Driving While Black — Racial Profiling

The war on drugs has strongly influenced law-enforcement practices. In 1986, as part of an initiative to stem trafficking, the DEA introduced racially biased drug courier profiles to highway patrols. Of course, officers still can¹t randomly stop citizens. They are bound by the Constitution and subsequent Supreme Court interpretation to have a reason‹what the court calls "articulatable" reasonable suspicion‹for doing so. But race and ethnicity are now considered grounds for reasonable suspicion in association with profiles of certain types of criminals, especially those running drugs or participating in gang activity. Claims of racist car stops increase, as does denial and subterfuge on the part of law enforcement. The offense of "Driving While Black," DWB, becomes a common‹and bitter‹joke among African Americans.

By the dawn of this decade, the issue of racial profiling is leading the nightly news. Practices brought to light in New Jersey have revealed the extent to which this insidious policy has become standard procedure. In 1999, after months of intense public scrutiny and a lawsuit, Governor Christine Todd Whitman dismissed NJ Chief Trooper Carl Williams and acknowledged that racial profiling was a problem in her state. Similar fights take place throughout the country. The American Civil Liberties Union identifies racial profiling as one of its highest priorities for the new decade and launches a national campaign to end the practice. Politicians cannot sidestep the issue any longer, and by the end of this era, it may well have come to a head.

Suspect is read his rights, Portland, Oregon. 1992 Frank Fournier, 1992