Color-Coded Crime: Driving While Black
Koriand'r Conyers

The African American male of the 21st Century is as diverse and different as the many shades and styles that he possesses. However, regardless of the type of car, style of dress, tone of skin, occupation, level of education or socio-economic status, African Americans remain victims of racial profiling. Riddled with discrimination, racial profiling is an ineffective crime prevention tool that results in the death and injury, the degradation and embarrassment, and the deprivation and violation of civil rights of African-American males.

On numerous occasions, racial profiling has resulted in the unnecessary death or injury of many African American males. The police are fighting a continuous war against drugs. In this war, police have devised several tactics and techniques to apprehend drug traffickers, but one has proven itself ineffective due to the fact the number of law-abiding citizens it harasses surpasses the number of criminals it arrests. With a strong foundation in discrimination, racial profiling bases suspicion on the color of ones skin, not their behavior. Though some police would argue that racial profiling is a “time-honored tool” for catching drug traffickers since drug dealers are stereotypically African American males, statistics clearly contradict this argument. New Jersey’s officials found that “[Interstate 95] troopers seized drugs or cash in 25 percent of their searches of whites, compared with 13 percent of searches of blacks.”(L.A. Times) Moreover, reports from the files of Florida Highway Parole show that in 1999 “73 percent of those arrested on drug charges in Florida highways were white males.”(ABC News) Though police have the knowledge that negates their negative stereotypes of black males, studies show that “70 to 75 percent of the people being pulled over and searched [on Interstate 95 in Maryland] are African American although they make up only 17 percent of the total drivers.” This information exposes racial profiling to be a useless weapon in the war against drugs and an unjustifiable excuse to harass or to harm African American males.

In fact, Deborah Mathis even states that police often see racial profiling as “an officer’s license to commit verbal harassment, intimidation, and physical abuse.”(Mathis 112) On October 12, 1996, five Brentwood police decided to use this license. At 2 A.M., the police pulled over Jonny Gammage and ordered Gammage out of the car. When Gammage stepped out of the car, he reached for his cellular phone. Police assumed the cell to be a weapon, tackled Gammage, and knocked the “weapon” from Gammage’s hand. “Held down with a boot to the neck,” Gammage was then severely beaten. With his ankles bound, unarmed, and handcuffed, Jonny Gammage died from suffocation.(ACLU) The fact that police continued to assault Gammage, even after he was “unarmed” and “constrained” suggests that police believed Gammage was guilty for more than “reckless driving.” Gammage was guilty of Driving While Black. DWB is the crime racial profilers find blacks guilty of when African Americans are “caught” driving. When police confront someone who is alone, take away their “weapon,” bind their hands and feet, and literally pin them to the ground by their throat, there is no other reason to explain the beating and murder of an innocent Afro-American man beside the fact that he was black male. Not only was the death of Jonny Gammage unjustifiable, but also unnecessary. Police claim to use racial profiling “to clean up the streets,” but the “confrontation” between Gammage and the police did not lead to the arrest of a drug trafficker or the bust of a huge drug deal, but the murder of a African American male. The uselessness of this discriminatory act reverses the roles of justice. Instead of protecting hard-working, law-abiding American citizens, racial profiling often leads to their injury or their death.

The questions, harassment, and temporary confinement that occur as a result of racial profiling subject African American males to a great deal of embarrassment and degradation. In textbooks and scholarly references across the United States, the American justice system is described as righteous, claiming every person accused of a crime to be innocent until proven guilty. However, in real life situations, the Justice System does not prove itself to be as fair and evenhanded. Rooted in the belief that all black people are guilty of some crime simply because they are black, racial profiling believes all African American males to be guilty until proven innocent. In search of evidence to assert their beliefs and to justify their racist behavior, racial profilers constantly stop and harass black men. Blinded by their discriminatory ways, racial profilers neglect to realize the effect “criminal treatment” has on those who are wrongly accused.

Undoubtedly, an Afro-American male feels strong sense of disgrace and humiliation when police publicly treat him as a felon and the only “crime” he is guilty of is DWB. Charles Carter, an elderly African American male, had the opportunity of experienced this feeling on the day of his 40th Anniversary. After Maryland’s Interstate 95 police stopped Carter, they thoroughly searched his car from contraband. The Carters “belongings were strewn along the highway, trampled and urinated on by dogs.” Police even denied Carter’s wife, Etta, “the simple dignity of a nearby restroom. (ACLU) Carter felt demeaned because the officers were so consumed with the fact that Carter was a drug dealer that they had complete disregard for his property, allowing his belongings to be mangled and soiled. Furthermore, American society has built the belief that a man’s job as a husband or a father is to protect his loved ones. As result, when a man is unable to safeguard his family, he feels an immense amount of shame. Though racial profiling angers African American males, the majority knows that it is best to comply with the officer. The uncertainty of knowing what to expect from being pulled over by a police officer humbles many African-American males. Carter felt embarrassed because he was helpless to prevent his wife from experiencing the mental abuse of being treated like a criminal. John Tolbert experienced a similar humiliating situation when police stopped and search him and his family for no given reason. Tolbert quotes “If I was a white man with his family, and said I was going on vacation as I told the officer, they never would have searched the car for two hours and embarrass and humiliate me and my family.” Clearly, African American males recognize that these degrading situations would have never taken place if the police did not discriminate against them. Racial profiling leaves African American men with the feeling that they must twice as hard to prove their innocence of a crime they did not commit. The natural assumption that “because you are black, you are guilty” belittles black males to the status of everyday ‘thug.’

