The more facts that emerge from the now-infamous encounter between the professor and the policeman in Cambridge, Mass., the less it looks like a classic case of racial profiling. The 911 caller who alerted police to a possible break-in never mentioned race until the operator asked for a description. The participants--a worldly Black professor and a white police officer who teaches others how to avoid racial tensions--are as atypical as they come. Both appear to have needlessly escalated a misunderstanding into an arrest, and, let’s face it, no such encounter has ever ended with beers at the White House, as this one is expected to this evening.
None of the unique circumstances of this case, however, should obscure the fact that minorities are commonly stopped by police for no other reason than the color of their skin. That’s why the early reports on the Cambridge incident touched such a raw nerve. As former secretary of State Colin S. Powell said the other day on CNN, “There is no African-American in this country who has not been exposed to this kind of situation.”
But as familiar as the “driving while Black” phenomenon is to African-Americans, it hasn’t penetrated the consciousness of many whites, despite a parade of ugly incidents.
In one highly publicized case a decade ago, two New Jersey state troopers wounded three unarmed Black men after shooting into their car during a routine traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.
In the ensuing uproar, the state found that when Blacks and Hispanics were pulled over on the turnpike, they were three times as likely as whites to be subjected to searches. Reversing years of denial, the state attorney general admitted what minorities had contended for years, that disparate treatment was “real, not imagined.”
New Jersey’s experience, and federal cases in seven jurisdictions from California to Pennsylvania, should have virtually ended racial profiling. But you can’t solve a problem unless you admit it exists, and too many law enforcement officials have been in denial.
Study after study has documented the same divisive trends. In Illinois, a report this month found that last year, minorities were more likely to be subjected to certain searches than whites, even though police were more likely to find contraband in the vehicles of white drivers. In the city of New York, a disproportionate number of minorities stopped by police since 2005 were frisked. The yield of weapons or contraband was minuscule.
The psychological roots of profiling, beyond lingering racism, aren’t hard to identify: Black men disproportionately hail from impoverished backgrounds and commit a disproportionate number of crimes. They represent about 6 percent of the American population, but about 37 percent of the prison and jail population, a gap so big that it also suggests profiling. In any case, it is no excuse for police to engage in guilt by association. Racial profiling is discriminatory, breeds distrust and wastes police resources.
Yet, it persists.
Change involves mayors and police chiefs insisting that profiling won’t be tolerated. It involves education, such as the classes taught by Sgt. James Crowley in Cambridge, and it involves restraint from both sides, including people in the position of Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. not imputing racist motives when an officer has reasonable grounds for questioning them.
Everyone at Thursday’s White House “beer summit” should be able to drink to that.
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