A viral Facebook post shares what happened on a recent Delta flight, when a passenger was harassed over wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt.
Woman harassed over BLM shirt
Demetria Poe shares what happened last week on a roundtrip journey from Minneapolis to Washington on Delta, flying out on Thursday and returning on Sunday.
According to her version of the story, she helped the woman seated next to her with her bags, but then the woman disappeared for a bit, before returning with a Blue Lives Matter mask and pin.
The seatmate remained silent until the plane took off, at which point the passenger confronted Poe:
“I support blue lives because I support our officers”
As Poe describes her rebuttal:
I explained to her blue lives do not exist. The life of an officer exists but there is no such thing as a blue life and that statement is nothing but a rebuttal to the fact that BLM has been disregarded time after time after time.
At that point the passenger proceeded to make statements like the following:
“Africans from the west sold the most slaves”
“The reason Blacks were 3/4th was because the south would have too many votes”
“Having Blacks in America has been the best thing for them because they can work they way up”
The passengers seated across from Poe stood up for her, and told the other lady to stop. The flight attendant came over to check on Poe, and offered to move the other passenger.
What Delta ended up doing…
According to Poe, upon landing in Washington, a Delta representative told her that the other woman wouldn’t be flying Delta anymore, so it sounds like she may have been banned.
On Poe’s return flight on Sunday, Delta took special care of her:
- She was upgraded to Comfort+ in advance
- Delta provided her with gifts, including a handwritten card, a luggage tag, a notebook, and a Delta “Black Lives Matter” pin
As Poe concludes:
I said all this to say that it’s time and situations like these where these companies need to take a stance! This furthers why I will only fly Delta Air Lines! At this point make me an ambassador Delta. I just thank God that this didn’t flip onto me because too many cases Black people are guilty until proven innocent.
Bottom line
You shouldn’t be looking to pick a fight with a seatmate. Planes are confined spaces, and we need to treat one another with respect.
It’s one thing to wear a shirt making a political statement, while it’s a whole different thing to lecture someone else about how their ancestors should only count as fractions of people.
We’re increasingly seeing major corporations support causes, though often there’s not much behind it. I’m consistently impressed by the way that Delta not only stands up for what’s right on paper (even if it’s controversial, for all the wrong reasons), but also does so in practice.
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