‘Absurd.’ He was stopped by Blue Grass Airport security. Then they searched his hair.

When travelers go through security at an airport, most expect to walk through a full-body scanner, and maybe even get patted down by a Transportation Security Administration agent. But what about having your hair patted down and searched?

That’s what happened to Damon Young on Thursday at Blue Grass Airport. Young, the editor-in-chief of Very Smart Brothas, a website that provides commentary and essays geared toward black people, detailed his experience in an article published online and shared Thursday on social media.

Young, who lives in Pittsburgh, was in Kentucky this week with author bell hooks at the bell hooks institute at Berea College. As he went through security to board his plane to Philadelphia, he went through the full body scanner. After his body was scanned, instead of getting the typical cue to move along, he didn’t receive any cue from the TSA agents. So he stood there.

“I’m just standing there trying to determine what exactly it was” that held him up, Young said in an interview with the Herald-Leader.

Young said a TSA agent spoke into her walkie-talkie and asked a male agent for assistance. A minute later, a male agent approached Young wearing latex gloves. Young said he asked the man what was going on, and the agent responded by commenting on the size of Young’s hair.

“Um, sir ... your hair ... um ... sir ... is large,” Young wrote.

Young’s hair was then searched.

“He basically just pats down my hair and gives it like a little brief massage,” Young said.

Young said the search lasted about a minute, and he was cleared after his hair was searched.

“I didn’t feel like embarrassed or scared or anything like that,” he said. “It was more like absurd to me. I have a little bit of hair, but I don’t have like a lot of hair. What could possibly be hidden in my hair?”

Young said that after he wrote about his encounter, his copy editor, a black woman, said her natural hair gets searched frequently.

“She said, ‘This happens to me all the time,’” he said. “‘Welcome to being black.’”

Young said there were several comments from black women on social media who also said the hair pat-downs happen to them often. Questions about whether hair pat-downs are discriminatory have been raised before in other airports around the country, and such pat-downs have drawn attention from the American Civil Liberties Union.

Young said he didn’t want to minimize the possibility that racial profiling could be at play in the unusual search. He acknowledged that some people go through much worse.

“If anything, it was funny,” he said.

He said he knows people have to do their jobs, but he feels that people of color are targeted in a way that white people don’t seem to be.

Blue Grass Airport referred questions to a TSA spokesperson, who did not immediately respond. But a 2016 TSA blog post said it is normal for hair to be screened.

“It is still TSA procedure to pat down anyone’s hair when needed, no matter their race or gender,” the post on the Ask TSA blog says. “These approved methods may include visual inspection, swabbing for explosives or a pat-down.”

The TSA post also says: “There has been some disinformation out there stating that TSA no longer pats down hair. This is inaccurate. TSA has provided more oversight of the procedure to ensure there’s no profiling, but hair pat-downs are still conducted.”

The post said such pat-downs can occur if “the hair area alarms for a potential explosive” or if “an individual’s hair looks like it could contain a prohibited item or is styled in a way an officer cannot visually clear it.”

This story was originally published November 3, 2017 at 11:08 AM with the headline "‘Absurd.’ He was stopped by Blue Grass Airport security. Then they searched his hair.."