Doctor lost dignity along with his seat
When I heard the sound of the United Airlines passenger screaming, I felt sick to my stomach. Many of us were appalled by the cell phone video that went viral this week: a 69-year-old Asian immigrant doctor refused to get off the plane when the airline ordered him to give up his seat for a United employee. He had patients to see in the morning, he protested. He couldn’t wait for the flight the next afternoon.
A Chicago Department of Aviation security officer wrestled him out with such force that his face slammed into an armrest across the aisle, and then he was dragged away, his body limp, his shirt riding up his belly. He bled from the mouth, his glasses cockeyed. Other passengers cried out, horrified and disgusted. Sometime later, he ran back on the plane, disoriented and muttering he had to get home, before he collapsed again and was carried out on a stretcher.
The brutality seemed to sum up the callous times we are living in, when authorities at the highest level demand that we obey or risk getting humiliated or killed. We’re already feeling frayed by the Syrian government’s chemical attack that slaughtered dozens of its citizens. By the U.S. raining down cruise missiles in retaliation. By the man who killed his estranged wife and a special-needs student in San Bernardino before turning the gun on himself.
United botched its apologies, first describing what happened as its need to “reaccommodate” passengers and claiming the victim had been “disruptive and belligerent.” When calls for a boycott swelled, furor erupted over social media here and in China, and the airline’s stock price dropped, the company issued another apology — “No one should ever be mistreated this way” — and promised a review of what happened. The federal Transportation Department has also launched an investigation, and the aviation officer has been placed on leave, pending a review.
The doctor has been identified as David Dao, from Kentucky by way of Vietnam. His wife is also a physician. I found it highly disturbing when media outlets dug up the suspension of his medical license from more than a decade ago; the grandfather has since been reinstated. You can find details of his background elsewhere, though I’ll share an amazing one: over the years, Dao has won $234,664 in the World Series of Poker circuit of tournaments.
None of it is relevant to what happened. For Dao and his family, his troubles must have seemed behind him until he was thrust back into the spotlight. Dredging up his past is akin to rape victims getting asked if they’d been drinking or dressed provocatively at the time of their assault, or when African American victims of police shootings are demonized — as if they’d been asking to be violated, as if they deserved it.
Critics have argued that Dao brought it upon himself and that he should have gone without fuss like the three passengers who left before him. A United spokeswoman told me its computer picked customers based on factors such as who would have the easiest time rebooking and avoiding families with small children, unaccompanied minors and those with connections. She added that gate agents determine a “fair offering” to solicit passengers into giving up their seats. Evidently, the incentives weren’t fair enough because no one volunteered.
Regardless of the airline’s intention, Dao’s treatment raised the specter of historical, state-sanctioned cruelty against those viewed as foreign and untrustworthy in this country — especially against groups stereotyped as quiet and submissive.
Seventy-five years ago, Japanese Americans were forced into desolate internment camps under Executive Order 9066. For more than half a century, from 1882 to 1943, most Chinese were barred from entering this country under the Chinese Exclusion Act, which tore apart families.
As the video clip made the rounds on television, I felt sick all over again when Fox television host Bill O’Reilly laughed at Dao, and so too did some in the audience of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show. They could have been laughing because they were shocked or nervous, or maybe deep down they couldn’t relate to Dao or his pain. They couldn’t picture him as their neighbor or as their doctor, as their father, their brother or their son. They couldn’t imagine themselves in his shoes — in his seat.
You may have heard of the concept of “face” in Confucian cultures. It’s more than keeping up appearances; it’s about maintaining your dignity, your reputation and how you function in the social order. I don’t know how traditional Dao is — probably in some ways and in others not at all — but I suspect that for an immigrant of his generation, the loss of his dignity wounds him deeply. The sacrifices he’d made to build a life for his family here, all he’d done to make amends, wiped out within seconds.
David Dao’s treatment raised the specter of cruelty against those viewed as foreign.