By Lisa Wade , PhD
When the airline business diligence first try out to go commercial-grade after World War I , it involve to convince skeptical customers that air travel was safe . One strategy was to make passengers feel that the entire crew was able-bodied and uncoerced to see to their safety . This included the stewards , the all - manful forerunner to the stewardess . But which men to hire ?
Ocean liner and train car , air locomotion ’s main rival and the model on which they built their business enterprise , largely employed black Pullman porter and stewards . But the airline consider that the irresistibly whitened passenger would not have mat comfortable placing their lives in the hand of dark men . So they hired livid men instead . Kathleen Barry , who discourse this in her bookFemininity in Flight , explains :
If steward were so capable and appreciated , why not offer one ’s discernment in Johnny Cash ? The answer is , in short , because pourboire were for black people . blackened porters on trains and boats were topple as a matter of course but , according to Barry , tip a white individual would have been equivalent to an contumely . A journalist , write in 1902 , captured the thought of the sentence when he expressed jar and appal that “ any native - born American could consent ” to accepting a summit . “ baksheesh go with servility , ” he said . Accepting one was tantamount to affirming “ I am less than you . ” This interpretation of the substance of a gratuity , alongside airline business ’ need to inspire self-confidence and bare racial discrimination , is why we do n’t tip flight attendant today .
This article to begin with appeared on Sociological Images .
