My trip to NYC becomes a lesson in profiling

On an AirTran flight to New York City last Sunday, I came face to face with racial/ethnic profiling in the worst way. As I boarded the plane, moving to my assigned seat in row 28, I noticed a family of traditionally-clad Africans or Arabs seated in the middle of the plane. Truth be told, the four of them--two women, an older man and a toddler--stuck out like a sore thumb amid a sea of New York businessmen and cheesehead tourists. I was also seated next to an Arab man way back in the belly of the plane.

Throughout the flight, all five of these individuals were treated differently than the other travelers. When the older man tried to walk to the bathroom at the front of the plane (near which he was seated), a crew member came on the intercom saying, "The front lavatories are only for our business class." Ahem. I have used both the front and back bathrooms on planes countless times, and while I understand the business class pays an arm and a leg for wider seats and complimentary mimosas, do they really get VIP bathroom access? Or is this a case of airplane apartheid? And when the man did walk to the back of the plane, people actually snarled in seeming disgust that he would deign to use the bathroom nearest his seat.

The women received patronizing admonitions about their luggage, and the flight crew addressed them as they would normally speak to the six-year-old sitting one seat over.

The worst display, however, came not from the crew members but from my fellow passengers...

The man seated next to me was quiet throughout the flight, reading the in-flight magazine, taking a short nap and drinking a Coke over the course of the two hours. We exchanged courtesies upon boarding, but other than that we did not interact. After the plane landed at LaGuardia, this man took out his cell phone and made a call. He started speaking in Arabic (or what I assume to be Arabic based on previous experience) to the person on the other end of the line. And not a second after he first spoke did panic set in among the people seated around us. The usual stand-up-to-stretch-your-legs became we-must-get-off-this-plane-immediately pushiness. People actually said, "Let's get off quickly. C'mon honey. Get your stuff. Let's go. NOW."

"Pardon me," I wanted to say. "You are in row 29 and 30...do you not know how a toothpaste tube works?"

"And furthermore, could you be more OBVIOUS!?"

I'm sure the Times Square bomber is fresh on everyone's minds, and the suspect in that caseis Pakistani, but does that justify these passengers' actions? Absolutely not. The media has primed us to connect Arab to terrorist, sure, but we must be smarter than our evening news. We must realize that the images presented to us via the media are not universal truths about a person or group.

Even as we try to "un-prime" ourselves, we may occasionally revert to our primed ways. I admit, I went there. I thought, "That's suspicious. This man makes a phone call immediately after landing, and he seems to be speaking quickly and nervously." I hate that I thought that. Clearly, I am not faultless in this case, but I do believe there is a difference between fleeting thought and action. Fleeting thought can be redirected. Fleeting thought can be overcome. Action is branded into the moment, a distinctive and public marker of profiling and racism.

I've thought about that man every day since, hoping he didn't notice his fellow passengers' reactions. And amid a sea of Times Square tourists, I wondered how many were shuffling faster than usual to snag their "I love New York" T-shirts and Bubba Gump shrimp, eager to escape the men making phone calls and drinking Cokes on the corner of 7th and Broadway.