three White women passed through the full-body scanner at the TSA security line, with no fuss, before they got to us. My mother entered first. She followed protocol: raising her hands, and then stepping out of the scanner when she was asked. The TSA official said she had to search my mother’s hair.
Because the TSA has an ugly, discriminatory history with scrutinizing Black hair, I was expecting a pat down on my long Senegalese twists. But I fully expected them to lay off my mother, whose hair is long, thin, and bone straight. The idea of her being able to hide so much as a pen in her hair is absolutely comical. But there was the TSA guard, with her claws up, ready to work through my mother’s scalp. That’s when my mother did what has now become the unthinkable: She refused.
I watched the TSA guard swell like an airbag with faux-institutional power, and at that moment I forgot myself, and started right through the full body scanner, hearing but not hearing the other TSA officer yelling at me, “Ma’am, ma’am, step back. Step back!” I was not going to let them take my mother from me. I know my anger could cost me my life—we are living in a climate where a Black woman can be brutalized or killed in custody and then blamed for her own death. But that was exactly why I was fuming. My instincts were locked and loaded, a simple chant thrumming in my head: Sandra Bland, Sandra Bland, Sandra Bland.




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