Reading while black: Canadian man stopped by police after reading a book in his car

Louizandre Dauphin was having a tough week.

The Bathurst, New Brunswick, director of parks, recreation and tourism says he'd been thinking about the shooting deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile by police officers, and needed to get out of his apartment.

In an Instagram post, Dauphin wrote, "I decided to take a drive to the Stonehaven Wharf and sit by the water on this cold, rainy July day and try to pacify my mind by reading the works of Timothy Keller and C.S. Lewis."

On his drive back home, he was pulled over by an officer with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

"Thankfully, he is kind and respectful and asks me the usual questions; where I'm from and where I'm going," Dauphin wrote. "I tell him that I was at the Stonehaven Wharf reading a book pointing to the two books in the passenger seat. He smiles and says that a few citizens in Janeville called the police because of a suspicious black man in a white car was parked at the Wharf for a couple hours."

After verifying Dauphin's identity, the police officer let the former high school English teacher go.

"So, a black male, sitting in his car, reading a book is suspicious activity," Dauphin wrote. "Good to know. At this rate, I may never leave my home again." He ended the post (below) with the hashtag "#DangerousNegro.”

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-reading-while-black-20160712-snap-htmlstory.html