looking dudes to be pulled off their planes before takeoff. Divide that by the100 people sufficiently peeved to complain and you get one case for every 4.59 million passengers. Good Lord! CBS must already be cranking up the made-for-TV movies about this dark period in our history. [Editor's note: I have every reason to believe my math is terrible here — which is why they call me Very Bad Math Guy, after all — but I think you get my point].

Now, keep in mind: The ACLU and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee are alleging not only that the yanking of Arab-looking people is widespread, but that the five cases being brought before the federal court are the best illustration that this practice is totally unfair. "In ejecting our clients from their flights, the airlines were indulging in discrimination, not enforcing security, and that is both shameful and unlawful," said Reginald Shuford, a lead ACLU attorney told the press. "You don't have to be a security expert to know that what happened to these men had everything to do with bias and nothing to do with safety," he added.

"THOSE BROWN-SKINNED MEN"
Hmm. Let's take another gander at the guy with spiritual heartburn, Edgardo Cureg. Mr. Cureg was on a Continental Airlines flight on New Year's Eve. According to the ACLU's version of events (i.e., the case made by Mr. Cureg's lawyer), Mr. Cureg, a legal resident of Filipino descent, bumped into a professor of his who's from Sri Lanka. While they waited to board the plane, Cureg loaned the prof his cell phone. And when they were boarded, Cureg found the professor and retrieved his phone. They were not seated together. Meanwhile, another passenger, Michael Dasrath, was seated in first class. A woman had been scoping him out and allegedly told the captain, "Those brown-skinned men are behaving suspiciously." Soon thereafter, Mr. Cureg, Mr. Dasrath, and "another man" (presumably the professor, though the ACLU's site isn't clear) were pulled off the plane and put on other planes that same day.

"What happened to me didn't happen because the airline thought I was a security risk. It happened because someone didn't like the color of my skin," Dasrath said. Hmmm. Does this mean there was no one left on the plane with off-white skin after these three men were removed? Or could it be that, for good reasons or bad, these specific three men were singled out — in part because they had brown skin, but also because they were behaving suspiciously? After all, the fact that at least two of them were conferring, but not sitting with each other, might arouse some reasonable suspicion, since that would track with what we know about the 9/11 hijackers — groups of men who also passed through security unscathed.

Indeed, the fact that a group of men were removed suggests that security had something to do with it, since the whole idea is that terrorists work in groups. The ACLU and the plaintiffs make much of the fact that the airline couldn't have thought these men were security risks, because they had made it past the security checks and were put other planes. But, if the aim is to disrupt a hijacking, putting them on different planes may be all that is required.

Also, while it may sound bigoted in an ACLU press release, saying "those brown-skinned men" isn't necessarily racist — is it? Was the woman supposed to say, "The man in the yellow tie, as well as the fellow with the brown jacket, and another gentlemen with silver rimmed glasses are behaving suspiciously"? Obviously, I don't know what these guys were wearing, but you get my point. A description isn't necessarily an epithet, even if it hurts your feelings. For example, "the guy with no legs" is a much better way of describing someone than "the guy with blue eyes" — even if the legless fellow feels put out.

Oh, and one last thing. The ACLU devotes most of its press release to the experience of Mr. Cureg and, to a lesser extent, Mr. Durath — the men who had their New Year's Eves ruined. They even claim the event is especially reprehensible because it occurred "as late as New Year's Eve" — i.e., so long after 9/11. Huh? Wasn't New Year's Eve a time when security was especially tight? Across the U.S., New Year's events were canceled as a result of terrorist warnings. If this sort of thing is going on all the time, why pick an incident on New Year's Eve? Indeed, why are two of the ACLU's five plaintiffs (40 percent, by Bad Math Guy's reckoning) from the same New Year's flight, if this is an epidemic?

Anyway, I've gone too long here. But let me make one last point. Mr. Shuford, the ACLU lawyer, predicted (in the words of the Associated Press) that "some people will conclude discrimination is just another cost in the fight against terrorism and suing over the issue is unpatriotic." Mr. Shuford (now in his own words) said, "But there is nothing patriotic about discrimination, nor is there any honor in suffering it in silence."

Well, there's nothing patriotic about all sorts of things, unless they are done for the right reason. Cleaning toilets isn't patriotic, but if you're doing it in an army barracks, maybe it is. Discrimination isn't patriotic, but defending the country against attacks is. The airline personnel who made these decisions were doing what they deemed best in that effort at the time. Suing them over it doesn't seem very patriotic to me.

As for suffering in silence, who says that's not honorable? I suffer in silence every time I wait in a line at an airport, because I know the inconveniences I endure are nobody else's fault and we should all do what we can to get along. It would be nice if Mr. Cureg swallowed the bitter taste, and did the same.