

A music executive encountered a woman trying to get ahead of him in line, she thought she should be ahead simply because of the color of his skin. He was shocked when a Facebook post about it went viral and displayed his character with a heartfelt apology. Perfect Takedown A music executive encountered a woman trying to get ahead of him in line, she thought she should be ahead simply because of the color of his skin. He was shocked when a Facebook post about it went viral and displayed his character with a heartfelt apology. Emmit was waiting in line at airport security when he was interrupted by a rude woman. When he realized she was only behaving like this because he was African-American, his cool response drew a round of applause…

Viral Post Almost immediately, the cheers from others waiting in line let Emmit know that what he said was on point. The applause from others waiting in line prompted him to share the incident on social media. He had in mind a few good friends who would get a kick out of the story, but it all went much further than he planned. The post had gone viral before he even landed at his destination as people praised him for his conduct.

Airports Bring Out The Worst If you’ve been to an airport and flown at least once in your life, chances are you didn’t have the best experience. Losing luggage is hardly the only thing that can go wrong, as airlines and airports have recently introduced an increasing amount of security measures. These, coupled with reduced amenities during flights, have made flying so much more inconvenient. To be fair, we’re all in the same boat — except, of course, for those who pay extra, like Emmit.

Paying For Preference Indeed, for several years papers have reported on the widespread reduction of seat room in economy class. At the same time, the amenities offered in first class have never been nicer. In addition to the extra room, paying extra for your ticket will also give you priority seating, significantly cutting the wait time going through security and boarding at the gate. For Emmit, this price was definitely worth it, as the very least his money can buy is to fly headache free.

Wasn’t Having It So there Emmit was, waiting to pass through security, when he was interrupted suddenly by a woman trying to get ahead of him in line. He knew he had priority seating and was unsure of what exactly the issue was, but he had an inkling it had something to do with his appearance. He could see no reason whatsoever why she thought she deserved to be ahead of him, besides his being African-American.

Music Executive Emmit’s larger stature and weight made sitting in first class all the more desirable. Thankfully, he was a music executive that had collaborated in successful projects and musical ventures that had earned him the funds to spend more money on flights, providing him with more room and comfort. It was possible that the woman thought he wasn’t well dressed, but as he looked the woman up and down, he couldn’t help thinking that she wasn’t dressed as if she “belonged” there in priority any more than he did.

Birthday Trip In fact, Emmit was on his way to a birthday vacation in the Dominican Republic traveling through Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, right outside of Washington, D.C. Flying a day ahead of his birthday, he was thrilled to finally have gotten his affairs in order and managed to clear his work desk ahead of the flight date. So when the woman came up to him, challenging his right to be there, it took him a while to truly get fed up with her nonsense.

“Wrong Place” “Excuse me,” Emmit remembered the woman told him, “I believe you may be in the wrong place, you need to let us through. This line is for priority booking.” Politely, Emmit stood his ground and asked her for clarification: “Priority meaning first class, correct?” “Yes,” the woman said impatiently, “now excuse me. They will call y’all after we board.” But Emmit was just where he was supposed to be, based on his ticket. He proceeded to show her the ticket.

Explaining The Sitution He was in the right place and wasn’t going to move just because somebody didn’t think he should be there. “You can relax, ma’am,” Emmit told her, trying to assuage the situation while asserting his right. He was in the correct spot, he told her, and had been there longer, so she needed to wait. He didn’t have to show her the ticket but did so in the name of general peace and social cohesion. Emmit thought it would all be over, but he was mistaken.

“Must Be Military” She still wouldn’t let it go, as Emmit recalled in the Facebook post. “He must be military or something,” Emmit heard the woman tell her companions, “but we paid for our seats so he still should have to wait.” Incredibly, the woman was trying to rationalize how he came about the first class ticket, which just convinced Emmit all the more that the reason she couldn’t believe he was supposed to be there was that he was African-American.

Doesn’t Work That Way Before getting into what Emmit said, it’s important to note that the men and women in the armed services don’t get free first-class tickets! “I’m prior military and I’m offended,” said one of the hundreds of comments on his Facebook post. The fact that someone is in the military has nothing to do with what class seat you get. “Heck, they gave us economy seats,” the commenter said, so there was no reason to think that this would be the reason. “These racists are bold!” they concluded.

Military Perks As often happens, there is some truth to the falsehoods that the woman was spewing. Members of the military, along with their families, have the option of flying “Space Available,” meaning they can fill in seats on planes the military has chartered for whatever reason. Despite this, it’s not at all like these folks get priority seating, as there is a strict order of preference determined by how badly the military needs them to get to the destination. Furthermore, this was just a normal commercial flight, not a military transport.

