Every now and again you read a news report in the media which connects with real life in the most profound ways. You may have read some of the increased media coverage about the black steel band ejected from a budget airline because someone thought they were terrorists. They have become known as the Talipan.

In the first week in February it made all sorts of connections when I read about the black steel band led by a blind calypso musician who won damages against one of our leading budget airlines for ejecting them from a flight from Sardinia because a British psychology lecturer on holiday with his family complained he thought they were terrorists. It spoke volumes about the way post 9/11 hysteria can impinge on human rights. It touched on the power of casual racism and intolerance to shape human action. It said much about the treatment of people with a disability. It showed how mere suspicion, however groundless, can have grave ramifications and how regulations can often make situations far worse than they are.

I was partly drawn to the case because I too am a regular visitor to Sardinia and have used the same airline on numerous occasions, flying in and out of Alghero.

The incident happened on New Year's Eve 2006. After performing to critical acclaim on the island the London based Caribbean Steel International Orchestra, whose four members were the only black passengers onboard , were escorted off a Stansted bound plane at gunpoint after the lecturer threatened to remove his family from the plane if the pilot did not insist upon the band's removal. The band's leader is believed to be the only blind tenor pan player performing in the world today.

The band had sat together in the terminal building, a fact that had been noted by the suspicious passenger. He grew alarmed when he saw band members sit separately by the windows. on the plane (they had pre-booked priority window seats on the flight which resulted in them sitting apart). Following the complaint that he thought they were terorists the crew evicted the five musicians from the plane and they were escorted to the airport building for interrogation by the armed Sardinian authorities.

[Photograph taken by Soon. Accessed from FlickR and used under Creative Commons license.]

The university lecturer had also complained to the stewards that the blind band leader, who was wearing dark glasses, was behaving suspiciously. The lecturer thought he was 'reading a newspaper'. The band leader had sat next to a passenger reading a newspaper and, being an avid football supporter, had asked him to read out the football scores for him. As he did so the leaders' glasses appeared to scour the result page in the passenger's newspaper.

After a 20 minute delay while their identities were checked by the Italian authorities the band were given permission to rejoin their flight home. However, the captain refused access even though the band’s leader had his disability card inspected and his sightless eyes verified. He had lost his sight in 1983 after a cataract operation failed.

In court the budget airline claimed the captain had taken the 'safety first option' after he noted 'tension' on the flight because of the incident.  After promptings from the band's MP the budget airline offered the band members £100 each and vouchers for their flights home, but no apology. Although the band were allowed to leave the island on New Year's Day they had to fly to Liverpool instead of Stansted forcing an uncomfortable overnight stay because they missed their London bus connection and could not find a hotel room that early in the morning. The band were forced to spend a very cold and wet New Years Day night in a kebab shop and then a bus shelter before the bus station opened and they could return to London. They arrived home two days later than they had intended and missed spending the New year with their families.

Each member was awarded £800 compensation, in addition to the extra costs each incurred of £190.  In his written judgment District Judge Southcombe told the City of London county court the captain had 'ample time' to reassess the situation once the Italian authorities had checked each band member's identity and papers. 'Just because a passenger was black or someone did not like the look of him or her, it was not acceptable to offload that passsenger', he explained.

Judge Southcombe concluded that the band's ‘embarrassment at being the only black persons removed from the aircraft at gunpoint for no reason, their inability to be with their families and friends on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, the overnight stay in the cold in Liverpool have to be taken into account’. The sum awarded, he declared, reflected the ‘extreme situation’ the band found themselves in. The psychology lecturer did not in fact give evidence in court.  Various media reports suggested that he was in fact a professor of psychology.

The budget airline is appealing against the verdict while the band members have called for an investigation into the incident by the Civil Air Authority. The budget airline has still steadfastly refused to offer the band a full apology. It commented: 'while we sincerely regret the inconvenience they suffered, our crew were absolutely right to prioritise passenger safety/ security at all times'.

The story begs many questions. Would the incident have happened if the band had sat together on the plane? Would the incident have happened if the band's members were all white? Would the lecturer's suspicions have been aroused if the band leader was of normal sight?  Why did the reported 'tension' spread so rapidly among the passengers? Was the reaction of the captain excessive? Why, once the band member's papers had been checked, were they not allowed back on the flight when it was clear they were talented musicians returning home from a successful tour of Sardinia? And why were the budget airline's regulations followed with such prejudice when it was clear that there was in fact no danger to the plane, or the occupants?

