Flight attendants questioned by black doctor for helping a sick passenger

Earlier this week, Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford was aboard an Indianapolis Delta flight to Boston when she noticed that the passenger sitting next to her had a problem. Since she is, you know, a doctor and all, she started helping the person – but for some reason, the flight attendants on board apparently thought that there was something about suspect about it.

According to New York Timesa hostess came to ask her if she was a doctor. Stanford stated that she was indeed – she is a licensed physician in Massachusetts – and she gave the woman her medical license without asking for it. She said to the Time that she had gotten into the habit with her after hearing about Dr. Tamika Cross, a black doctor who had been asked for her references while trying to help a passenger on another Delta flight in 2016.

According to Stanford, another flight attendant then came and asked to see her medical license, which she gave him. Apparently satisfied, the attendant departed, but only returned with the first attendant. They both started interrogating Stanford. "Are you a chief doctor?" Asked one of them. "Are you really an MD?"

"Is this your license?" Said the other attendant, according to Stanford, to which she responded, "Why should I take away someone else's health license?"

According to Stanford, this was a pretty blatant case of racial profiling. She had proved to two separate flight attendants that she was a doctor twice, but they still doubted her qualifications – just as they had done for Cross.

"It's something that the medical community has embraced as a reality. When you search for a doctor on Google, most of the images that appear are those of a white man, "said Stanford at Time. "There are other people who look like me. And I should not be questioned about something that I've been working on all my life. "

Since then, Delta has apologized to Stanford in an email and said she was investigating the situation. But his uncomfortable confrontation with these flight attendants is now about something bigger than the only flight: #WhatADoctorLooksLike the conversation is recentered. Cross, the doctor who had a similar experience in 2016, wrote on Facebook about what she saw as a clear lack of progress on the issue.

"In 2016, you also did not think I looked like a doctor," she reads in her message. "Hundreds of thousands of us across the country and even in other countries come together to show you what we look like, but here we stand JUST 2 years later and your employees do not have learned.

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This article originally appeared on VICE US.