Girl Pilots And Black Pilots

I was amused by this, from the November Reader`s Digest:

“I am so tired of hearing ‘Oh my God, you’re a girl pilot.’ When you see a black pilot, do you say ‘Oh my God, you’re a black pilot’?” Pilot for a regional carrier

Well, we know that there`s affirmative action for both black pilots and “girl pilots,” and the concern is exactly the same, (Adversity.net has some worrying stories)but we`ve been much better trained not say it.

One world leader wrote in his autobiography that he was concerned the first time he flew with a black pilot:

“We put down briefly in Khartoum, where we changed to an Ethiopian Airways flight to Addis. Here I experienced a rather strange sensation. As I was boarding the plane I saw that the pilot was black. I had never seen a black pilot before, and the instant I did I had to quell my panic. How could a black man fly a plane?”

Who was the political figure who had this incorrect thought? Well, as you might have guessed, he was a President of South Africa, that notoriously racist country. His name was Nelson Mandela.