Driving While Black : What To Do If You Are A Victim of Racial Profiling

A practical handbook for people who want to be safe and do something.

Racial profiling does happen. And while cases where victims find themselves looking down the barrel of a policeman's gun make the six o'clock news, dozens of less extreme, yet troubling, examples occur every day. Cabs that whiz by only to be seen stopping for "safer"-looking people just up the block; being asked for multiple pieces of identification when making purchases with credit cards; being followed around a department store by salespeople and security while never being asked if they need any assistance; being detained for hours and extensively searched in an airport or train station--Driving While Black clearly defines the system officially known as CARD (class, age, race, dress) and offers advice about how to handle potentially life-threatening situations with the police, as well as recourse for readers who suspect their civil rights have been denied due to racial profiling.

A book written to save lives, Driving While Black is not just for people of color, but for anyone who likes to wear a baseball cap, baggy jeans, sneakers, and a tee shirt and finds they are often treated like a "suspect."

It happens every day: at a seemingly routine traffic stop, a cop approaches your car with his gun drawn. You're checking out some clothes in your favorite store and notice you're being followed by security. Dressed in a business suit with arm outstretched, you watch as dozens of unoccupied cabs pass you by. A woman clutches her purse and hurriedly crosses the street when she sees you walking down the sidewalk towards her. For many African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and Asian Americans, such incidents are known as DWBs--Driving While Black--or examples of racial profiling. Kenneth Meeks's well-researched and disturbing book details the origins, practices, consequences, and solutions to this problem. "From a legal point of view racial profiling is tricky to prove," he writes. "Seldom do investigators recover a smoking gun with fingerprints on it. This is why a national movement has been launched by politicians of color and civil rights leaders to mandate that law enforcement agencies keep statistics of whom they are stopping, questioning, detaining, and searching." There are numerous case histories in Driving While Black, including Samuel Johnson's terrifying highway encounter with the New Jersey State Police, Amy Bowllan's Amtrak nightmare in Baltimore, and Yvette Bradley's airline ordeal, all of which involved racial profiling on a number of levels. Along with the instructive horror stories, Meeks includes nonconfrontational tips on dealing with profiling: stay calm, carry identification at all times, take names, never run, and never go to the same precinct that violated your rights to fill out a complaint form. Informed and impassioned, Meeks's book is both a practical guide and a call to arms. --Eugene Holley Jr.