Southwest Airlines was sued by a White mother of a Black child over blatant racism claims after one of the airline’s employee thought the White mom travelling with her Black daughter, was trafficking the child and called the police.
Mary MacCarthy and her daughter.| The Mirror
Mary MacCarthy, White mother of a Black child sued Southwest Airlines over blatant racism claims, while travelling from California to Denver with her Black daughter, to attend her brother’s funeral in October of 2021.
According to the lawsuit, a Southwest employee displayed the alleged blatant racism by wrongly reported a woman named Ms. MacCarthy to the police while they were in the air. The employee suspected child trafficking simply because Ms. MacCarthy’s daughter had a different skin color than her own. As they were leaving the plane, they were approached by Denver police officers.
During the alleged blatant racism incident, officers questioned MacCarthy and indicated that they received racially biased information suggesting her daughter, who is Black, might be a trafficking victim, as MacCarthy is White.
The alleged blatant racism incident was said to have caused extreme emotional distress to MacCarthy and her biracial daughter after they were barraged questions filled with blatant racism.
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MacCarthy believed that the Denver officers in were there to inform her about a family matter, but instead they told her that an airline employee had reported her as a potential human trafficker.
MacCarthy later shared an email she had sent to the airline, asking for an apology for the said display of blatant racism, during an interview with CNN.
In an NPR report, this was not the first complaint the airline received over a blatant racism display. It was mentioned that Southwest Airlines has a history of racial profiling biracial families.
In January 2021, flight attendants were said to pull Luca Guerreri, a white man traveling with his Black daughter, off of a Southwest plane after he was suspected of trafficking his daughter. Guerreri later sent a complaint to the airline about the blatant racism they experienced.
Southwest are yet to give a statement regarding the ongoing blatant racism lawsuit.
