As a middle aged white woman, I would never dream that I would be able to stand in the shoes of anyone who has been victimized by the police in a case of racial profiling, but oddly enough, I believe that it happened.
Earlier this month, I drove to Washington, D.C. to attend a unity rally and to promote healthcare insurance reform with Reverend Dunning. My college aged daughter accompanied me, and with banner in hand, we spent the day in D.C. It was a beautiful day, and we had a great time. Several days prior to the rally, I had decorated my car with posters made available by MoveOn.Org which say, "Real Health Care Reform=A Strong Public Option. And of course, I still proudly display my "Obama 2008" bumper stickers on my back window. They've been there for more than two years now.
I was driving north on I95 and turned off on I895 as I headed home. My daughter, tired from our day, propped her seat back to take a nap. I glanced in the rear view mirror and noticed that there was a State Police car several hundred feet behind me, so I signaled, and moved to the right lane. Of course I checked my speed and was glad to see that I had not been exceeding the recently changed speed limit in the area. I glanced in the rear view mirror a couple of minutes later, and noticed that the police car was behind me. He stayed behind me for at least two miles, and then moved into the left lane as if he was going to pass me. He drove next to my car, and then dropped back behind me again. At one point it looked like he was going to make a "U" turn and go in the opposite direction on I895, but then, he pulled next to me (but not up far enough to see me) and then put on his lights. He was pulling me over, so I signaled, pulled off onto the shoulder, and wondered out loud "what the heck is going on". My daughter woke up and pulled her seat into an upright position. The officer approached the drivers side of my car, and as soon as he saw me, he said, "Oh, I apologize, I thought your tag expired in 1/09 but now I see that it says 11/09." He told me to be careful as I merged back into traffic, and returned to his car. He pulled in front of me and I proceeded through the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel. Within minutes of exiting the tunnel, I saw the same police officer on the side of the road, having pulled over a black woman and he was writing a citation.
Now maybe she was speeding or had some other offense that was deserving of a citation, but I had a very eerie feeling that the officer pulled me over because he made assumptions about my race after looking at my car. I think he tried to see what I looked like, but was unable to because of the posters on my side, rear windows. I still had a bit of an adrenalin rush from having just been pulled over, and I had a sinking feeling in my stomach about the likely reason I had been pulled over.
I can't help but wonder if the outcome of my experience would have been different if I had been black.
While I don't like the word "stupid", and was a little surprised when it was used at the press conference the other night, I'd like to know the last time a white man was arrested in the sanctity of his own home for "disturbing the peace". Believe me, I come from a rather loud family, and we gather together for breakfast every Sunday morning. There have been plenty of times that we've disturbed the peace at my mother's home, yet none of us ever faced the threat of arrest. We should be able to feel safe in our own homes.
As a mental health clinician, we sometimes refer to someone who has a bruised ego as experiencing a narcissistic injury. It happens when someone feels that their position or authority has been threatened. In order to experience such an injury, one needs to be prone to narcissism. The officer in this case should have been able to diffuse the situation in Professor Gates home by apologizing for the inconvenience, and by telling Professor Gates that he just wanted to make sure that his home remained safe. A bruised ego got in the way, and now it's become a huge media event. It just didn't need to happen. The situation could have been handled so much better.
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