3. Racial Profiling Everyday
While we normally hear about violent racial profiling in the news, non-violent racial profiling happens everyday. Many African-Americans are constantly suspected of committing crimes or being likely to commit crimes which leads to many unnecessary 911 calls. While Oregon State Representative Janelle Bynum, an African American woman, was campaigning door to door in a Clackamas County neighborhood before the 2018 midterm elections, a white woman in the neighborhood called 911 to report her. The caller was concerned by Bynum’s behavior and she reported to the 911 operator that Bynum was going door to door and spending a lot of time typing on her cell phone. Bynum was using her cellphone to take notes on what her constituents wanted to see from her before her next election. The caller made no attempt to speak with Bynum and did not answer the door when Bynum came to her house before she called 911. Thankfully the officer who responded to the call was very professional and the situation resolved smoothly with the caller later apologizing for the unnecessary call. The white woman had every opportunity to speak with Bynum and find out what she was doing, however, she chose to call 911 on an unarmed, non-violent, professionally dressed black woman.⁸
Bryan Stevenson, a death row lawyer and author of the New York Times bestseller Just Mercy, was also racially profiled by his neighbors. Stevenson had just finished a very late night at his office in Atlanta and pulled up to his Midtown Atlanta apartment. One of his favorite stations was playing on the radio, so he decided to sit in the car and listen for a little while longer. Fifteen minutes later a SWAT car pulled up twenty feet from Stevenson and two officers dressed in military gear got out. Stevenson decided to get out of his vehicle to go into his house but as soon as he opened the car door one of the officers drew his gun, pointing it at Stevenson and he said “Move and I’ll blow your head off!” Stevenson managed to stay calm throughout the situation even while he was subjected to an unwarranted frisk as well as car search. When the SWAT officers could not find anything criminal about Stevenson they let him go without a word of apology. Had Stevenson tried to run he surely would have died just because a neighbor racially profiled him and called the cops.⁹
To many white people, myself included, these stories sound absurd. We could never imagine having the cops called on us for sitting in our car outside of our house or for walking through a neighborhood canvassing for re-election, but this is the truth of racial profiling. Traffic stops are another example of everyday racial profiling. Officers are more likely to pull over African Americans than either white or hispanic people. The outcome of traffic stops also show racial bias
“For example, when pulled over for speeding, black drivers are 20% more likely to get a ticket (rather than a warning) than white drivers, and Hispanic drivers are 30% more likely to be ticketed than white drivers. Black and Hispanic motorists are about twice as likely to be searched compared to white drivers.”¹⁰
Unfortunately this form of racial profiling has actually been approved by the Supreme Court in United States vs Brignoni-Ponce. This case concluded that race could be used as factor in deciding which motorists should be stopped. This particular case had the greatest impact on Mexican Americans as the ruling was about racially profiling in order to find undocumented immigrants. “The Court said that ‘the likelihood that any person of Mexican ancestry is an alien is high enough to make Mexican appearance a relevant factor.’ ” The idea that the US Supreme Court upholds the idea that it is okay to racial profile people is extremely unnerving given how many African-Americans die each year because they were incorrectly racially profiled, it is also further proof that the US is inherently a white supremacist nation.¹¹
