The great American writer James Baldwin once said, “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” I thought about those words recently, when considering the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two black men killed by the police.The police officers responsible for their deaths got off scott free. Unfortunately, this has been going on for a long time, and it will continue to happen.
I remember hearing about the Rodney King beating in 1991, which sparked major rioting in Los Angeles. That happened almost 25 years ago and it doesn’t seem as if anything has changed. Cops continue to assault, torture and execute black men with impunity. All the protesting, marching, letter writing and lobbying hasn’t seemed to have made any difference.
I thought about my own experiences with the police and law enforcement. I was profiled before I even got to the United States. When I was traveling from Nigeria to the U.S. in 1992, I had a layover in London. The customs officer asked me if I was willing to take a drug test. Being a naive 21-year-old, who had no dealings with law enforcement, I said yes, I had nothing to hide. Looking back on it, that was a huge mistake. By giving consent to them, British customs could have subjected me to an invasive body search. I guess they figured a young Nigerian man travelling with little luggage must have been a drug mule. A few hours later, I passed through customs in New York, and an officer asked to check my shoes. I consented to the search, because I was not aware of my rights at the time.
However, after several years of living in America, I know more about my rights. I have learned to never consent to a search, never let a cop into your house without a warrant, never agree to participate in a line up and to never speak to a police officer without a lawyer present. Like comedian Chris Rock said, every black man in America is a qualified paralegal!
I remember another disturbing experience in Oklahoma. I was working late at the cafeteria in the Student Union. I went into the closed cafeteria to grab some stuff for my lunch break. After work, I was waiting for my brother to pick me up. I was suddenly surrounded by three armed police officers who demanded to see the bag of chips I had hidden under my coat. (This was my first experience that cops lie.) I told them I had nothing hidden and said they should call my boss to confirm I worked there. The whole experience was infuriating and embarrassing.
Things didn’t get much better when I started driving. I got pulled over regularly, even though I wasn’t driving expensive cars. I think I stopped counting after the 10th time. And in my 10-year history of driving in Oklahoma, I only got one ticket for speeding. One time a cop pulled me over in my driveway and said I had strayed out of my lane — three blocks away! Incidentally, since I moved to California, I have only been pulled over three times in 11 years.
I’m not the only member of my family who experienced this treatment. My father, who used to work the late shift, was regularly pulled over even though he was in his 60s and driving a Daihatsu Charade, one of the cheapest cars on the market at the time. Now police officers, do you think a black man in his ‘60s, driving a cheap Japanese car, is really going to be a drug dealer or a threat to to the community?
Education and money do not necessarily protect you against these indignities. My brother, who is a doctor and his friend, who is a lawyer, both drives Mercedeses, and they regularly get shadowed by police officers.
As a black driver, you get paranoid about dealing with the police. I stopped drinking when I went out, because I feared getting a DUI. I broke up with a white, pot-smoking girlfriend because I dreaded I would get pulled over and found with one of her joints. She thought pot smoking was no big deal. She was once pulled over by the police. They found her stash, said it was good weed and let her go on her merry way. I tried to explain to her police wouldn’t give me that same leeway.
When I first moved to this country about 22 years ago, I couldn’t understand why Black Americans had so much rage and bitterness. But after living here for a few decades, I know where that anger comes from. When you are subject to this level of harassment and intimidation from law enforcement, it leaves a sour taste in your mouth. I condemn rioting and looting, but I understand how people get so frustrated they want to lash out at something.
You can tell people to turn their anger into something productive by writing to their elected representatives, making phone calls and lobbying, but that doesn’t seem to be working. Even hitting abusive cops with civil suits hasn’t stopped the problem. Personal injury lawyers see Maricopa County as a goldmine, because they usually win when they sue Sheriff Joe Arpaio for abusive policing. According to the New York Post, the City of New York paid $550M in personal injury and property damage settlements in 2011. But a million-dollar settlement won’t bring a dead loved one back. Abusive policing is bad for all of us — black, white, brown — and it needs to stop.
