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Despite the Outrage, Southwest Did the Right Thing
There is no bigger hassle for a company than a disgruntled customer with a Twitter account. This week Southwest is getting some heat; not for killing a dog or dragging a customer off a flight, but for asking for proof of an infant’s identity. The Washington Post reports:
But her family then had what Gottlieb called an “uncomfortable and hurtful” interaction with a Southwest Airlines employee at a Denver International Airport ticket counter: On Monday, she said, the employee asked Gottlieb to “prove” she was the mother of her biracial son, even after seeing the toddler’s passport.
The employee then asked for her son’s birth certificate, citing “federal law” — and proceeded to ask the dismayed mother if she could prove she was the mother with a Facebook post, Gottlieb wrote in a tweet.
“We had a passport that verified our son’s age and identity, and both parents were present,” Gottlieb said in a statement to The Washington Post on Tuesday. “But still being pushed further to ‘prove’ that he was my son felt disrespectful and motivated by more than just concern for his well-being.”
You know what’s more uncomfortable for a mother being asked for her son’s birth certificate? An infant getting trafficked. The airline is correct; parents traveling with children under two years of age are required to travel with proof of their relationship to the child in order to protect the child.
We hear a great deal about white privilege; but here’s an uncomfortable fact for Gottlieb: just because you’re a white woman with sensitive feelings doesn’t mean you’re immune from some basic questions. The rules don’t exist to make adoptive or biracial families feel uncomfortable or upset; they are there for the sake of children. Traveling with a passport and both parents isn’t enough; authorities aren’t concerned about the child’s identity or age; they want to make sure they are traveling with the right adults before they’re able to speak for themselves.
I have a four-year-old, a three-year-old and a one-year-old; which means I’ve been traveling with a child under the age of two my entire time as a mother. I’ve flown with all of my children alone over half a dozen times across the country; from Arizona to South Carolina to Chicago and Florida. Given that my oldest are now able to speak, they’ve been asked several times by different airport employees and TSA what their names are and who I am; not in an interrogation kind of manner, just a friendly question posed to verify everything was kosher. As a mother, I appreciated their intention to make sure my children were traveling safely and with the appropriate caregiver.
It’s a fair expectation that parents of all children traveling under the age of two should be asked to provide birth certificates in order to prove they are traveling with their own children. The issue with how the Washington Post framed the story is that it was wrong and racist of Southwest to do so at all. Outside of how tiresome it is for racism to always be the blame for behavior people don’t like, it’s also dangerous in this instance. And the most upsetting thing is, this might discourage other airlines from taking this important and necessary step of asking questions of families that don’t look biologically related. The next time an airline employee sees something that doesn’t look quite right regarding a child, they may choose to stay silent, lest they elicit a social media mob more concerned about feelings than a child’s safety.
Published in Culture
Thank you Mr. @milkchaser for the most helpful “rapid custom clearance” tip. I will ever be grateful.
I’m sorry. This was the kind of bureaucratic cya behavior lacking all common sense that derives from an over regulated society. But leave it to the liberal media it see it as racism rather that what happens when government regulations are ubiquitous and employees mindless.
Maybe I should sell these:
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No. Though I think there’s a space where it could be written in, but that wouldn’t help. The other question I have is about names – does the child have the same name as at least one parent? That would certainly add confusion – is that addressed in any of the stories?
I am thinking about a trip I took with my daughter about 30 years ago. It was originally for my wife. We bought the ticket, and then my wife had something come up at work, so I went. It was before you were required to have id to get on a plane, so I just flew on my wife’s ticket. My daughter was only a few months old. No one asked for any I.D. for either of us. Never gave it a second’s thought.
Man, have we traveled a long way down a bad road in a short time.
According to the WaPo story, Gottlieb and the child have different last names. But Gottlieb also stated that the father was present, and it seems unlikely the child didn’t have one of their last names. Why the employee cared that the mother’s last name did not match is unclear from the story (“federal law” was cited), but it does say that, according to Southwest, “employees are not required to match the last names of a child and guardian on domestic flights.” I’m still going with the fact that the employee was more wrong than right for whatever reason, although the victimology asserted is open to question.
We went on a cruise one year with two of our kids. The youngest was about two at the time. Children doing international travel must be either traveling with both parents or have a written letter granting permission from the missing parent. I didn’t want to do a passport for my kid, so I checked to see if a passport was necessary for young children to travel internationally and they are not. But Birth Certificates and written consent from an absent parent is required. This would be to prevent custody dispute abduction/kidnapping by a relative.
We have passports for all three of our kids – they don’t list our names. Someone could take one of our kids – or we could give them to that person – along with the passport and they could travel with them. But if the requirement is a birth certificate, even if they take that certificate, when they see that the name of the parent does not match the name of the adult traveling with them, they will be stopped.
The best line of defense with human trafficking in the air are flight attendents.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/flight-attendant-rescues-teen-girl-human-trafficking-article-1.2965478
Pulling the victim card in a situation like this is wrong. However, I’m a white woman married to a white man and I have 4 white kids and 3 black kids. And you do get extra scrutiny when traveling or doing stuff with kids whose race doesn’t match yours. I remember one time taking one of the non-white kids for surgery. Hubs was at home with the other kids so I was on hospital duty alone. A nurse told me she would “probably” have to see some kind of proof the kid was mine. I told her if the kid was white she wouldn’t be asking and that was the end of it. I’ve also had school officials tell me they should “probably” have a copy of the adoption decree on file. I told them it’s a confidential document and it’s at home and that was the end of it. In other words, if you don’t fit the usual model, certain busybodies will take it upon themselves to go the extra unnecessary mile.
I get the concern for human trafficking but, come on, smart traffickers wouldn’t put kids with adults who obviously looked like they don’t belong together. Which is really my pet peeve- why do we assume families who don’t look alike don’t belong together?
4.5 million years of bipedal hominid evolution might have something to do with it?
Counterintuitively, if you wanted to evade any invasive questioning in a hyper-politically correct environment you might choose a racially diverse homosexual couple.
Okay, I’m being facetious, but not entirely.
The lesson I learned from parenting two Haitian children is how pervasively and deeply non-racist the United States is.
Others’ mileage may vary.
I agree with this. In most cases our family doesn’t get a second look. Of course, after 20+ years I may have stopped noticing “looks. “