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Traveling while Black: as a frequent business traveler throughout Europe, she was repeatedly detained on suspicion of transporting drugs. So she came up with a plan

Doreen Mcgann

I work as a financial consultant for a Japanese electronics company and was returning from a business trip five years ago when I was detained by customs officials in Stockholm Sweden, the city I call home. I was a neatly attired Black woman in a business suit toting a laptop as my carry-on luggage. But the customs officials saw something else. Two hours of interrogation. My luggage searched and X-rays taken. By the time I was released--well after midnight--all the taxis were gone.

This wasn't the first time I'd been targeted. At airports across Europe, customs officials have pulled me aside to search my person and my belongings for illegal drugs. This time, sick and tired of being treated like a prime suspect, I called the authorities at the airport and accused them of racial profiling. I expected to hear stunned denials, but instead, the customs official calmly explained that I fit their profile of a drug courier: Black female, frequently traveling alone.

After being detained on several more occasions, mostly while traveling in Europe, I realized my Blackness and femininity had become my burden. Since I couldn't help how often I traveled for my job, my only option was not to travel alone. These days I arrive at the airport early and scour the business lounge for a companion. My choice is usually a well-groomed, fiftyish White businessman traveling alone and bearing a laptop--everyone's image of the non-drug-dealing phenotype. In short. apart from gender and hue, exactly the kind of traveler I am.

Sometimes I can strike up a conversation and carry out the whole airport check-in in such a casual way that my consort fulfills his role unconsciously. At the other end of the trip, we disembark and leave the airport in the companionable silence of a long-associated couple. At other times I have to reveal my need, relying on the kindness of strangers. This usually works quite well, but I recall an exception. As we left New York. my cohort demanded my duty-free alcohol rights in exchange for his role in my subterfuge. I calculated the cost of my time, and the probability of my being detained once I arrived in Stockholm, and I relented.

Once. on my way to the United States, I was accosted in the in-transit area of London's Heathrow Airport. My Jamaican passport was checked manually and then put under what I supposed were ultraviolet rays. The customs official then declared my U.S. visa to be counterfeit. Yet I was allowed to board the flight, and my arrival in New York was uneventful. On returning home to Stockholm, I called London to inquire about my being stopped. Again the "evidence" cited by the customs official was that I was a frequent-flying Black woman. And the fact that I was Jamaican by birth, he said, only made matters worse. My suggestion that this profile also described a business traveler elicited incredulous silence.

It was clear that the time had come for further changes. I sadly gave up my Jamaican passport and became The Unlikely Swede. Movement between Helsinki and Stockholm was simpler after that. Still. I recall the time I traveled for business in the company of a Swede, a Japanese and a German. I was held leaving Sweden. The three men stood politely aside while customs officials ran checks on me before waving us on. If I was the mule. I wondered, what were my traveling companions?

I never lose sight of the irony that I make contact with businessmen to avoid being mistaken for another type of working girl. The business-class lounge has become my sanctuary from suspicion, the place for a conciliatory handshake as I embark on yet another mission.

Doreen McGann still lives and works in Stockholm. Sweden.

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