What a Racist Slur Does to the Body
A few weeks ago, I was on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Charlotte, North Carolina. Amid an airline ecosystem rife with cancellations, delays, and overbookings, I was relieved to find the trip relatively uneventful. The crew was on time, the pilots were accounted for, and the weather was clear—the sky a vast and uninterrupted blanket of blue.
Charlotte is an East Coast travel hub, and when we landed, several groups of passengers had connections in the airport for flights that were already boarding. Anxious to make these connections, many people in the back of the plane jumped up as soon as they heard the ping indicating that passengers could unfasten their seat belts. They grabbed their bags from above their heads and tried—mostly politely—to wriggle their way to the front of the plane, repeating “Excuse me” and “I have a connection”
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