Racial Profiling Is The Pits, Pt. II

Last week, me and my niggas Trav and HotTub (yes his name is HotTub) embarked on a road trip to Durham for some ThisIsRealMusic.com business. We rented a van, departed Philadelphia, hooked up the iPod, kopped the snacks and put the Chrysler on cruise. These things are simple and normal and the exact opposite of extraordinary. That is unless you are three black men driving a van down the 95 and 85.

We were stopped TWICE on the way to Durham. Once in southern Virginia and then again a few miles past the Va-NC border. These were classic cases of racial profiling, aka driving while black aka a nigger's America.

Let me tell you a little bit about gay people. They annoy me. Not because they are men that do other men missionary style or women couples where one looks like Naomi Watts and the other looks like Gary Busey. No, they annoy me because they negligently compare their plight to that of the negro american. There is just absolutely no comparison. Three gay men won't be pulled over without cause because a cop wouldnt know they were gay, lest they were wearing pink, lime green and periwinkle sweaters tied around their necks, singing Liza Minelli at the top of their feminine lungs with the windows down. Even still, they'd be allowed to go about the merry way. But the fuzz can't spot a blackie from a mile away and the mere sight of brown skin seems to be reason enough to put on the blinkers and protect and serve.

Somewhere below Richmond, we were in our groove. We were making good time, talking business and, of course, rappin about music. That's when Trav frantically turns down the music, asks "what's that sound?", looks in the rear view and sees some unmarked car flagging us down with blinking lights and a siren. The cop walks up on the driver side, asks for licence and registration, but gives us no idea why we've been stopped. At this time, HotTub is just waking up (he slept for the whole trip except during the times when we stopped for gas or were stopped to be racially profiled), Trav meanwhile, is on pins and needles. He's the kinda black dude that is completely aware of the police/blackman dynamic and, instead of reacting with defiance, indignation or exasperation...reacts with frayed nerves and calculated submission. My first question to the kop would have been "may I ask why I've been stopped." Trav never asked the question in the midst of a 5-8 question interrogation. Trav also generally thinks of me as a loose cannon and confrontation-escalator, so I was trying to just be still and quiet, so as not to heighten his concern over where this encounter was going. But then, after no explanation, this pig cop asks Trav to step out of the car. At that point it was like "screw this cooperation madness", so I asked this idiot cop why were pulled over. His response: "Ohhhhh, some speeding, changing lanes without signals and a bunch of other stuff." Huh?!?!?!!!!! "Some speeding"???? what is that exactly? Did u clock us going 70 in a 55 or was it just "some speeding."

Anyways, Trav steps out the whip and follows the cop back to his car, where the cop has Trav actually sit inside the effin car!!!!! When has this ever been protocol? They sit there for a good 10 minutes, while the cops rabid, drug sniffing German Sheppard barks in Trav's ear. After he checks licenses, comes back to the car and asks me about the trip (to make sure our stories check) he lets us go without issuing a ticket, issuing a warning, nada. Know why? Because we werent speeding, driving reckless or doing anything other than very normal things that people do when they drive.

Let me tell you a little bit about black men. Some of these niggas make it hard out here for a Vince. If you don't know, a fairly common practice for kats in the drug game is to travel up and down the 95 and 85, in rental cars, with drug packages. Thats how the drugs make it from the docks to the blighted urban centers up and down the east coast. So, I guess, a cop sees some young black men in the driver and passenger seats and figures "what are these two monkeys doing in a van, with Pennsylvania plates? they obviously arent taking their family to Disney World." So they pull us over ("us" meaning young black men in general) to check out what we have in the whips. Similar to when I got pulled over on S.R. 50 in Florida, a state road that runs East-West from Hernando County (a suburban Tampa county where I used to live) to Orlando. Apparently, drugs make their way West, from Orlando to Marion, Sumter counties on SR 50...so when I was returning from hanging with some friends in Orlando one night, I got pulled over, had my car sniffed by a dog, patted down and told to stand with both of my hands behind my head. This all speaks to the dilemma that racial profiling poses...there is a moral responsibility to respect the individual ur profiling. Imputing me with criminal activity based on the color of my skin is downright disrespectful and demeaning. Then again, there is the responsibility to monitor criminal activity and certain criminal activities are perpetrated by a certain profile. I can't totally dismiss this. If me and my nigs happened to be transporting the drugs, then cop who stopped us would be prescient as opposed to a profiling bigot.

