Here's What The United Airlines Fiasco Really Means

Written by Aree Worawongwasu and Grace Moon of NYU Asian Pacific American Coalition 

On Sunday evening April 9, 69-year-old David Dao was violently dragged off a United Airlines plane in Chicago. Due to an overbooking, passengers were told that four volunteers needed to give up their seats for off-duty crew members needed in Louisville, Kentucky the next day. Since nobody volunteered, a staff member announced that they would use a so-called ‘random’ selection process using a computer. Among the four ‘randomly’ selected individuals was a couple who reluctantly complied, a third person who also agreed to leave, and David Dao.

Dao refused to leave and told crew members,“Nope. I’m not getting off the flight… I’m a doctor and have to see patients tomorrow morning” (Washington Post). Then, Chicago Aviation Police forcibly removed Dao from his seat, violently bashing Dao’s head against an armrest. Dao was then dragged across the floor, with blood dripping from his mouth (see video)

Photo Courtesy: The Indian Express

While people have understandably called for a boycott of United, it is also important to consider that United employees did not violently drag David Dao off the plane- a Chicago Aviation Security Officer did. What happened to David Dao is an act of police brutality. We should condemn United Airline’s policies and its record of blatant disrespect toward their customers, but we should also recognize that this incident is part of a larger systemic problem of police violence against people of color.

There is also respectability politics at play here, [as many news media outlets] emphasize that David Dao is a doctor, and did not want to leave the plane because he had to treat a patient the next day. In fact, the media mentions David Dao’s occupation more than his race. While Dao’s commitment to treating his patients is commendable, his occupation does not make the violence perpetrated against him any more unacceptable than if he were not a doctor.

Simultaneously, [many journalists] have also dug up David Dao’s criminal past--but not that of the Chicago Aviation Security Officer-- that are irrelevant to the incident. Regardless of whatever wrongdoings David Dao has committed, the bottom line is that he did not deserve to be brutalized and dehumanized.

What happened to David Dao was inhumane and no apology can justify the dehumanizing and traumatic experience he undertook. In response, both Asian American/Asian communities and media outlets are blowing up, vocally expressing outrage at the situation.

But what about Srinivas Kuchibhotla? An Indian software engineer shot in Kansas.

But what about Timothy Caughman? An African American retiree stabbed to death by a white supremacist.

But what about Harnish Patel? An Indian store owner shot dead outside his home. 

Forgotten names that many may not even recognize. Where was the public outcry and the news headlines for these individuals? Many East Asian communities are guilty of selective outrage, which is when individuals get intensely fired up (only) when someone who is or appears to be of East Asian descent, such as David Dao, is attacked or abused. Replace David Dao with a South Asian, African American, or Latin American individual; we are likely to be met with silence.

To reiterate, what happened to David Dao is not an isolated incident, but part of a larger systemic problem of police brutality against people of color. We must recognize this paradigm, while recognizing that the struggles of different communities of color cannot be equated. While David Dao was read by many people as East Asian and the outrage from mainland Chinese news media emphasize that he is Chinese, recent reports actually identify him as a Vietnamese-American immigrant (Washington Post). How does this change the discourse around this act of violence? While police brutality towards East Asians is an issue we should all combat, it is important to acknowledge that Southeast Asians such as David Dao are statistically more likely to be subject to policing and state violence. Moreover, we should combat the ways in which our communities are complicit in the oppression of others. Are the same East Asian communities who are expressing outrage towards what happened to David Dao also condemning Chinese-American Peter Liang’s killing of Akai Gurley?

We come to the ultimate question of what it really means to act in solidarity. In the viral videos of the incident, bystanders can be heard yelling, “No, this is wrong!” “Oh my God, what are you doing?” while capturing pictures and videos on their phones. Never does anyone directly intervene or offer their own seat while David Dao is being tormented.

Solidarity.

Solidarity is the deep and genuine acknowledgment that the oppression one faces is a shared one. In the words of Audre Lorde, “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” What happened to David Dao is unacceptable, but we must check that we do not participate in or add to the selective outrage of injustice. We cannot neither make progress nor create radical change with this mindset. We must reckon with the reality that our histories, sufferings, and liberations are bound to each other, and that we can not move forward without each other.

#StudentVoices #DavidDao #SocialJustice