Earlier this week, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only black Republican in the chamber, dropped a bombshell on the Senate floor. He revealed he’d been pulled over a whopping seven times in one year. CNN got a clip.
Scott recalled that five of those stops were for picayune stuff like “driving a new car in the wrong neighborhood.” On one of those stops, a police cruiser bird-dogged him all the way from a shopping mall to his apartment complex in North Charleston. The cop finally lit Scott up for–wait for it–not using his turn signal on the fourth turn.
Sadly, what Scott endured is an all-too-common experience for a number of black professionals. They’ve learned the hard way that wealth and success aren’t enough to keep you from getting pulled over and profiled.
Ronald Sullivan, a professor at Harvard Law, believes that for blacks, wealth isn’t “a complete insulator” to prevent them from being harassed by the police. He thinks that a number of cops see color as “a proxy for criminality.” However, he believes that black professionals have one advantage over less well-off blacks–they know how to file complaints about police misconduct and get access to legal help. Even so, whenever he’s pulled over by the police at night, he knows that “what they see first and foremost is my black skin.”
Todd Cox, the director of criminal justice policy at the Center for American Progress, can relate. During his days as a student at the University of Pennsylvania, he was walking through a wealthy Philadelphia neighborhood when officers stopped him because they were “dubious” about what he was doing in that area of town. Even when Cox showed his Penn student ID, the cops continued to bombard him with questions for several minutes before letting him go.
That experience reminded Cox of “the talk” that many black parents give their kids about how to act around the police–advice to “be respectful, do exactly as they say.” Sullivan remembers when his parents gave him “the talk” as well. As far as he’s concerned, it’s telling blacks, especially black men, that they have to “treat themselves as second-class citizens.”
Eddie Hailes, general counsel at The Advancement Project, recalls that many black professionals face a lot of anxiety and shame when police don’t treat them the same as their white counterparts. As he sees it, “it’s an ongoing daily battle that white men don’t have to deal with.” He has one request that a lot of black professionals have–treat him with respect and dignity.
Sadly, it appears that there are some in law enforcement who didn’t get the hint after two high-end Manhattan department stores were forced into six-figure settlements for profiling minority customers. Within a two-week span in August 2014, Barneys New York and Macy’s were forced to cough up $500,000 each amid overwhelming evidence that loss prevention agents and off-duty cops disproportionately stopped and detained black and Latino customers. They apparently assumed that just because of their skin color, they couldn’t possibly afford to buy certain items legitimately.
As a black man who is a proud graduate of the University of North Carolina, this is an all-too-familiar story. I’m well aware thatmy Carolina alumni bumper sticker is not enough to keep me from being pulled over for “driving while black.” I haven’t had to experience that indignity, but the fact I even have to prepare myself for it says a lot. For instance, when I worked nights and needed something from the store, I had to be careful not to get to the shopping center before it opened at 7, lest anyone think I was “casing” the joint.
The mere fact that wealth isn’t enough to stop blacks and other minorities from being profiled says a lot about what we still have to overcome as a society.
