Southwest Airlines has always been near and dear to my heart. In many ways, the airline has become symbolic of the ways my life has soared over the years. At 15, when I took my first flight, leaving my Section 8 house—not to mention the closet—outside of Kansas City, to start a fully funded preparatory program in New Mexico, Southwest got me there safe sound. For years, Southwest was the only airline I could afford—with it’s “Bags Fly Free” slogan—and it allowed me to stay close to my family and the reality of my roots, while also utilizing the newfound resources at my disposal. Southwest flew me from Kansas to New Mexico to Tufts University without making me feel as poor and out of a place than I actually was. Last week that changed.
I hadn’t flown with Southwest in years, mostly because I’ve been living on the east coast and JetBlue reigns supreme here. However, last week, I needed to snag a flight to Atlanta for my event—BlaQueerMagic: Prose, Poetry & Power—a book signing of my polemic “Godless Circumcisions: A Recollecting & Re-membering of Blackness Queerness & Flows of Survivance, at Charis Books & More. I was super excited about this event, my first in the south, because it was going to be blacker and queerer than any of my previous events, due to it’s location. Atlanta is known as the undisputed Mecca of Black Americans and BlaQueer Americans and Charis Books is the oldest feminist bookstore in the south.
The event was amazing, but the flight was an entirely different story. It was still dark outside when I began to board the flight. I had settled into my seat in the mostly empty plane of black passengers and all-white crew-members. I had just began to put on my jacket and doze off into Solange-world when I felt someone bump hard into my seat and laugh. I smelled the liquor and heard the word “nigger” long before I was able to see their faces: two young white men, one with a black eye and other with a busted lip. They couldn’t have been more than 18 years old. In that moment—being from rural Kansas—I couldn’t help but feel and think about the power of that word, particularly when uttered by drunken white men. It is powerful enough when unspoken, for example, when unarmed black wo/men are killed by sober white police who see mythical guns and claim their killing was justified due to the criminality—or inherent niggerness—of black folks. I felt power. I felt fear. I felt a knowing, a knowing that any moment, my life could be in danger—whether via TSA or other white folks drunk on fear, power and immunity—and no one would do anything.
I watched as the brother two rows ahead of me gave them a look, promising that he could indeed hear them, as they started to loudly yell “NIGGER” and call each other “my nigga.” I watched as numerous crew members walked by and rolled their eyes as the drunken white kids. In fact, one male crew-member walked over, in attempt to give me coffee, and rolled his eyes at the “young pricks.” I asked him what he was going to do and shrugged before handing out more drinks. I looked to the older brother ahead of me, and he had put his headphones on and gone to sleep.
I knew there was noway I could make it through this flight when they started joking about how they needed to “drop a nigger or two,” and who could get more “niggers” and who had badder black bitches. At some point, I took out my phone and took to facebook live. While I was unable to get their faces in the action, I was able to document my own immediate thoughts below. After seeing me recording, and hearing one of the boys dry-heaving, a flight attendant instructed them to leave because “they were too drunk too fly.” Not too racist. Not threatening passengers. Not too anti-black. Just. Too. Drunk. “We’ll see if we can get you on the same flight tomorrow.”
There were no apologies. No acknowledgement of the racial violence that the flight attendants had openly joked about and condoned during the duration of the flight and certainly no attempt to make assure any of their passengers that future flights would be more safe, civil and well...not racist.
I reached out to Southwest on Twitter and received an apology of sorts, but only after I sent them a direct message. I had no idea I was paying for racism as a carry-on—no vouchers included—but that seems to be a part of Southwest’s hidden-fees.
