Since 9/11, a Sense of Being Profiled

Mary Worth feels her dark skin has consistently caused alarm since the state of fear that followed the September 11 attacks.

“I feel profiled in airports because of the color of my skin,” said the Boerum Hill resident who said has been stopped and questioned in the airport five times since 9/11.

A couple of months after the towers fell, Worth had to renew her passport for a trip to Japan. After the first photo was snapped, her friend offered a suggestion: “You might want to choose another picture because you will be profiled,’” Worth remembered her saying.

“My hair was wavy and big. My friend told me to pull it back in order to ‘look less ethnic,’” Worth explained of her attempt to not appear as a terrorism suspect to authorities. “I ended up getting stopped. They said it was ‘random,’ but I can pass for many different races and a lot of people think I am an Arab.”