December 22, 2016

By: Olivia Bulu

This past week, a YouTuber by the name of Adam Saleh filmed a video whilst aboard a Delta airline airplane, and the video went viral. The video showed him being removed from the airline for “speaking Arabic”. In the video Adam repeats “We are being kicked off the plane because we spoke in another language!”. As he exclaims this, the airline staff do not deny anything, they continue to expel him chaotically. In the video another passenger is sticking up for him, telling Delta they cannot do that and do not have the rights to do so.

The video began to spark up even more controversy when Adam was recognized as a Youtuber who stirs up controversy as a profession. All of his videos are social experiments that test society’s reactions to deviant behavior. Does the Youtuber’s profession justify Delta’s response, or was it a social prank gone way too far?

After the justifications for Delta started to arise, Adam took to Twitter to defend himself and his profession,  

“Hey, Me and Slim are finally back in NYC. We have landed safely and want to thank you for all your support. As you all know from the video I uploaded, we got kicked off a plan for speaking Arabic. When we were being taken off the plan, I said ‘We’re getting kicked off the plane for speaking Arabic’. Delta never denied anything in the video. Not a single person answered us back to tell us otherwise. But now that the video is out, they are trying to deny it to save their brand. Delta has been called out previously for racial matters. The media has been twisting my words, so I will not be speaking to any media until I speak to my attorney. What they did to us was wrong and we deserve to speak up about this and not let this happen again. Yes, we’re pranksters, and it sounds like the boy who cried wolf but today you can clearly see it’s as real as it gets.”  (@omgAdamSaleh)

The passenger on the plane who stuck up for Adam and Slim  was interviewed by New York Times,  and stated, “She heard someone speaking Arabic and assumed the worst.” He said, “ I do think it was heavy-handed, kicking the guy off the plane and the removing his bags.”. Adam and Slim thanked him.

Delta came out with a statement,

“Upon landing the crew was debriefed and multiple passenger statements were collected. Based on the information collected to date, it appears the customers who were removed sought to disrupt the cabin with provocative behavior, including shouting… what is a paramount to Delta is the safety and comfort of our passengers and employees. It is clear that these individuals sought to violate that priority.”

I think there is a problem with both sides of this story. I am an intent YouTube watcher, and Adam Saleh has an interesting channel, but all bias aside, Adam Saleh is known for making a disturbance in public, which could have instigated an issue with surrounding passengers. But Adam Saleh’s tendencies does not excuse the Islamophobia presented by Delta airlines. The video is proof that the airlines did not deny any allegations of the language being an issue. Even in their statement, they did not deny any discrimination. This is not the first time this has happened either, Islamic people face the struggle of dealing with the stigma surrounding their language daily; Back in August, 2016, a Muslim couple was kicked off a Delta flight for “sweating”, saying “Allah” and texting. Turns out the text was to the male’s mother, stating they’re on their way home. (independent.co.uk). I think the coincidence is that someone ‘famous’ caught it on tape, and now Delta is scared because of how popular the video has gotten. If it was someone with 100 followers, the video may have been taken a bit more seriously. This is just goes to show Adam’s social experiments actually worked; it exposed and validated a piece of our society that is undeniably still alive. The validity confirms reason for social activism, which was the purpose for Adam’s youtube. How many more racist videos need to surface before it is recognized as an issue?