Though the police treatment is the one of the most disgracing factors of DWB, the most humiliating feeling is when someone knows he is innocent, but he can not fight for his innocence. It is the police who must find him not guilty, but the extremes that some officers go to is completely debasing to African American males. Although in some cases a black male who does commit some kind of traffic violation, neither his behavior nor anything in his car give police a legitimate reason to punish him beyond a traffic ticket. If the America preaches “let the punishment fit the crime,” then clearly America recognizes that the case of Nelson Walker was not fair, but degrading and shameful. Pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt on Interstate 95 in Maryland, Nelson Walker, a black young man, was detained for two hours as police searched and then dismantled his car in a futile search of contraband. (Mathis 115) Then, to add insult to injury, police offered no apology, but a screwdriver and the words “You are going to need this.” (ACLU) Even though the police do have the right to search you car after you give them permission, they also have the responsibility to protect and to serve American citizens. After Walker permitted police to search his car, they literally destroyed the car in their search and left Walker stranded on the side of the highway. The police involved in the Walker event devalued this young African American to the point where they did not even believe he was worth helping, even after Walker was undeniably found innocent of having any kind of contraband. The very words and reports from the black male victims of racial profiling prove racial profiling to be embarrassing and degrading to African American males. How else would someone expect Afro-American men to react when the people who have sworn to protect them are the same ones who want to place them behind bars?

Racial profiling deprives and violates the civil rights of African American males. Civil rights are broadly defined as the equal opportunity and treatment for minority groups. America boasts of how all races, regardless of color, are guaranteed civil rights, but everyday discrimination denies African American males these rights. One form of discrimination in particular deprives black men of their rights on the road and as American citizens. Indeed, racial profiling denies black males the same treatment and opportunity as white males. Racial profilers treat black males as if they have already committed a crime and all the officer needs to do if find the evidence to prove it.

In fact in the report “Contacts between Police and the Public,” The Bureau of Justice Statistics found that the percentage of blacks drivers who were either “stopped and searched”, “physically searched during the stop,” handcuffed, or arrested were more than twice the percentage of white drivers who underwent the same treatment.(JBS) If the same crime is being committed on the same highways, and the only distinction between the two percentages is the “suspects’” skin color, then clearly racial profiling is playing a major role in the denial of equal treatment. As stated in the 14th and 15th Amendment, civil rights also assure the rights of an America citizen, including freedom from discrimination and civil liberties. One such right is “the right of a citizen to travel upon the public highway.” The case of Thompson v. Smith claims the right to travel as “a common Right which [man] has under the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” (MSLawyer) The problem is an African American male can never get the opportunity to fully enjoy his right to travel if police continually stop and harass him for DWB. The phrase “Driving While Black” in itself proves racial profiling to be a violation of civil rights, because it sends the messenger to black males that because they are driving and they have brown skin, that are committing a crime. The suggestion that a crime is being committed leads black males to believe they do not have the right to drive, when in actuality, Afro-American males are guaranteed the right. Furthermore, the fact that no such messenger is being sent out to Caucasian people proves the practice of racial profiling to be unequal and racist.

Although some police are unconscious to their discriminating ways, there are some police officers who knowingly mistreat and target African American men. In doing so, these prejudice officers openly ignore the civil rights of black males. As the story of Robert Wilkins proves, the kind of vehicle, level of education, or type of dress a male may have, it is the color of ones skin that determines how some police officers will treat a man. In May 1992 on Interstate 95 in Maryland, police pulled over Wilkins and requested to search his car. When Wilkins refused, the police searched his car for drugs anyway and forced Wilkins and two of his family members to stand in the rain for “an extended period of time.”(ACLU) Not only was Wilkins “completely humiliated,” but Wilkins was also violated. Though “a police officer may legally request permission to search from any person who has “apparent authority” over the vehicle,” a motorist does “have the right to refuse to give permission.” (Meeks 44) Acting upon racial profiling, the officer blatantly disregarded Wilkins’ rights to refuse a search and his rights to equal and just treatment. Racial profilers allow their own prejudice beliefs, not the law, to determine how they treat black males. As a result, police deprive African American males of the rights guaranteed to them by law in the Constitution. John Conyers once said “I am a taxpaying, good doing, respectable, respectful American citizen, and I don’t want anything more or anything less than equal protection of the law that is given to my right neighbor.”(ABC News) The very least that black males request from American society is to receive what has been promised to have been theirs for decades, equality. The only thing that prevents this promise of equal opportunity and treatment from being kept is racist discrimination, such as racial profiling, that victimizes innocent people. It is impossible to claim the existence of “civil rights for all,” when one section of the population is being treated much differently than the other.

As an effective form of discrimination, all facets of racial profiling proves to be more than an ineffective crime prevention tool, but one of the black males’ worst enemies. The prejudice stereotypes lead police to overreact and to harm or kill African American males. The blinding racism results in police ignorance to the psychological and emotional effects of “criminal treatment” on black males. The discriminatory actions of police deny the civil and constitutional rights of Afro Americans. As Mathis argues, the combination of these negative effects allows the African American male to have the constant feeling that he is not at home.