tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10635442.post3927692307600164670..comments2023-10-21T03:07:18.017-05:00Comments on Enclave: Tennessean Reporter Owes the Problem of Racial Profiling More Than She GivesS-townMikehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05948307051485318061noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10635442.post-45439871207584907602009-08-30T08:48:18.383-05:002009-08-30T08:48:18.383-05:00As a driver again for the first time in about 4 ye...As a driver again for the first time in about 4 years in Nashville, I am amazed at the fact that I get pulled over a minimum of once a month. I suspect it has to do with my car. I drive a matte-black El Camino with tinted windows and a calligraphic font decal on the rear window. I've actually been stopped three times in Salemtown, once for "flying down the street" (by my speedometer, at 25 mph), as well as in the school zone, which is remarkable because I obey the speed limits carefully after receiving a questionable ticket as one of my last moments as a driver of the last car I drove. On the road for just over a year in this car, I've probably been stopped 20 times.<br /><br />Am I being profiled? Doubtless. Do I mind? Only when I'm actually inconvenienced by being late to a meeting or a movie or something time-dependent. Is it racial? That's a difficult question to answer. I always have my driver's license, proof of insurance, and vehicle registration ready when the officer appears at my door, and I have never received a ticket in any of these stops. My vehicle has never been searched. Is this because a polite and friendly white guy with all of his documents at the ready and no music playing is the driver of the vehicle? Or is it because there was tenuous grounds for the stop in the first place? Are they hoping to catch me ridin' dirty? And should this bother me?<br /><br />There are clearly some built-in assumptions at the time of the stop, and I accept these. I am not driving a car representative of my peer group. Are cars strong enough cultural indicators that it's possible to know enough about the drivers statistically to know when it's okay to stop them for something trivial with the expectation that something non-trivial could be discovered during the stop? And, in the end, would such statistical indicators be racially based? And even if it is racial, is it wrong? If there's actually evidence of car make and model and detailing being correlated with incidences of illegal behavior, I'd say the profiling is appropriate. It's clear that the officers don't know my race at the time of the stop. But what am I to make of "dim tail lights" requiring 3 patrol cars to surround me on Gallatin Road while I'm on the way to a friend's birthday party in East Nashville?<br /><br />We've had enough drug and gang activity in Salemtown in the two years that I've lived here, that I guess I've grown generally comfortable with the type of profiling I'm experiencing. But, if I were a young black man who kept getting stopped and were building a record of difficult-to-disprove moving violations, let me tell you: I would be pissed.Freddie O'Connellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15392136345471305672noreply@blogger.com