Who Are They Going To Believe?: The Epistemology of Racial Profiling

I think I was 16 years old, maybe 17. I was riding in a friend's car, coming back from a party. Just to give you a short geographical sketch, I grew up in central New Jersey, about 35 miles from New York City. Where I grew up was relatively rural the further you got away from New York City. The towns were small and quaint; farms, dairies and roadside produce stands.

The neighborhoods were set up in such a way that you had to go through more "exclusive" neighborhoods, white neighborhoods to be exact, to get to more " racially diverse" neighborhoods. Of course, there were neighborhoods that were exclusively black too.

We were heading back from this party when we went through one of the small towns and stopped at a red light. As was common in New Jersey, there was an island that separated traffic going in opposite directions. And usually situated on these islands were the town cops, if not the State Police. We pulled up to the stop light, looked left, and there was a cop looking directly at us. I caught my friend's eye and the understanding was instantaneous: we are going to get pulled over. As a black person, it's just something you know. It's our "generic" sixth sense.

The light turned green, we proceeded and of course the cop followed us. We were just about at the edge of that small rural town when he flashed his lights and pulled us over. The exchange started out as "routine." "Drivers license and registration." My friend handed it over. "Ok, get out of the car!" "Excuse me Officer, is there a problem?" "Get Out of the Car!" "Are we under arrest? Do you have "probable cause" to have us get out of the car?" The Officer glared at us and said in a low voice (under his breath) "some smart-ass niggers here." He the said "You want probable cause. I'll give you probable cause!" He then proceeded to go to the front of the car, pull his nightstick out of his waistband, and smash the front headlight. "Now there's probable cause!" "Get out of the car!" "Great," my friend moaned.

We got out of the car and the officer proceeded to berate us for being cognizant and knowledgeable about the law. He then proceeded to search the car. He had finished searching the front and was about to search the back of the car when he stepped back, reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a bag of marijuana, threw it into the back of the car and said "Look what I just found!" "You're both under arrest!"

To make a long story short, my friend hired a lawyer and through alot of "pre-trial" machinations, ended up pleading it down to a misdemeanor. And what prompted that was the signature line that runs through all black men's mind: If this goes to trial, who do you think they are going to believe? Two teenage black boys or a white policeman?

I shared this story with you for two reasons. First, when I was completing my Master's in Public Administration at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University in 1996, it was right at the same time the O.J. Simpson trial was captivating the nation. After the verdict, a few white students that I had gotten to know asked if i would facilitate a discussion regarding race and the O.J. verdict. I gladly obliged. These students knew I had done a lot of work over the years in this area and had heard me lecture on the topics of race relations, racial profiling and diversity many times, both inside and outside the classroom. The second reason is that I want to weigh in with my opinion on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates. There has been so much discussion around the issue of racial profiling and the relationship between communities of color and law enforement. How does racial profiling occur? How do these two events intersect, if at all?

When I faciliated the discussion with the white graduate students, I was surprised at how upset they were with the verdict. Over and over again their frustration bubbled to the surface. They kept referring to the "overwhelming" evidence, the fact that black folks and specifically their black friends were "close-minded," and that the police were being maligned for just doing their job. After giving them the space to "vent" their frustrations, I shared with them the above story. I wanted to put the epistemology of our "experiences" in front of us; in front to make the discussion more salient and real. I gave them one of the main working assumptions I use in my unlearning workshops: Reference determines value! What your reference point is determines the value you put on that particular experience. I asked them: Have the police ever planted evidence on you? Have you ever been stopped, pulled over or harassed because you are white? Have you ever been arrested in your own house? Have you ever been questioned because the assumption is that you either were in the wrong neighborhood, stolen something (assumed) or looking for something to steal (like being followed in a department store)?

I could tell from the looks on their faces that these were questions they never really thought about, and quite frankly, never had to think about or give any thought to. Why? Because that was the privilege, their privilege for being white. For them, because they never had similar types of experiences with the police, they were more inclined to give the police the benefit of the doubt; more inclined to view the police in a more favorable light. Their narrative didn't unfold the same way a black man's would. I remember telling them, after about the 5th time of hearing about the glove (but the glove, what about the glove? The police found a bloody glove on his property!): Nobody's disputing that there was a bloody glove found on his property. The question is: how did it get there? Reference determines value.

I also shared with them the fact that in and of itself, each of these experiences, taken separately, depending on the experience, seemed inconsequential. But aggregate, putting them all together, at best, makes one either relegate themselves to a subservient position by lowering their sense of security or self-esteem, and at worst, induces the behavior that is called "black rage."

When I heard of Mr. Gates experience, I wasn't surprised. What did surprise me was that President Obama would say that the Cambridge police acted "stupidly." Of course they acted stupidly. They arrested a man in his own home for disorderly conduct. But to comment on the issue, especially when you are trying to keep the country and congress focused on health care reform is the height of naivte. What was he thinking? Doesn't he know how race, class and the police are always a toxic combination? Didn't he realize that just the mention of that toxic combination would unintentionally take everyone's eyes OFF of whatever prize you were working to attain?

Will something positive come from this incident? I hope so. Will this incident serve as a springboard for a discussion of the larger issues of racial disparity, racism, the disproportionate amount of men of color incarcerated, sentencing disparities, affirmative action and oversight of police behavior? I hope so. But we should not leave it to politicians. Nor should we assume that hanging out and having a beer will be the start of much long-awaited policy changes. It is up to us, the people, to educate each other, to raise our level of understanding that race issues are much more insidious than we care to admit. We need to develop a more socially-cognizant perspective. We need to take the initiative and implement a paradigm shift. We need to start from the premise that race and racism plays into every situation like this. There is nothing wrong with accepting that premise as a "working assumption." And because it plays into every situation doesn't mean that we are bad people. It is not a terminal illness. It is learned behavior. And if it is learned, it can be unlearned. What does make one a "bigot," is the understanding that those attitudes and behavior are in play and not want to change around it. After that recognition, it then becomes the social cognitive question we must ask ourselves: How do we educate people around experiences that they have not had and behavior they are not aware of?

Finally, we need to take responsibility to help each other develop frameworks that translate these historical lessons into a language we all commonly understand. We also need to understand the power and necessity of building these very coalitions with each other and the fact that any movement like this is bound to self-destruct unless it links up with segments of the community we come to understand have been institutionally excluded from the halls of power and decision-making processes. This building of understanding, of community is a viable alternative, but it must remembered that we must work to close the loop and force the larger institutional structures to meet our needs, our desires for a more "color-conscious" (not color blind...there is a difference) society and not rely on surpluses coming from the very institutional structures we expect to replace.