The way Dr. David Dao was dragged down the aisle like a ragdoll on a United plane shocked me to the core. As a United 1-Million Mile flier, I am very familiar with these planes and the aisles where we walk down to store our bags and find our seats. And when we heard for ourselves on the video Dr. Dao saying, “I have to go to work.” how much more American could that be but to believe in making it in America.
Recently, I read Amy Frykholm’s “Language in Black and White” in The Christian Century (April 17, 2017) about Raoul Peck’s new film about James Baldwin. What struck me was Baldwin saying, “The story of the Negro in this country is the story of America, and it is not a pretty story.” The lives of African Americans today are still “not a pretty story” when African Americans continue to experience prejudice, violence, discrimination and inequities in our society. It has gotten to the dismal point that we have to say, “Black Lives Matter.”
Baldwin points out that America places values on skin color rather than on our humanity and our citizenship. The United video is “not a pretty story.” I wonder if Dr. Dao were not an Asian American would he have been treated that way. He bled as a human being and he’s a naturalized American citizen who emigrated from Vietnam.
The passengers on a plane settle into their seats like eggs in a paper carton, little wiggle room or we might bump (crack) our fragile seatmates. Most of the time, my face is in my newspaper avoiding any unnecessary contacts. But the next time, I board a United flight, I will now make it a point to see who’s around me and to acknowledge their presence as human beings just like me on a mission to “go to work.”
There is indeed much more work to do.