United Airlines has sent a brief note to its staff in honor of today’s Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. The letter, like so much of our public discourse over race, leaves me wondering how we move forward in a turbulent, race-conscious nation and world.
United Airlines, MLK Day, And Equality
The note, shared with Live and Let’s Fly, was signed by United President Brett Hart, a Black American, and CEO Scott Kirby. Read the note first and then let’s discuss.
United Team:
This Monday, we will honor and commemorate the extraordinary life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In years past, many of us marked this special day by participating in annual parades or volunteering in our communities. And while the prospect of gathering together looks much different this year, there’s never been a more important time to reflect on Dr. King’s commitment to justice for all — and the responsibility each of us must hold to carry it through in our own lives.
Given the extraordinary challenges our country has faced in the past few months alone, it’s clear there is more to do to achieve Dr. King’s vision of a world where people are judged purely “by the content of their character” and not by the color of their skin.
Our teams continue to work towards making that vision a reality by empowering one another to do the right thing, making meaningful contributions in the communities we serve, treating our customers with dignity and respect and making Diversity, Equity and Inclusion a cornerstone of our culture at United Airlines.
“Everybody can be great because everybody can serve,” Dr. King said in 1968. And for our United family, we have the opportunity be great, serving everyone, every day—in the air, on the ground and in our communities across the globe.
Scott and Brett
The note is nice. The sentiment is nice. But I want to draw your attention to one sentence:
Given the extraordinary challenges our country has faced in the past few months alone, it’s clear there is more to do to achieve Dr. King’s vision of a world where people are judged purely “by the content of their character” and not by the color of their skin.
Is that the really the goal in 2021? Yes, we’ve all heard that line from his famous “I Have A Dream” speech. And that is indeed my sincere goal and what I will strive to teach my children.
But we live in a society in which race still dominates. We saw protests and civil unrest over the summer driven by race. We saw sedition in Washington driven, in part, by race. In 2021, we see a divided nation drifting further and further from any notion of a colorblind society. One extreme embraces the very worst form of fear-based racism that has ravaged America for over 200 years. Another extreme rejects a colorblind society as an imposition of white patriarchal hegemony. And the Zeitgeist of the new era is intersectionality, a theory that employs presumptive and dangerously vague language to discount or silence whole groups and classes of people.
Be clear: I’m not making an equivalency argument. But I see MLK’s goal of colorblindness further than I have ever seen it in my entire life.
Folks, I’m not so naive to think we can suddenly be 100% colorblind and expect harmony and human flourishing after so many centuries of inequality. But in my observation, I question whether that is even the goal anymore. And I wonder how society can approach that goal in a meaningful way that encourages the greatest good for the greatest number.
So I love the note. I love the sentiment. But I want to open the conversation now. Is that the goal? And on this day in 2021, how should we, the traveling public, think about the immense privilege and blessing we have to cross the nation and world and observe, firsthand, the sort of disparities and poverty that are centuries in the making? How can we move beyond lip service and play a meaningful part in creating a society that eradicated from the sin of racism and its systemic scars?
Perhaps too much for a travel blog on an early holiday morning…
image: United Airlines
President Obama’s grandmother routinely avoided black men by crossing the street per one of President Obama’s books. Presumably, it was to avoid crime. If true, this is sexism and the racism, not simply racism.
Many routine use cues to avoid whom they feel are potentially criminals. Is this unfair or survival? Clearly, not all Black men are violent criminals. I don’t think President Obama or Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) ever robbed anyone at gunpoint. Within the past day, I read of a Black woman who robbed someone at gunpoint along with a Black male accomplice and also read about a white murderer (Phil Spector) so no race sex combination can claim they have no criminals among their ranks.
What should a person who wants to live an honest and ethical life do? Treat everyone the same, suspecting a four 4 year White boy as a possible robber just as much as a 25 year old Black man, whether or not he’s wearing a United Airlines uniform or civilian clothes?
Is the crime rate even the same? Some advocate that Black men do not commit more crimes but are just arrested by the police more due to their race (and gender). (I added gender because there are far more men than women in bbn prison and because BLM martyrs are mostly dead Black men, not Black women).
I do not have the answer. Until someone does, racism and sexism will probably continue.
150 years since emancipation and a vast minority of the american population is not fully integrated. There are subcultures that never interact with one another.
If you read the history of civil war and reconstruction period you will invariably come to the conclusion that white southern males were scum. They never wanted to try reconciliation or integration. They always thought they were superior to the progeny of the slaves they brought from africa and hence the jim crow laws. 150 years is a long time if people really meant it to happen. Abraham Lincoln and the northern abolitionists gave in too easily and too much to the southern confederates for reconciliation. I think the best solution would have been to make the Confederates slaves for 50 years. Then maybe more people today would have similar perspectives on their shared history.
There will be a lot of whataboutism but the people that exploited should be the people that do the heavy lifting.
