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00:00 So a mother is suing Southwest Airlines for racial discrimination.
00:04 She says she was accused of human trafficking when flying with her biracial child.
00:09 Her name is Mary McCarthy, who is white.
00:11 She traveled from California to Denver with her daughter, who is biracial, to attend her
00:15 brother's funeral in October of 2021.
00:18 This is according to a new lawsuit filed this week.
00:20 And here's what the suit alleges, quote, while they were in the air, a Southwest employee
00:23 called the Denver Police Department to report Ms. McCarthy for suspected child trafficking
00:29 for no reason other than the different color of her daughter's skin from her own.
00:33 Now, according to this lawsuit, as McCarthy and her daughter were walking on the jet bridge
00:37 and this is video of that, by the way, they were confronted by Denver police officers
00:42 after significant questioning.
00:44 McCarthy was eventually allowed to leave by the officers, quote, and this is in the lawsuit,
00:49 but not before this display of blatant racism by Southwest Airlines caused Ms. McCarthy
00:54 and her daughter extreme and emotional distress.
00:57 I appreciate her being with us.
00:59 I just want to show you first, though, part of this recorded interaction that she had
01:05 when they got off the plane with a Southwest official and Denver police officers.
01:09 Here it is.
01:10 The flight attendants were just concerned about about the behavior when you boarded
01:15 the aircraft.
01:16 That's all we're following up on.
01:17 We're not we're not suspecting anything.
01:18 That's all we need to know that.
01:19 I mean, you guys are good.
01:20 I do apologize.
01:21 It's not because I have a daughter who has already, unfortunately, been traumatized by
01:22 police officers.
01:23 And in her life, well, I'm not trying to do that by any stretch of the means.
01:33 So this is OK.
01:36 At the time, Southwest said they were, quote, disheartened by her account of the events,
01:40 adding, in part, we are conducting a review of the situation internally.
01:44 Our employees undergo robust training on human trafficking.
01:47 Above all, Southwest Airlines prides itself on providing a welcoming and inclusive environment.
01:52 We did, of course, reach out to a Southwest spokesperson again, given this litigation.
01:57 They had no comment.
01:58 Mary McCarthy, the mother, joins us now.
02:00 Good morning.
02:01 I appreciate you being with us.
02:03 Why did you file suit?
02:04 What do you want?
02:08 When I initially spoke out about this back in October of twenty twenty one, the reason
02:12 I went public with it, which, you know, takes a certain risk, you know, in the meantime,
02:16 my daughter and I, our names have been dragged through the mud.
02:18 We've received a lot of backlash, but it was really because this is an opportunity for
02:23 me to speak out against racial profiling.
02:25 If one less family, one less child can go through an experience with the airlines or
02:30 elsewhere in life and not be racially profiled, to me, it's worth speaking out.
02:34 It's all about the crux of the matter, which is in twenty twenty one now, twenty twenty
02:40 three.
02:41 No corporation should be able to get away with this kind of behavior.
02:45 I read through the lawsuit that you're seeking unspecified damages and you want an apology
02:50 from the airline and you want mandatory training to change.
02:55 What's the ultimate goal here?
02:56 What do you hope at the end of this changes for other people?
03:02 So I hear, you know, on a regular basis from other parents who go through this families
03:08 like mine that are mixed race for a number of reasons, whether it's their biological
03:11 their children happen to look a little bit different from them in terms of skin color,
03:15 lots of families who have adopted children.
03:19 And this is happening quite regularly, more often, I'd say, to fathers than to mothers
03:23 where they are sometimes pulled off of flights or very aggressively questioned, sometimes
03:29 even separated and detained.
03:30 The parents and the children simply due to largely a difference in skin color.
03:36 This is racial profiling has no place in the United States of today.
03:42 And that's what I'm speaking out against.
03:44 The airlines are teaching their staff to look out for human trafficking, child trafficking
03:49 on airlines.
03:50 But clearly, that training is failing if they're not as part of that training, also warning
03:55 them to look out for their own behavior and racial profiling.
04:00 And by the way, child trafficking and human trafficking is not an epidemic on commercial
04:04 flights.
04:05 It's not like a moral panic.
04:07 Trafficking isn't something that we have to worry about on commercial flights too much.
04:10 So how about focus on reducing racism more than on some of these kind of boogeyman type
04:15 of moral panics that they've got all worried about?
04:18 I did read a statistic that you're correct that most of the human trafficking does not
04:22 happen on airlines, but it was pointed to in one study around 38 percent.
04:26 I do want to read to you what the International Air Transportation Association said in terms
04:31 of their guidelines for combating human trafficking.
04:34 And they say cabin crew are in a unique position to notify law enforcement because they quote,
04:40 travel with passengers sometimes for many hours.
04:42 They can spot the smallest signals and behaviors.
04:45 But they also go on to say that you need to defer to another person not to speak for them.
04:53 My question to you is, do you think it could have been an honest mistake by one person?
05:00 Honest mistakes happen.
05:01 I'm deeply sympathetic to anyone doing their job.
05:04 I'm not only a mother to a biracial child, but I've always been a single mother.
05:08 So I'm very careful when I travel that I always take documentation.
05:11 I carry her birth certificate.
05:13 I'm prepared to show my ID and her birth certificate at TSA.
05:17 They have the right to ask me any questions.
05:20 They can ask me questions about race because frankly, that's a physical difference.
05:23 That's a reality.
05:24 But there's a big difference between TSA doing the screening that they're doing as part of
05:30 their job and a flight attendant not even taking the time to ask me a question, find
05:36 out if we have the same last name, the basic due diligence before they call the police.
05:42 You can see in the body cam footage that they lie about numerous things.
05:47 The Southwest attendants is heard on the body cam footage repeatedly lying about why I was
05:53 traveling, saying that I lied about the fact that I was traveling to a funeral.
05:58 That's appalling behavior towards one of your customers on any level.
06:03 And I feel like the public should know that this is how they're treating and talking about
06:07 their customers.
06:09 And I want to build awareness around all of that.
06:11 And as I understand, you said you travel with the birth certificate of your daughter and
06:15 you were not even asked to present that as proof.
06:18 Just before we go, your daughter's 12 now.
06:21 We hear her tears in that video.
06:24 How is she today?
06:26 Fortunately, she's doing great.
06:28 She's a blossoming 12-year-old going into seventh grade.
06:31 But when it comes to this incident, just after it and up until now, about a year and a half
06:36 later, she clams up and doesn't want to talk about it.
06:38 Of course, I did what any responsible mom would do.
06:40 I made sure that she got a therapist to talk to about this because it was also the day
06:44 that we were traveling to my brother's funeral, so she could deal with the grief of that.
06:48 And fortunately, she is doing great.
06:50 She knows that I'm speaking to the media.
06:52 She supports that.
06:53 But of course, she herself is doing the things that a 12-year-old girl is supposed to do.
06:58 And not have to worry about stuff like this on a daily basis.
07:01 And hopefully, moving forward, less and less for kids like her.
07:04 Children of color have enough challenges in their day-to-day life.
07:08 Let's not add to it.
07:09 Yeah.
07:10 Well, we appreciate you sharing your story.
07:11 I'm sorry also for the loss of your brother.
07:14 And we welcome anyone from Southwest Airlines, of course, on the program to join us as well.
07:19 Mary, thank you.
07:20 Thanks, Poppy.
07:21 Yep.
07:21 - Thanks, Poppy. - Yep.