Some might argue that such extreme situations are justified in the post 9/11 context, that the captain had no alternative but to deny the band access even after the Italian authorities had checked all the documentation.

But consider this. What if the band members were in fact terrorists but white skinned and their leader able-bodied? It would be highly unlikely that they would have been stopped. The lecturer’s suspicions would not have been so aroused.

As Roosevelt once observed in the last century in another decade noted for its paranoia, quite often there is 'nothing to fear except fear itself’. Indeed, one might argue that exhibiting racist behaviour on an airplane could itself, if taken to extremes, be prejudicial to the safety of the occupants. It is also outrageous that, not for the first time, the budget airline concerned showed such scant regard towards a passenger with a disability.

And the final irony? Guess who is playing at the opening of Terminal 5 at Heathrow in March. Yes, you guessed it. The Caribbean Steel International Orchestra!

I doubt if the budget airline will dare show its face, do you?

For a revealing interview with two of the members of the Caribbean Steel International Orchestra see Grounded from guardian.co.uk.

About the author

Richard Skellington edits Society Matters for the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Open University. He’s an administrator who manages the Environment, Development and International Studies programme.

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It’s an interesting prospect that the next American president could be the son of an African man (and a white woman) who went to a majority-Muslim school as a boy. But to what extent is the candidacy of Barack Hussein Obama really related to this individual man, to his policies or skills as a legislator or thinker? Will his identity as an African-American prove to be the most important factor for his success or failure as the Democrat candidate, whether or not he uses it to manipulate popular perception?

What got me thinking about the possible meanings of ‘Obama’ was the entry of media tycoon and daytime Queen of the air Oprah Winfrey into Obama’s campaign at the end of last year. I wondered then how the personas of the ‘two Os’ could together alter the fortunes of the Obama campaign. I also wondered how her television fan base overlaps  with the political demographic that is so crucial for Obama. At their first rally together in South Carolina on December 8th, Obama drew attention to the unique nature of the event, given their ethnic origins: ‘Me being here is so unlikely…Just like Oprah being where she is so unlikely’. They were able to deploy the public personas they had already constructed through opening up their personal lives to the public – for Obama this was in two memoirs written before he was even a senator. They appealed directly to the state’s demographic (African Americans make up nearly half of all Democratic voters in this traditionally republican-voting state), peppering their speeches with ‘y’all’ and ‘you folks’. After making several references to church attendance, beauty parlours and God, Obama then danced to a Stevie Wonder song and invoked Martin Luther King: “But I’m not in this race because of the odds. I’m in it because of the ‘fierce urgency of now’’.

Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama.
[Photograph taken by Joe Crimmings. Accessed from FlickR and used under Creative Commons license.]

7.6 million viewers watch Oprah's show a day. Will her endorsement of Obama be one of his greatest assets? Perhaps it will serve to further racialise Obama’s image, and then we have to assess if that will help or hinder him.  Whether Oprah's popularity will translate into votes for Obama in the state’s Jan. 26 primary is an open question, but it does seem the case that Winfrey’s popularity has got him out of the starting blocks pretty quickly, allowing him to tap a swathe of hitherto disinterested or disaffected black voters. Oprah's tour came as Obama had cut into Hillary Clinton’s support among female voters in some states and the opinion of US pollsters does seem to be that Winfrey could help Obama draw more middle-aged and older women, the core of Winfrey’s talk show viewership. For the key to any endorsement by celebrities is to win people over who are not already in your camp. Women account for more than half of the state’s black Democratic vote. So if her support makes a difference, it is likely to be amongst women, also considered a crucial part of Clinton’s base in early voting states. But black female voters are also prime target for the primaries in southern states, hence Winfrey’s mention of the large number of beauty parlours in South Carolina. She said, ‘We love to keep our hair done, don’t we?’ She added, ‘I know what it means to come from the South,’ a reference to her childhood in Mississippi. One middle-aged black woman interviewed after the rally said to a journalist that she admired Oprah and Obama because ‘they’re both self-made, positive African Americans’.

