To Sweat or Not To: Being Black in White-Dominated Spaces
Eight Black men were removed from an American Airlines flight because of a complaint about body odor — but it had nothing to do with their hygiene.
This past week, I had an uncomfortable flashback to something that happened to me more than a decade ago (on January 19, 2010, to be exact) while I was living in Buenos Aires. The memory was sparked by a story about a recent American Airlines flight that was delayed when a flight attendant complained about someone who was stinking up the plane.
The story also reminded me a conversation I once had with a White friend who insisted that Black men and White men smell different. That comment reminded me of what Thomas Jefferson had to say about the smell of Black people as a race.
I’m sure if President Jefferson had been on that American Airlines flight, he would have applauded what happened next. In a stunningly egregious case of racial profiling, after the complaint about body odor was made, the airline removed eight Black male passengers from the aircraft — none of them were seated together, and none of them knew each other — and gave them a sniff test.
