DEI programs will not jeopardize the safety of passengers
Don’t cry over spilled milk,” we often tell children to reassure them that all of us make mistakes. So, we shouldn’t waste too much time beating ourselves up for things we can’t change. All is forgiven. Now, let’s get a towel to clean up this mess. However, this dynamic changes drastically outside of the home environment, where Black children, teenagers, and adults often face unwarranted blame and punishment. Part of being a Black person in America is realizing that if you make a mistake, someone may make a mountain out of a molehill, and even if you’re careful not to spill the milk, someone may blame you for it all the same.
For instance, Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, recently claimed, “It will take an airplane crashing and killing hundreds of people for them to change this crazy policy,” referring to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs endorsed by some airlines. It’s no secret that conservatives have their hearts set on eliminating as many DEI programs as possible. They see these programs as a threat to the racial hierarchy that safeguards white privilege. So, they’ve become immersed in a political campaign designed to discredit these programs, portraying them as dangerous. Musk wouldn’t openly suggest that hiring more Black pilots would cause them to crash out of the sky unless he believed they were intellectually inferior to White pilots. This is incredibly offensive coming from a White man whose family benefited from the South African Apartheid regime.
The majority of pilots in the United States are White men.
As it stands, most pilots flying commercial airliners in the United States are White men. As Eileen Bjorkman wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, “when you hear ‘this is your captain speaking,’ on an airline flight in the United States, more than 90% of the time, the speaker is a white male. Just 3.4% of U.S. airline pilots are Black.” Now, you can either accept that this disparity is indicative of racial injustice, or you can endorse the myth of white supremacy and black inferiority in an effort to justify the status quo. By Elon Musk’s…