The Truth “Nope,” Emmit replied when he overheard her, “too big to be in anybody’s military.” The truth was, he told her, he was a “black man with money” — but he used the common racist epithet to drive the point home. She only believed he didn’t deserve to be there because he was African-American, Emmit strongly suspected. Her inappropriate behavior had gotten to the point that he felt the need to shut her up publicly, even though he would normally not humiliate someone like that. But things later did a complete turnaround…

Applause From The Crowd Initially, Emmit loved that bystanders who had gathered to see what the commotion was all about clapped, as they loved the witty reply to a woman they saw has harassed the person in front of her in line. In an airport, where you come in contact with so many people from all over the world, tolerance is of particular importance. Emmit was faced with intolerance and fought back, earning the praise of much more than just the people who were there to see him shame the woman.

Posting The Story Emmit wrote the post and shared it on his Facebook account, never thinking it would be read by more than a few of his friends. But within just two days, it had been shared over 250,000 times. That number has grown to over 300,000 since then, in addition to the hundreds of comments and over 868,000 emoji reactions as more and more people lauded Emmit’s conduct and comeback. “The power of an educated man with patience,” one person wrote in the comments section.

“Never Judge A Book By Its Cover” “Never judge a book by its cover,” another person wrote, referring to Emmit in their comment. Indeed, if there’s any lesson to be learned, it’s that you shouldn’t judge people on their appearance. Referring to the woman, the commenter continued to describe her, writing, “She is so ignorant it makes no sense that people like her still exist. Enjoy yourself, you handled it well.” The vast majority of the comments and reactions supported him, yet Emmit was anything but pleased.

“Not The Solution” By the time he landed in the Dominican Republic, the post he wrote about the incident had gone viral in a way that none of his other posts had. Instead of being thrilled about it, though, he was anything but. Even though the woman’s behavior was reprehensible, it was apparent to him that such posts were going viral for the wrong reasons. “This racist stuff is definitely a[n] issue but this is not the solution to that issue,” he wrote in another post.

Apology In this second post, Emmit apologized to the woman. “It brings me no joy waking up in paradise,” he wrote, just to find out on his 37th birthday that he had caused another person to go through “hell.” For those who claimed the story was fake, he addressed this, too. “The story was definitely real, just like this issue is definitely real, but I now know that I myself should of [sic] handled it another way, or left it how it was, and not shared it publicly.”

Receiving Threats The vast majority of responses were supportive of him and how he responded to the woman, but a worrying handful sent Emmit and his loved ones threatening messages. “If y’all want to be angry at someone be angry with me for posting it, and direct your hate to me, and not the ones defending my character to the ignorant ones,” he wrote on Instagram. In another post, he clarified, “[As l]ong as the people that are close to me know the real me THAT IS ALL THAT MATTERS…”

Taking Serious Abuse The woman bore the brunt of the abuse, and after a quick glance through some of it it’s no wonder she hasn’t come out publicly to make a statement. “Ignoramus,” said one of the nicer comments, while others poked fun at her appearance for having “fried blonde hair.” Many, though, were immediately flagged on Facebook for incendiary racist language, as the jabs pertained to the woman’s Caucasian race. So when Emmit finally saw what people were writing about, he knew that things had gotten way out of hand.

Airport Segregation It’s terrible to think about, but the rampant segregation in the Southern states extended to airports as well. By mid-1963, the last segregated airport had been integrated, but not without a battle. One of the last airports to be integrated had to be forced to stay open, as the municipality controlling the airport rather it closed down than be integrated. As an African-American man, it was hard for Emmit to ignore what this woman was asking him to do when the only difference between them seemed to be the color of his skin.

Benefit of the Doubt Emmit realized that just because he understood things in a certain light, this didn’t mean the woman did, too. She might have been in such a rush that she forgot her manners, regardless of the person’s race. It could be possible that she is just a rude person who needed a rude awakening like the one that Emmit gave her, so she can understand how it comes off to other people. She didn’t get what she deserved in those cases. And if she was a racist, how exactly did Emmit’s reaction on social media help the situation?

Wrong Reaction Although the original post was bringing attention to an incident of racism, Emmit realized that it was doing much more harm than good. He knew he was right and didn’t need the validation of the internet to know that. Besides the damage caused by the woman, some people commenting were harassed, in turn, by racists on the internet. These comments have been reported, but that doesn’t change the fact that Emmit had strayed from how he tried to deal with people he doesn’t get along with.

