Vine star Jasmeet Singh, a Canadian Sikh who performs as Jus Reign, was forced to remove his turban by TSA agents at San Francisco International Airport — a humiliating experience he related in a series of tweets in which he called out the TSA for its xenophobia.
Singh, who has more than a million followers on Vine, is likely among the most well-known Sikh men in North America. Many of his most famous videos skewer Western interpretations of people of color and their culture, like “Brown People Try White People Food,” a response to BuzzFeed’s ubiquitous “White People [do something mildly out of their comfort zone]” videos.
But being a charming and popular presence on Vine isn’t quite enough to avoid TSA suspicions:
This is the second such incident this month: Two weeks ago, Sikh actor and designer Waris Ahluwalia, who’s appeared in three Wes Anderson movies and a Gap campaign, was prevented from flying from Mexico City to New York by airline employees after refusing to remove his turban. The Sikh turban, called a dastaar, is an integral part of the religion, and cannot be removed in public. “When a Sikh man or woman dons a turban, the turban ceases to be just a piece of cloth and becomes one and the same with the Sikh’s head,” according to the website of the Sikh Coalition, an advocacy group.
