Traveling While Black: I Was Racially Profiled and Locked Up in Israel
Detroit activist and writer Kristian Davis Bailey was en route to a West Bank conference to talk about Black and Palestinian solidarity when Israeli police accused him of drug smuggling. Here, he reflects on the trauma of his arrest and insists that it’s nothing compared to what Palestinians face. For two months I have been silent about an unexpected and traumatic experience: my racial profiling, arrest and incarceration by the state of Israel in mid-December. I was on my way to Birzeit University in the West Bank to speak about the Black Lives Matter movement and the connections Black youth…