Staying On The Side Of Right “When dealing with people,” Emmit wrote on Instagram, “I always try to stay on the side of Right, so to make sure I never do anybody wrong, I try to always put myself in that persons shoes, and ask how would I feel if that person did this to me, and if I was her this morning I would be a total wreak [sic] today, and that doesn’t help this situation, or her…it only makes them more angry, and bring more drama…”

Being The Better Man At this point, Emmit put everything in all caps so that the message would be loud and clear: “SO I WOULD LIKE TO APOLOGIZE AGAIN TO THE WOMAN I HAD THIS ENCOUNTER WITH YESTERDAY. NO MATTER HOW WRONG YOUR ACTIONS YOU DON’T DESERVE THIS.” In addition, he tagged people so that the message would get around, hopefully back to the woman whom he shamed so publicly. “I BELIEVE IF YOU CAN’T HELP NOBODY AT THE VERY LEAST YOU SHOULD NEVER DO ANYTHING TO HURT THEM,” he concluded.

Making Sure She Gets It Emmit also recorded a video clip the day after his flight, just to make sure that the message got to her. When he posts things on Facebook, he explained in the video, he’s used to only “five or 10” people seeing it. Emmit revealed he never wanted all the extra attention — indeed, he came out to the Carribean to get away from everybody, not attract attention. “I want to take the time to publicly apologize to the lady in the picture” he posted on Facebook.

Positive Force Despite the fact that many people didn’t think he had anything to apologize for whatsoever, Emmit wanted to be a positive force in this world. Even though he was right in shutting down such outward displays of racism, as his internet supporters pointed out, it did absolutely nothing to decrease the amount of racism in the world. The woman, humiliated, would have just held it against him. The furious comments just fueled indignation on either side, instead of reaching out and bridging gaps.

An Important Lesson Unfortunately, it seems that what Emmit feared came true for the woman. As of yet, Emmit hasn’t posted anything that indicates the woman ever contacted him to accept the apology, so it’s likely that the incident ended in the woman being completely mortified. This incident teaches us a very important lesson of accountability and intrapersonal relationships, thanks to Emmit’s conduct. Even though it was wrong to behave in the way that she did, if he had to repeat that day, he wouldn’t have humiliated her on the internet like that.

Another Airport Profiling Incident A flight attendant was the cause of another incident apparently motivated by racism in an airport, the result was far more dangerous, but luckily no one was seriously injured. It was Labor Day in 2019 at Newark Airport when someone yelled, “Evacuate!” The stampede that ensued, for everyone thought it was some sort of attack. Port Authority Police quickly deployed on the scene and tried to make sense of the commotion. Although two men were initially suspected, once their version of events came out it seemed that this was another case of profiling.

200 People Running for Dear Life According to the female flight attendant in question, at around 8:30 pm two Chinese-born men started acting suspiciously. When she confronted them, she said they began to run so she hit an alarm, as early media reports suggested. Soon enough, there were 200 people in the terminal running for dear life, fearing the worst. After all, the airport is one of the places where we expect a heinous attack to occur. However, it soon came out that this wasn’t the case at all.

Frantic Flight Attendant Although there were reported gunshots, this was apparently glass breaking from people frantically trying to escape and accidentally smashing a display. “Imagine you’re starting to board and a frazzled attendant comes off the plane,” one traveler told CNN, “stops the process, asks someone to call the police, then starts yelling, with increasing loudness, ‘evacuate!'” Indeed, it quickly became apparent that the panic was solely caused by a flight attendant. As for the two men in question, they soon came forth with their own version of what happened.

Cornering Them, One by One The two Asian men who came forward identified themselves as Han Han Xue, 29, and Chunyi Luo, 20. The Alaska Airlines flight attendant approached Luo first, asking him bizarre questions: “Are you scared? Are you nervous?” The Shanghai native and finance student at a San Franciso college was immediately made uncomfortable because she was standing so close to him. Luo said he was nervous because his flight was late and stepped away, putting some distance between him and the overly inquisitive flight attendant. But then she started talking to Xue…

Acting Suspiciously “Why are you acting suspiciously?” asked the flight attendant, who remains anonymous. “Minding my own business,” replied Xue, but then the flight attendant began asking extremely penetrating questions, including those about his Chinese heritage and how much he made. She assumed that he knew Luo, which is ridiculous because they didn’t know each other. “How much are they paying you?” she asked. “Did they give you a visa? Did they give your family a visa? Do you make a lot of money? Do you work on Wall Street? Are you on an American visa?”

Pandemonium Breaks Loose Xue understandably felt profiled by the woman, so he proceeded to distance himself and join the other passengers about to board. “I’m to you guys,” she told them. “The cops are already called.” A few minutes later, after she had spoken to the officials at the gate, they announced boarding would be stalled. Then the flight attendant screamed, “Evacuate! Evacuate!” She pressed an alarm, and Luo later told Buzzfeed, “I thought somebody had a gun. Everyone is running. I just followed them and escaped.”