This is not to say that skin tone does not racialize individuals as suspect—skin tone may trigger surveillance in times of hyper insecurity, like when there is a terrorist attack—but the hijab triggers stops and searches routinely. Leila, a forty-one-year-old stay-at-home mom who does not wear the hijab, is a Palestinian American Muslim woman. Leila does not pass for white because of her skin tone, but because her name does not sound Muslim to most people, she is often mistaken for being Mediterranean. She told me that her experience flying was very different from that of her mother-in-law, who wears the hijab.

Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, loc. 151