“What are you a brain surgeon?” A white police officer asked my black partner this when we lived in Boston.
My husband had just picked me up from work and we were driving our small car toward home. It was a street and neighborhood we knew, we had driven here many times before. At the end of the street we needed to turn left. A car in front of us sat at the red light and we slowed to wait behind it. When the light turned, we followed the car through the intersection and made the left turn, just as the car in front had. Then we saw it — the dreaded blue lights of a police car flash on. The cop was behind us.
The officer had been sitting in his parked vehicle. I saw him when we drove by and as we waited at the traffic light, I noticed the seemingly distracted white officer when I looked out my husband’s car window. I probably don’t need to tell some of you, that the driver of the car who had just made the left turn ahead of us, the one the cop ignored, was a white person.
We pulled over and rolled down the window. The officer came to the driver’s side. “What are you a brain surgeon? You can’t turn here.” We definitely could. We had done it many times before, even earlier the same week. There was no sign indicating we couldn’t and the white lady in front of us had just made the turn unbothered.
Then there was the state trooper at the airport. We were dropping my in-laws off for their flight back home to Kenya. We were running a little later than we’d like, so we opted to drop them off curbside at international departures. I’d accompany them into the airport to make sure they made it through security and my husband — who was driving all of us — would find somewhere to park.
As we pulled up to the curb where people all around were dropping off passengers, a state trooper pulled up behind us, blared his horn, flashed his lights, and said over the loud speaker, “you can’t park here.” We pulled away from the curb and drove past several cars who had pulled over to drop off their passengers. We found another empty spot, and pulled over again.
As we went to open the door, get out, and grab the luggage from the trunk, the trooper again pulled up right behind our car, turned on his lights, and announced over his loud speaker, “I said, you can’t park here!”
Determined that our Kenyan family not miss their flight home, we were desperate to let them out. And, we could see that this ordeal with the police was distressing them. So, we attempted to do a curbside drop off one last time. We did the same thing we had just done — pulled away from the curb, drove past all the other cars dropping off passengers, and this time pulled over in the very last drop off spot available. The trooper followed us.
The officer, a white man, passed all the other vehicles that were parked at the curb. He drove past all the people pulling out luggage and saying their goodbyes. None of them caught his attention the way my black husband had. This time he got out of his car, walked over to my husband’s open window and yelled “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, I SAID, YOU CAN’T PARK HERE!”
Now we come to the 3rd story. It went down on a beautiful day. The sun was shining and the weather lovely. We were driving north from our home in Massachusetts to visit my family in New Hampshire. Having lived here for 4 years with my family just a couple hours north, we’d done this drive many times. Just after crossing the state border, we ended up stuck in traffic that slowly crept along.
It was going to be a long trip. The road, a four lane highway with a median separating the 2 southbound lanes and the 2 northbound lanes, was crowded, back-to-back with vehicles. The people we shared the northbound road with, probably had a similar idea to ours, to sneak in a slow and restful weekend out of the city.
We were in the rightmost lane, furthest from the median. As we inched along, I saw a cop car parked in the median between the south and northbound lanes. Given my husband’s track record of getting pulled over for no good reason, it didn’t feel great to see an officer there on our route. But, surely, they wouldn’t find a reason to pull us over while we were stuck on this congested throughway.
I was wrong. Once we passed the police car, I saw them get on the road in the lane beside us. Then they moved into our lane behind our car. That’s when the lights came on.
We pulled over to the side. It felt as though everyone else in the other slow moving cars were watching it all. I saw what appeared to be puzzled looks on the faces of those in the vehicles next to us. We seemed to be thinking the same thing — what traffic law could we have broken?
The cop walked up to our window and told us that our inspection sticker was expired. It was a little sticker stuck to the lower right side of the car windshield — right in front of me on the passenger side. There’s no way the sticker was visible to the police officer from the place they were parked on the median. Also, it wasn’t expired.
In each of these traffic stops, when confronted, the white officer let us go about what we were doing. In each episode the cop was overly upset and aggressive from the get go. They approached my husband the same each time — with anger and disrespect. Though he committed no infraction, each officer had a reason for pulling us over — my husband was driving while black.
Now you might ask, how did you know these traffic stops were about race? You can’t be sure, can you? At least, this is what other people have asked.
I see your point. There’s no way that I can get inside any of the officer’s heads to see what their deepest thoughts and intentions were. It’s true, I don’t have a special mind reading ability.
The thing is though, these 3 experiences fit the larger narrative of racism that we know well. In our mixed race family, we’ve seen the same racist plot play out again and again. They fit with the stories and experiences of racism we have witnessed and those that friends and loved ones of color have shared with us. And they follow the history of racial inequity in this country.
There’s no race card to play. There’s an extensive narrative of racism that’s woven through different spaces, places, and communities we’ve known. There’s too much evidence to deny it. And to deny it’s about race, doesn’t make sense.
To live a truth day after day, and tell yourself that it isn’t true, that’s not an existence that works for us. We can’t live in and witness racial inequity and say it’s not there. It isn’t safe, or healthy, and it isn’t wise. We have to trust our experience, we have to trust the experience of the people of color in our lives, and we have to trust the data that says racism is alive and well in the US. We have not seen evidence that tells us the United States has undone the system of racialization that it was built on.
These are just 3 stories within a 1 year time frame. They are but a small part of the collection of stories of racism that span the few decades my husband and I have shared. They are 3 out of the many experiences that confirm how this country sees and values the man that I love. He must carry the weight of meaning that comes with living in a black, male body in the United States. Each story of racism in our anthology, reiterates the message we’ve received many times over that, though my husband is a great many wonderful things, in America, first and foremost, he’s a black man.
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