I think Obama is an ambiguous character; he both uses and doesn’t use his ethnic identity. He has, no doubt, very little choice in this. I think he has to capitalise on this ambiguity, as Ophrah has so successfully done. Of course it's inevitable that he’s accused of ‘acting like he’s white’ by radical blacks. Also inevitable is the danger of democrats voting for Hillary Clinton because they don’t believe a black man can win the presidency – a kind of disingenuous projection of racism onto others that makes you think of a favourite children’s joke: ‘whoever smelt it, dealt it!’ Just as important, though, is the problem of class. In the US it's common to speak in coded terms of ‘beer track’ and ‘wine track’ candidates. Obama’s biggest problem could be that he’s regarded as a brainy 'wine track' liberal and thus may lose out to a rival, Clinton, whose support is firmly rooted in the blue-collar, non-college degree communities. This seems to have been the case in the New Hampshire primary of Jan 8th.

Obama’s credibility and popularity with the electorate as a whole will I think rest on him being an African-American in a country founded on slavery who plays down the destructive aspect of racial divisiveness - he is indeed a 'positive', 'post-racial' African-American. Although he is young and relatively inexperienced compared to Clinton, you could argue he is indeed more 'urgent'. And that's because, as Andrew Sullivan has recently argued in the US magazine Atlantic Monthly, he may be able to bridge the fissures that threaten American culture, represented by the great divide between white secular-minded liberals and neo-conservative religious fundamentalists. Can he hold a mirror up to America in which it sees itself in multi-ethnic unity? However, to successfully attract the black vote in order to achieve the Democratic nomination is one thing; he also must successfully represent the economically marginalised and socially conservative voters across the US. Perhaps this is an even bigger challenge.

More on the 2008 US election

• Tears in her eyes
• Is there a double standard for women in public?
• Sarah Palin: when politics is personal, ignorance is a woman

About the author

Jessica Evans is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, in the Faculty of Social Sciences, and a member of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at the Open University.

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The ongoing Test Cricket row between India and Australia over the issue of racist insults claimed to have been delivered by the bowler Harbhajan Singh to all-rounder Andrew Symonds, has led to to massive media coverage. It has resulted in all sorts of responses, including the idea that racism is the preserve of particular people. One commentator even suggested this could not be about racism because the parties involved were black and Indian. It has also raised again the excesses of  the practice of 'sledging', which originated among Australian cricketers, havng been more or less invented by Steve Waugh, the Australian captain, to provoke opponents and unsettle them through what became uncontained, if supposedly humorous, insults. Waugh was largely able to contain them, but recently the practice has been seen as getting out of hand. Maybe on this occasion 'sledging' has been brought into the debate about racism, because it is a black, Australian cricketer (born in Birmingham, UK to parents, one of whom had African Caribbean links) who is accusing an Indian player of racist language and insulting behaviour, but, nonetheless there is an uneasy tension betwen what might constitute so-called 'banter' and abuse in the media discussion.

A cricket match.
[Photo © copyright, Photos.com]

At other times 'sledging' has been seen as 'part of the game', as English bowler Monty Panesar suggested in the England Test Tour of Australia in 2006/7. I interviewed Panesar, electronically, as part of my research on the Sport Across Diasporas for the AHRC funded project, Tuning In: Contact Zones at the BBC World Service. I asked him if 'sledging' had ever had racist components. It is telling that his response was to say that whilst 'on the majority of occasions, the expression is used in the playing of the game, there may be occasions where racism comes into play, but I haven't had experience'. Sledging has taken a perilous path and an interrogation of its meanings and limitation of its excesses are overdue, but, nonetheless, as Panesar says, racism is not so obscure and its meanings are all too identifiable.

What such incidents have shown is both the ubiquity of racialization, which includes racism, and how circuitous its routes and manifestations can be. Racism is a part of sport where there is sadly nothing new about the claim that abuse, of any sort, is not really vicious in intent, but  'just a joke', in order to mask its meanings. However, whilst sports media coverage has centred on individuals, these incidents highlight the wider social field in which racism and other forms of abuse persist and demonstrates that sport can include practices that are definitely 'not cricket'.

[Image: Cricket match, © copyright Photos.com]

About the author

Kath Woodward is Profesor of Sociology at the Open University, focusing on gendered identities. She has recently completed research into anti-racist organisations in sport.

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