I haven't been posting much- most of my writing these days is on my dissertation or in the form of facebook status updates.  sad, I know.  But my dad told me this story the other day and I needed to get it out somewhere.  I'm so angry about this, so frustrated, and I have no real outlet for this anger.

So my dad was flying on Southwest Airlines last week.  They almost missed their flight and he and his girlfriend were the last two people on the plane before they shut the doors.  They got on the plane and the first available seat was a middle seat between two people who were playing a card game on the seat between them.  My dad politely (as he tells it) asked them if he could sit there.  The woman looked at her traveling companion, and without making eye contact with my dad she said, "I don't want him to sit here."  They then ignored my dad and went on playing their game.  My dad was so surprised he didn't do anything, he just kept moving back in the plane until he got a seat.

We'll never know why this woman said what she did.  The only unquestionable fact of the matter is that she was incredibly rude.  For that, she should rot in hell.  But I can tell you what it came off as for my dad and for me, whether we're reading more into the situation or not. 

I get my native blood from my dad.  He's in his sixties, and he has mostly grey-to-white hair that hangs down his back.  He keeps it nicely tied back in a ponytail, but there's no question that he has long hair.  His skin is a little darker than mine, and there is little question that he is not Caucasian.  I used to say that he was obviously native, but I know better than to say that now.  All I can say for certain is that he doesn't look white.  He's not a big man, I think he's 5'11" or so, and he has that middle-age stockiness that most men aquire, but he's not fat.  He has a very friendly face, and a nice smile that usually wins people over instantly.  He's not the type to scowl at the world, and while much of his work has themes that could be interpreted as anger, he doesn't project anger in any way.

So when a white woman refused to make eye contact and refused to yield a seat on an airplane to my dad, we all immediately assumed she's making a decision based on race.  Maybe she just didn't want to share, but the one detail that really put it over the edge into racism was the fact that she didn't make eye contact and wasn't talking to him when she announced that she wasn't willing to share the seat.

Just writing about it makes me so incredibly pissed off I want to cry.  I cry when I'm mad, it's just the thing I do.  I just can't believe someone would be so amazingly rude to my dad.  And she acted in such a way that he really couldn't respond without making an enormous fuss.  I wish he had.  I wish he would have put her in her place, shown her the door, and then shoved her right out onto the tarmac.  That sort of behavior is inexcusable.  But truth be told, in a world where random people feel like they can be so rude, who's to say that an angry response from my dad wouldn't have been interpreted as violent and subject to persecution by the authorities?  If this woman was on the plane and felt this way, who's to say that the flight attendants wouldn't have sided with her and acted in a racist way against my dad as well.

After the election, I was so high.  I felt so good about how far we've come in this country.  I felt like we had really done something important, and that the emerging majority was finally getting its due.  I heard people talking about the barriers they experienced in the past and felt good that those stories were in the past.  I felt good that my sons wouldn't have to deal with that sort of ignorance, embarrassment, and shame in that way.  We've got enough on our shoulders, I was hoping that at least we could put the future in a better light.  But now I'm not so sure.  Because shit like this still happens, and these people still exist. 

I wish there was some neat, tidy resolution that I could put at the end of this story.  When my dad told me the story he told it, then changed the subject when I wanted to hear more about what happened.  He didn't tell me about what it felt like to be treated so poorly.  He was just coming home from installing a major piece of artwork in a major city, from an event where he was respected and honored as an American Indian and as an artist.  How shitty is it that his high ended the moment he stepped on to an airplane.  How demeaning and shitty and awful?  there is no resolution.