The hijab overrides white-passing skin privilege to trigger surveillance

Evidence

Leila and Sommer were both cognizant that they were privileged to avoid surveillance at airports because they were not identified as Muslim. This juxtaposition of Muslim women who wear the hijab versus those who do not is evidence that it is bodies that are identifiable as Muslim that are subjected to consistent and repetitive profiling. The comparison also reveals how racial privileges associated with skin tone—that is, passing for white—become muted if someone chooses to wear the hijab. The hijab marks women as foreigners who need discipline, demonstrating that clothing can work in the same way that skin tone marks someone as dangerous or a criminal. — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 151

Categorization

• XREF: Clothing equalling skin tone as a racial marker directly parallels the Osage-orange thorns / immodesty-panics theme the reader already works on — dress as identity infrastructure.
• ADDENDUM: Could support ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ — here the veil is not about modesty policing but about how a garment becomes a racializing trigger, a sharp inversion of that essay’s frame.