Driving while black
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Anonymous
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This is a question for black people.
I have an almost 16 year old daughter. She has her drivers permit and has been learning to drive. She is very good at it. Now my question is how often where you stopped (by a police officer) while driving. My daughter looks like me. She is darker than her brother who looks like his dad. My son is blond haired and blue eyed just like his dad. Infact we get stares when he calls me mum in public. We are from England and moved here two years ago because of my husbands job. I am scared out of my mind that my daughter will say something inappropriate and get arrested. She has a very sharp tongue and is very sassy. We have been working on it but she doesnt seem to get it. Please help me, i am loosing sleep because of this. Thank you |
Anonymous
| It is inappropriate to be sharp tongued and sassy with police officers no matter what race you are. Why are you even bringing race into this? As well as your sons color? |
Anonymous
| Op her: because in this country my son is considered white while my daughter is considered black. So i dont worry about my son as much as i worry about my daughter. The treatment i receive when i am with my daughter is far different from the treatment my husband gets when he is with our son. In England nobody looks at an interracial couple but here there is always that double look. Like they didnt see it right the first time. Sorry this has been my experiance. |
Anonymous
| But what I am trying to say is: she may get in trouble for being too sharp tongued, race MAY or may not exacerbate it. I mean, I am white and I would never be sharp tongued around a police officer. |
Anonymous
| Oh, I am sorry, I missed the line saying the question is for black people. I guess you can disregard my answer then. |
Anonymous
| OP, I understand your fears for your daughter. I also think it's appropriate that for a period of time after she receives her driver's license she be limited in time and place in her driving (no nighttime driving, no driving with other teens in the car, possibly only driving with an adult). That is frequently done in this country. She also needs to understand the consequences if she is ticketed will involve your entire family because your insurance rates will skyrocket if a teenage driver is ticketed for speeding or another moving violation. So she must acknowledge that her behavior will have consequences. She cannot control her race and the police reaction to it (sadly) but she can control her own conduct. |
Anonymous
| AA woman here- I don't think I have ever been profiled by the police before. So I don't worry about that. But it has certainly happened to many AA men. But I have been profiled in stores. In my late teens, my sister and I were asked to leave a 7-11. I was a college student looking for some junk food, trying to decide what to buy and the guy assumed I was there to steel. Years later, an idiot at dress barn accused me of trying/attempting to steel their cheap @ss clothes. (i still refuse to shop there). This past summer at a county fair, I noticed a worker in a (fake) jewelry booth eyeing me very (too) closely, the whole time I was in his booth. The first 2 times, I was just in the store shopping and didn't even know I was being watched. And the reaction from the store keeper was shocking and humiliating. It really upset me. The county fair guy was annoying and stupid. I just told myself that he has just lost a sale. I am in my 40s and can only think of 3 times that this has happened - so it has been a rare thing. With the police, I've been stopped several times for traffic issues (that were my fault) and the cops have always been nice and I'd say when I was younger I usually got a ticket (speeding). In the past 5 yrs, I can think of 5 times where I was stopped and they let me off with a friendly warning. But as I said, I know of AA men who have had completely different experiences. |
Anonymous
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I have a huge problem with people like OP, and feel that their attitude is a reason a good chunk of people.don't take some race issues seriously. If your daughter gets in trouble for sassing a police officer it's because she sassed a police officer. I find it ridiculous that you'd pull the race card on that. Are there asshole cops who profile? Sure. But anyone knows that sassing back a police officer will not end well, no matter what race you are.
What happened to the pp in the stores is inexcusable profiling because she didn't do anything to bring on the negative attention. |
Anonymous
| PP here: I was just laughing to myself. One of the recent times I got stopped was on 1-95 near Baltimore. There was some kind accident - during rush hr - it was like 110 degrees and I was trying to get my friend to the airport. The cop was standing in the hot rd diverting traffic in some weird way, and I didn't get it and I didn't see him. So I tried to go around all of the cars. Then I saw this really angry, overheated, sweaty cop aggressively waving me to the side of the rd. He was pissed. He said one of his buddies had recently been hit and that I had almost hit him and that shouldnt have passed from the left side. I thought I was about to go to jail. But I calmly made my case, feigned ignorance of what he had been trying to do, assured him that I hadn't been rushing/speeding. And miraculously, he let me go. Phew. That was a close call. |
Anonymous
You make a valid point, but OP's a mom and not sure how the police are here. I get why she's worried and I don't fault her for asking the question. |
Anonymous
| Wait, wait... is that CHIPOTLE I smell? |
Anonymous
| I agree she's asking a valid question, but it also seems like she's putting all the stock in her daughter's race vs attitude. I'd spend less time trying to find people to prove why her race will be the biggest problem and more time worrying about the implications of a ticket ir getting in trouble with the cops due to attitude and doing something to require getting pulled over. FWIW OP, unless your daughter is extremely argumentative , doesn't do what the cops ask (license and registration etc ) or otherwise threatens the cop, chances are very slim she'd be arrested. |
Anonymous
I think you are missing a vital part of OP's concern. Here is my understanding of OP's concern, which I think is valid. OP is concerned that because her daughter, who is biracial, looks African-American, she will be prone to being stopped more often by police than a white teenager would be. Once stopped by police, the daughter has a sassy mouth and may say or do something inappropriate. OP is not trying to excuse the daughter's sassy mouth or claim that it is okay to be sassy. She is simply afraid that about the fact that race makes it more likely that her daughter is going to be stopped. You are missing the forest for the trees if you concentrate on the sassiness while jumping over the fact that a sassy white teen may statistically have many fewer encounters with the police than a sassy black teen, due to the phenomen of "driving while black." OP did not come on here to get commiseration about her daughter's sassiness. She is afraid for her daughter given her daughter's flaws. |
Anonymous
If OP's daughter *is* getting profiled, there's increased chances for OP's daughter to sass a police officer and get cited for contempt of cop. OP's son (who passes for White) can have an equally sarcastic temper, but he is going to get cited for contempt of cop far less than the daughter (who is treated as Black and hence at higher risk for being pulled over for a DWB.) |
Anonymous
| And once a sassy teen enters the justice system, the sassy white teen is apt to be depicted as just a teenager with an adjustment problem, whereas the sassy black teen is apt to be looked at as a danger to society. |