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.

Jeremy Helligar
5 min readJun 3, 2024
Photo: Pexels

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.

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Jeremy Helligar
Jeremy Helligar

Written by Jeremy Helligar

Brother Son Husband Friend Loner Minimalist World Traveler. Author of “Is It True What They Say About Black Men?” and “Storms in Africa” https://rb.gy/3mthoj