Welcome to Traveling While Black
A collection of stories on the pains and pleasures of traveling while black, curated by Morgan Jerkins, author of This Will Be My Undoing
I’m not a first-timer when it comes to getting my hair checked by the TSA. At this point, I’ve got it down to a science: If I wear braids in a bun, which is the most travel-friendly style, because otherwise they can reach down to the end of my back, I know someone is going to put their fingers through my hair. If I wear faux locs or any kind of extensions that give my hair volume, all I have to do is look at the X-ray screen and see a sizable yellow rectangle over the size of my head and know that a Black TSA officer will soon emerge out of nowhere and begin to course through my hair. I’ve made Facebook statuses about this inconvenience, and white female friends will tell me they have their hair in buns all the time and never get checked, mentioning this not to discredit my experience but to highlight the inequality.
What gets me is that this extra inspection is not universal across U.S. airports. I may not get hair-checked at JFK, but I might at LAX. Philadelphia…