I don’t know that it was Honest Abe. It was Hayes/Tilden in 1876 and the same lust for power that drove the Capitol insurrection.
Lincoln pardoned all the confederates. It was out of magnanimity but they didn’t repay the kindness.
Ok, I see your point.
And this is why airline pundits really ought not approach these issues unless they are willing to do some work/research. Colorblindness is not the goal for anyone engaged in this work. Colorblindness is the term used by those who attempt to efface the history of racism in society and suggest that race no longer matters (we live in a “colorblind” society in which race no longer matters). People who work and study in this area rightfully demand that we acknowledge our legacies of racism and attempt to respond by creating a more inclusive and more just society (not a society in which we proclaim that “race” is no longer a relevant category). Additionally, intersectionality is about articulating a more inclusive understanding of how oppression functions in society – it involves not only race but class, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and so on. Truly puzzling that one could purport “employs dangerously vague language to discount or silence whole groups and classes of people.”
It’s not the research. You simply disagree with the conclusions I have drawn but prove my point precisely that MLK’s words ring hollow in 2021. You link character and race in a way that are inseparable. Furthermore, you don’t have to define intersectionality. It is a theory that promotes groupthink and makes broad assumptions which fail to account for individual circumstances. It will not lead to progress or reconciliation because it is a flawed branch of critical race theory. Yes, fighting objective discrimination versus fighting subjective discrimination is not an easy task. Do you question whether creating a hierarchy of identities and their corresponding privileges simply confuses the true problem and thereby exacerbates it?
MLK was an intersectional thinker avant la lettre. Read “A Time to Break the Silence” (1967) or really anything post “I Have a Dream” in which he attacks the triplet of racism, classism, and militarism as intersecting forms of domination and oppression in the US. To draw one quote from King and act as if it accounts for his position is superficial. And that’s what I object to – not your positions, but the lack of understanding of the figures, movements, and ideas you invoke in your post. With respect to the hierarchy of identities, that is precisely what racism does, that is what classism does, that is what militarism does. King’s approach is one that attempts to dismantle hierarchies as a means of creating a more egalitarian social order. The claim of anti-racist struggle and intersectionality is that those who experience marginalization in society are the voices that must be empowered and heard to acheive some measure of equality (King says that we must privilege and prioritize the “voice of the voiceless” in our societal and political deliberations). So, yes, undermining a hierarchy of identities is the aim, but a colorblind discourse that fails to acknowledge past sins and fails to privilege the voices of those at the bottom of the existing hiearchies in society has absolutely nothing to do with King’s vision or legacy.
Did you read my next story? I’ve read Taylor Branch’s trilogy and studied in-depth his opposition to the Vietnam War. One point of this post was to question MLK being reduced to that one line from one speech, as United did.
https://liveandletsfly.com/martin-luther-king-last-flight/
But I still see intersectionality as a fatally flawed theoretical perspective. That doesn’t mean I disagree with your statement that we must listen to the “voice of the voiceless” in order to actually achieve equal opportunity. Rather, I am troubled by many of the presumptions and assumptions inherent in intersectionality.
I do appreciate the discussion and your willingness to engage.
Intersectionality is an Oppression Olympics. It is used by racist grievance grifters to emotionally and financially blackmail well-meaning, credulous (white) folx. Pay as much mind to those who espouse critical race theory as you would those who worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The latest howler they’ve come up with is “multiracial whiteness” to explain all the BIPOC folx found among the alleged white supremacist deplorables. Shake off your false consciousness, comrade Klint!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/15/understand-trumps-support-we-must-think-terms-multiracial-whiteness/
https://spectator.us/topic/terrifying-scourge-multiracial-whiteness/
Don’t give up hope yet. Things were considerably worse in the early to middle 70’s yet that violence and destruction led to improvements and helped nudge a reluctant society toward progress. I think that we’re seeing something similar now with BLM and similar movements while the reactionaries are (pretty much as always) fearful of social progress under just about any circumstances. Normal people just have to support that progress, not for personal gain but for the betterment of society as a whole. Limiting hate speech would help and making social media responsible for the content within would also be a huge step. Mostly though, we just need to make a conscious effort to individually show empathy and tolerance. There’s a historical precedent set by a guy named Jesus that people can reference if they’re not sure if tolerance and empathy fit into their belief system.
As a privileged white male, everything you say on the subject of race is a form of oppression.
All you and I can do is acknowledge our responsibility for racist crimes and let black thinkers (preferably female and/or transgender) do the thinking.
If you can’t do this, just put on your MAGA hat and go anti-masking.
,…..and the relevance ,please of Mr.Hart’s race?
Answered below. Sorry I was not quick enough for you.
Again….what’s the relevance of Bret Hart’s race????
Why else does CEO Scott Kirby sign almost every other note/memo alone yet Hart signs this one?
Point taken..sadly