'Every Black Person Has Their Own Story Of Racial Profiling'

[Cali_Democrat]

My Family Has Been Racially Profiled Everywhere from Harvard to Our Own Home
Posted: 08/28/2014 12:40 pm EDT

What happened to Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri has resonated across the country with African Americans because all of us feel that it could have easily happened to any of us.

Every black person has their own story of racial profiling, especially black men. Any white person, not just police, engages in racial profiling when they suspect, avoid, follow, report or challenge a black person simply because of their race and their own idea of where black people "belong."

My own family is more typical than exceptional. I was about ten years old, and my family was living in a newly integrated part of Los Angeles in the 1960's. We had been on a family outing to the more exclusively white area of the San Fernando Valley. When returning at the end of the day, my father noticed a police car had begun following us. The police car followed us fully ten miles back to our neighborhood and didn't stop until my father pulled into the driveway of our own home.

As we exited the car, the officer got out to question my father. I remember hearing the officer ask my father, "Where do you live?" Insulted and incredulous, my father responded, "I'm standing in front of my home." After inspecting his driver license, the officer left. But he left my father standing there, embarrassed as a grown man, humiliated in front of his family, and reminded once more that in spite of his college education, middle class home and tidy children, he was no more than a criminal suspect in the eyes of America.

Read more:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/madison-t-shockley-ii/family-racially-profiled-harvard_b_5724260.html

[Heidi]

1. Kick!

[Blue_Tires]

2. +1

I certainly have a couple...

[LoisB]

4. So do I.

[treestar]

3. Wow, egg on that cop's face!

[loyalsister]

5. And, many if not most white Americans have stories

at least somewhat similar to the one on a poster seen in Ferguson (having trouble posting).

A white guy holding a poster that says....

"At 18 yrs. old in Festus Missouri, I shot a cop with a BB gun

Why am I still alive??"

My own is when I got caught shoplifting and the guy felt so sorry for me he offered me candy while we waited for my parents (rather than police). Skittles!!!

[Cali_Democrat]

7. Yet some people will continue to deny the existence of white privilege. nt

[gollygee]

13. Tim Wise has a story

about how when he was in college he was driving his girlfriend's car one day and locked the keys in it, and was trying to break into it, and a police officer stopped and told him he was doing it wrong and helped in break into it. I wish I could find a link to that story because I'm sure it's online but Tim Wise has written so much about racial profiling that it would be hard to find it.

[Cali_Democrat]

15. That reminds me of a video I saw online

People were conducting an experiment where a young black male and a young white male made it look like they were trying to steal a bike by messing with the lock.

Most people who walked past the young white male looked, but just kept on walking past.

Most people who walked past the young black male stopped and confronted him...called the cops in many cases.

The only difference? The color of their skin.

Racism is very real and black people live it.

[loyalsister]

16. That was a good one

I would love to see a few hundred of those anecdotes published as a collection.

[seabeyond]

6. yes. that should be a basic cluein. nt

[PeaceNikki]

8. Did you see what happened to a Cook County (IL) judge last month?

A north Side business owner slapped a 79-year-old Cook County judge in the face, spit on her and called her “Rosa Parks” after becoming angry that she was smoking near him outside the Daley Center, authorities said.

Monday's attack outside the courthouse came as a shock to friends of Judge Arnette Hubbard, a silver-haired African-American jurist who was the first female president of the National Bar Association and Cook County Bar Association, both black lawyers’ groups.

“She’s an icon in our community,” said Delores Robinson, past president of the Cook County Bar Association, who noted that Hubbard, a former commissioner on the Cook County Board of Elections, had been an international election observer in Haiti and South Africa and had long been a voice on civil rights and women’s issues.

Cook County prosecutors said Tuesday that Hubbard was outside the Daley Center smoking a cigarette when she walked past David C. Nicosia, 55, who became angry that she was smoking near him.

The two argued and Nicosia, who is white, stepped near her face and said, “Rosa Parks, move,” and spit in her face, prosecutors said. As he walked away, the Law Division judge followed him and called out for assistance.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-man-charged-for-slapping-spitting-on-judge-outside-daley-center-20140715-story.html

charged with four counts of aggravated battery and a hate crime - $90,000 bail.

[MineralMan]

11. Dude's getting some comeuppance, it seems.

[cascadiance]

12. As for myself as a white person who grew up as a "minority" through most of my childhood...

... I noticed it very much when I finally was in a white majority in high school starting my sophomore year, how much this white privilege was unconsciously present and how it affected the one woman of color in our high school who I think hung out mostly with a group of kids heavily in to drugs as I don't think she was accepted by the other white people there. I never really felt at home there, and though I certainly haven't had to endure the real crap noted here that African Americans have felt here, I did feel more isolation when living in more repressive atmospheres that need to be cleaned up more.

I started elementary school in an area in DC area where most of the school was African American through 1st grade, and my best friend was black. Moved to Hawaii where I was a white minority amongst many Asian Americans there, and then lived overseas in Thailand and Turkey, where we were obviously minorities in those countries as well. Even at the international and American military base schools, the atmosphere was a lot more diverse there too with people of races and religions all treating each other equally, which is why I keep more in contact with them than I do where I finished up High School, even though I was part of the white privilege majority there. One of them, who I consider a good friend, who's African American, lives close by to me here in Portland too.

It is too bad we really can't have a more constructive effort towards more desegregation (and class desegregation too) of our schools so that we can grow in to a more diverse society that respects each other, regardless of our class, religion, or race.

It is probably not that coincidental that I wound up here in Portland, which is more diverse not only class-wise and racially than many areas, but is also the state with the least amount of religious dogma in the country too.

http://www.oregonlive.com/mapes/index.ssf/2014/02/oregon_one_of_countrys_most_li.html

I like diversity, and I want to keep it that way. I only hope that we can fix the Fergusons of the world and at least start the trend for the next generation to not have their minds polluted any further. We need to also find a way to avoid the coming class war, which I see happening unless we can get the corporate corruption of our government to end.

[Liberal_in_LA]

14. kick

[Jamaal510]

17. I don't have much of a story,

but my big sister has had quite a few stories to share over the years. She would always tell the family about when store employees would follow her around in suspicion. Same thing with my Dad. He says that he hates it when he goes into mom-and-pop stores, and he gets stared at closely and be harassed about looking around instead of buying something right away.

[Enthusiast]

18. Kicked and recommended!

Thank you, Cali_Democrat.