Social justice at Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture)

Like seemingly every other American enterprise these days, the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) has added social justice to its mission. Thus, at least a portion of its time and effort is devoted to highlighting the achievements of members of victim groups. The largest group of victims to be celebrated at Oshkosh is women. Each person who shows up at Oshkosh identifying as female is given a free T-shirt and asked to pose for a group photo:

Anyone whose parents own an airplane can learn to fly easily. Anyone whose credit card has an ample limit can learn to fly easily (flight schools are not so flush with cash that they would turn away someone based on race, gender ID, or LGBTQIA status). Thus, the group victim photo (above) turns out to be a photo of wealthy white women and girls.

A 1:00 PM P-51 “Warbirds in Review” talk involved towing a vintage $3 million P-51 in front of some bleachers and seating two P-51 combat veterans next to an interviewer. A standing-room-only audience assembled in the hot Wisconsin mid-day sun. One pilot had flown roughly 100 combat missions in the P-51. The other had flown a combined total of more than 400 combat missions in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. With the perfectly restored airworthy P-51 airplane in front of the crowd and these two guys who could tell us about their combat experience, what questions were asked? “What was it like to be black in 1940 when segregation prevailed?” (Answer from Charles McGee, Tuskegee Airman: “I went to high school in the North and we didn’t have segregation.”) By the time we bailed out at 1:35 PM, not a single question had been asked about aviation and we hadn’t gotten to the aviators’ first flying lesson, much less learned anything about the fire-breathing P-51. These guys were not experts on being black in the U.S. in the bad old days, any more than any other African-American of the same age.

Boeing still hasn’t fixed the 737 MAX system design and software, but they were all-in on diversity at their Oshkosh pavilion:

7 thoughts on “Social justice at Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture)

  1. The 737 Max should just self-identify as a completely safe airplane, and label anyone who is concerned to fly on it a jetaphobic bigot.

  2. Brainwashing by media and academia and peer pressure-enchanced rationalization do actually work. Americans used to wonder what posessed Germans to go Nazi. Now Americans are going down the same road.

  3. Phil, did you join the group photos after your helicopter presentation? I think there was some talk about temporarily changing genders for the photo op?

  4. If it’s like any other trade show, they’re booth babes not really involved in flying. They’re definitely not blog commenters. It looks like a lot of them are recruiters for flight attentant jobs. This was the 1st time Icon didn’t have any women near the A5. That’s normally how they sell those, always implying an A5 opens access to women as well as places.

    • The A5 does open access to women, especially women who have made a lot of money through their divorce proceedings and want to fly near their new lake houses. It’s absolutely an airplane that’s priced right for a post-divorce healing.

  5. I wonder what they all thought of Donald Trump? It doesn’t seem like an awkward question to ask in the name of Social Justice and with a photo like that they should have taken a poll. I do notice a couple o’dudes, though: One guy is taking cover behind the BOSE display, a few guys who look like cowboys, and the rest of them are keeping themselves incognito. They must be the Indigo Girls. Correct me if I’m wrong, but DT is there in effigy near the 787 engine – bright orange smiley. Finally and more seriously, I’m still amazed that aircraft like the 787 still have windshield wipers.

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