Chris decided to book his parents a surprise side trip to Boston for this weekend, so we headed to the airport today. With my executive platinum American Airlines status, I requested that I be added to the upgrade list complimentary and use my 500-mile-upgrade credits to upgrade Chris and his parents. Eight people on this flight were going to get upgraded given the number of empty seats in First Class, and so we essentially bumped four people off the top of the list given my status. I don’t care; how many times has that happened to me?! Too many to count. And it honestly makes me even happier on the inside when I know that I, an Asian American female in her early 30s, is bumping down a bunch of over-privileged and entitled white men.

When we got on, as per usual, there were two other people of color sitting in first class; both were men who were at least middle aged. Everyone else was middle-aged, white, and male. Men always dominate the priority cabins. And as usual, I appear to be the youngest person sitting in the priority cabin, and the only East Asian person. Chris’s mom commented on that, too, after the flight, about the lack of diversity in First Class both in color and in gender. “Privilege” in this country tends to go to white males regardless of what people want to deny about systematic discrimination and discrimination in general. All you have to do is look at things like who’s seated in First Class; who gets pulled over by cops more often, and who gets worse treatment in restaurants than others.