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 and organizers have made to the Palestinian struggle. I’ve recently contributed heavily to this work: I organized a delegation of Palestinian students to Ferguson in 2014, co-organized the 2015 Black Solidarity for Palestine statement endorsed by 1,000 activists including Angela Davis and Talib Kweli, and co-wrote the 2015 Black-Palestinian solidarity video “When I See Them, I See Us” that featured Danny Glover and Ms. Lauryn Hill.
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