Let me tell you a little bit about white cops. Excuse my language, but the tend to be some fairly pronounced d-heads. About an hour after we were first pulled over -- this time I'm driving -- this cop starts tailing me, then pulls beside me and drives right there (a good 10 miles below speed limit) for half a mile. Finally I just pull over without him even putting on his signals. At this point I'm fuming, Trav is petrified and HotTub is snoring. I'm enraged because I don't speed. I don't speed because I used to speed when I was a young buck and it resulted in a suspended license. So these days, specifically on road trips, I set the cruise control at about 5 mph over the speed limit and just chill. I know for a fact that cops won't bother vehicles as long as they stay with 8 miles of the speed limit, since you dont get two points on ur license unless ur are 9mph over the limit and above.

So this a-hole kop pulls up on the passengers side. Asks for license and registration. He's about 50, looks, talks and acts like a southern football coach, which basically means he looks like Nick Nolte, talks like Dubya and acts like an alpha-male schmuck with one testicle and penis envy. Once again, we arent told why we were stopped. But after a string of questions and the most detailed inspection of our licenses and rental agreement, he asks The Tub, "Hey, buddy, you had that seat belt on the whole time?" Tub being a grown man in the back of a van. After Tub says he's been wearing the seatbelt the whole time, Nolte asks Trav to step out of the van and follow him to the squad car, where he once again gets interrogated while the licenses are run and a German Sheppard foams at the mouth behind his ear. And once again, Trav is let go without a warning or ticket and barely an explanation for why we were stopped other than "It looked like your partner didnt have his seat belt on." WTF?!?!?!!!

Let me tell you a little bit about HotTub. He's the kinda guy that appears to be high all day. I don't know if it's the oblivious smile or the things he says, but whatever it is, it's the pinnacle of comedy. As we got back on the road, the playlist was in the middle of "Happiness Is A Warm Gun", a Beatles track. HotTub decides to turn that melody into a country song, whose chorus merely refrains, "Gon' get me a nigger, gon' get me a nigger, gon' get me a nigger, hang him from a tree." Tub's hijinks totally trivialized the weight of what we were going through, but it was hilarious way to articulate what we were all basically thinkin: Aint nuttin changed.

Let me tell you a little bit about Barak Obama and Jemele Hill. Them two niggas is successful, but don't get it twisted. I love how everyone looks at this Obama phenomenon as an indication that we have reached this beautiful space in American race relations. Please cut the charade. As great as it is that people can see past Obama's skin and recognize some incredible talent and commendable drive and encouraging ambitions and visions -- that doesnt mean that this represents even a small slice of the way America operates and handles its ongoing relationship with minorities. The same way I can view Hillary Clinton as very capable women, but generally consider most women to be ditzy broads that welcome deviant forms of domination. Because straight up, Obama and Tiger could be driving that same van and they'd have gotten pulled over, too. feel me?

I mean, my friend Jemele is most definitely an American success story. This is a black woman, barely 30, raised in a single parent home in Detroit of all places. Now she's on ESPN, wearin make-up givin it to Skip Bayless...she's a star in an industry dominated by ridiculous white men with agendas. As I've said before, just thinking about her success makes me smile. She's also one of the people that an ignoramus would point to and say, "See, America is fine. It aint like it was before Rosa Park's feet hurt." And this is partly true. There are more opportunities afforded and it might be easier to achieve these days, but there are core injustices that remain a huge part of the black existence. Me, Trav and The Tub are all law abiding, college educated, upstanding black men. We were on our way to NC Central University (a historically black college) to document a hip hop class and talk to kids and generally do stuff that the average buffoon doesn;t associate with black men, since we're typical viewed as criminal-minded rubes with big penises, potent sperm and no sense of responsibility. Yet, we were subjected to the worse kind of infringement AND the pre-existing dynamic our ethnic gender has with police forced us to kowtow and behave like kids. It's the most emasculating experience you can imagine, one that had Trav (the dude forced to sit in these cop cars) holding back tears.

That's what it's like for us, many times. You fight your whole life on a mission to achieve and, in many ways, put your fellow black men on your back so to speak and show the skeptics how we get down. And then they hit you with one of my favorite American sentiments: Not so fast, nigger.