Event+From+The+Present.

Racial Profiling

Shortly after the September 11th, 2001 terror attack five passengers who were removed from or prevented from boarding flights filed suit accusing the airlines of racial profiling and discrimination. The suits were filed against Continental, American, United, and Northwest airlines in federal courts in Newark, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. All discrimination complaints came from people of Middle Eastern, South Asian, Arab, and Muslim heritage. September 21, 2001, Transportation Secretary Norman Minetta sent a notice to all airlines cautioning them not to discriminate against passengers based on race, religion, nationality, or ethnic origin.

"When a passenger -- a fellow passenger -- is given veto power over somebody else's ability to fly based on nothing other than hysteria and discrimination, then we all need to take pause and determine whether allowing this to continue is really doing anything to advance security or safety," Shuford said. (Hirschkorn).

Michael Dasrath, a US citizen of Indian heritage, was ejected from a Continental flight from Newark to Tamp because of a complaint of a single white female passenger. Edgard Cureg, a permanent legal resident of Filipino descent, was removed from the same Continental flight after using his cell phone inside the plane before takeoff. Arshad Chowdhury, a US citizen born to Bangladeshi parents, was removed from a Northwest flight from San Francisco to Pittsburgh. Hassan Sader, a US citizen who lives in Virginia sued American Airlines for removing him from a Baltimore to Chicago flight. Aseem Bayaa, a US citizen from California sued American Airlines for removing him from a Los Angeles to New York flight. (Hirschkorn).

Twain's novel still acts as a critique of this event even though his novel was written so long ago because it proves ones again that people still discriminate against others because whether it is race, religion, nationality, or ethnic origin. People in this incident are being discriminated against because of the events that happened on September 11th. Even though these people are innocent they look like terrorists so people treat them like terrorists. The airlines will claim the removal was not based on ethnicity but in reality it is. People are scared that the 9/11 incident will happen again but, the truth is someone from any ethnicity could be a terrorist not just people from the Middle East or Muslims.

http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/06/04/airlines.discrimination/

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_marcus_g_070108_keeping_our_airlines.htm

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