Camille Henderson Delta Airlines passenger says she was made to move to back of plane to accommodate two white passengers. Says she was discriminated.
Would one black female passenger have been asked to give up her seat for the benefit of two white passengers had she not been black?
A black woman has vowed to never fly Delta Airlines again after saying she was discriminated against after a flight attendant made her move to the back of a plane to make room for two white women during a recent flight.
Camille Henderson said she was sitting near row 15 window during a Feb. 3 flight from Atlanta to San Francisco when the women, who were sitting in the aisle and middle seats in the row next to her, said they had first-class tickets, ABC 7 reported.
‘They felt like they were ticketed first-class seats, but they couldn’t provide the tickets,’ Henderson told the news outlet, adding that the women continued the complaints for over an hour.
Henderson recorded part of the exchange between the women and a flight attendant.
Victim of white privilege?
‘Unfortunately, my first class seats are occupied,’ one women is heard saying, according to a recording obtained by ABC 7.
‘They are what?’ another person is heard saying.
‘They’re occupied,’ the woman answered.
Henderson said that flight attendants then came up with a solution to give the women more space at her expense – which Henderson described as a form of white privilege.
‘Are you flying by yourself?’ a person is heard asking Henderson in the recording, who replies that she is.
‘There’s a seat back there in aisle 34. It’s an aisle seat,’ the attendant says.
Henderson, embarrassed and fearful of retaliation, and outraged as to why crew did not ask the women to move themselves, agreed reluctantly to go to the back row.
‘They made me have to move to accommodate them…’
‘I don’t want to make it a race thing, but instead of asking the two white women that were seated next to me (to move), in an attempt to accommodate them, they basically made me have to move,’ she told ABC 7.
‘I just don’t know why I had to move because that was the seat that I paid for, that was my assigned seat,’ she added. ‘As I’m walking back there it’s just humiliating. It’s like having the entire flight look at you and asking what’s going on.’
Henderson said she was unsatisfied with what a Delta customer service rep she finally reached on the phone told her.
‘How were you humiliated for them to ask you to go to another seat?’ a rep is hears saying in a recording Henderson provided to the outlet – suggesting that there was no inconvenience since she was moved to another seat in economy.
‘You’re basically saying there’s nothing that you can do?’ she told the rep.
‘No, not under these circumstances that I’m showing, ma’am,’ the rep is heard replying.
Victim of discrimination?
An airline spokesperson told ABC7 in a statement: ‘We are looking into this situation to better understand what happened.
‘Delta has no tolerance for discrimination in any form and these allegations run counter to our deeply-held values of respecting and honoring the diversity of our customers,’ the rep added.
Henderson says that she will never fly Delta again.
‘Me, as a Black woman, I was displaced to make two white women comfortable. That doesn’t make any sense to me,’ she said.
