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Airport pat-downs of black women's hairstyles discriminatory: ACLU
Source: Reuters
US | Thu Mar 26, 2015 8:26pm EDT
Airport pat-downs of black women's hairstyles discriminatory: ACLU
SACRAMENTO, CALIF. | BY SHARON BERNSTEIN
(Reuters) - Two black women who said their hairstyles made them targets for airport security pat-downs said on Thursday the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had agreed to stop singling out women for screening based solely on their "sisterlocks."
Malaika Singleton, a neuroscientist based in Sacramento, said she was on her way to London last year for an academic conference on dementia when a TSA agent at Los Angeles International Airport began pulling and squeezing her hair.
"I was going through the screening procedures like we all do, and after I stepped out of the full body scanner, the agent said, 'OK, now I'm going to check your hair,'" Singleton said on Thursday.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
She contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, and it turned out that one of the lawyers there, a black woman who also wears the tiny, stylized form of dreadlocks known as sisterlocks had the same experience - twice.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Airport pat-downs of black women's hairstyles discriminatory: ACLU
SACRAMENTO, CALIF. | BY SHARON BERNSTEIN
(Reuters) - Two black women who said their hairstyles made them targets for airport security pat-downs said on Thursday the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had agreed to stop singling out women for screening based solely on their "sisterlocks."
Malaika Singleton, a neuroscientist based in Sacramento, said she was on her way to London last year for an academic conference on dementia when a TSA agent at Los Angeles International Airport began pulling and squeezing her hair.
"I was going through the screening procedures like we all do, and after I stepped out of the full body scanner, the agent said, 'OK, now I'm going to check your hair,'" Singleton said on Thursday.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
She contacted the American Civil Liberties Union, and it turned out that one of the lawyers there, a black woman who also wears the tiny, stylized form of dreadlocks known as sisterlocks had the same experience - twice.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/27/us-usa-california-hair-idUSKBN0MN01L20150327