Syracuse Law Professor Kevin Noble Maillard authored the following article, featured as original content for The Atlantic Magazine on July 23, 2013.  The full article can be accessed here.

 

Race is America’s Voldemort: That-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named. Even when discrimination’s role in an event is obvious, there has to be another reason. It’s not about race, it’s about class. It’s about safety. It’s about line dancing. But we are arguably experiencing the greatest racial tensions since the 1960’s, Barack or not.

The most prominent racial issue dividing America today is racial profiling. Trayvon, Stop-and-Frisk, Obama’s Beer Summit, and Arizona’s Show-Me-Your-Papers law are all about acting on racial presumptions.

Three years ago, on a balmy summer night in Palm Beach, I went for a midnight bike ride. Earlier that day, I presented a paper at a law professor conference at the Breakers Hotel. The whole day and early evening was crammed with intense intellectual schmoozing, so I was glad to have some solitary time to explore the long, narrow island. I hopped on my rented beach bike and headed south and over a bridge.

***

Suddenly I am blinded by a profusion of oncoming lights, accompanied by a siren, crossing against traffic into my lane on the two-lane road. Reacting quickly, I squeeze left and right brakes in addition to steering the bike sharply to the right. All together, it is perfect choreography for an overbar face-plant. I spill onto the blacktop.

I skid a little in front of my bike, scraping my elbows, wrists, and forearms on the road. Blood, but not too much. My childhood comes back to me in that odd mix of pain and nausea I felt from bike accidents in fifth grade.

***

The first policeman steps out of the car. “Where are you headed?” I tell him I’m on a bike ride. “Why so late?” I say I like it late. “What are you doing here?” I tell him I’m a law professor attending a conference at The Breakers.

At this point, I’m still thinking about my lonely, abandoned doll of a bike on the ground. Then the second policeman approaches. “We’ve had some robberies here.”

***

The first policeman asks for my ID. He asks for my name and address–clearly printed on the card, next to my picture that looked exactly like me–and my university affiliation.

Both men retreat into the car with my ID to run it though an interminable, rotary-dial background check system. It takes no fewer than 15 minutes. I’m alone with my thoughts, which are mostly questions. I try not to move, and attempt rationalization. Perhaps the burglary announcement was coincidental. I had multiple bike violations, and night cyclists are rare. There must be a logical reason for getting stopped. Other people must have gotten stopped like this.

The first policeman comes back with my ID and tells me I’m free to go. I’m mulling over this incident, and so I cross back over the bridge and decide to do a full loop of the island and think.

I’m on my bike for only a few minutes before another high pitched siren ringtone tells me to stop cycling. Again. This time there are two police cars.

***

Americans love to say “it’s not about race.” Unless there is a cross burning and people wearing “I’m racist” t-shirts, it has to be about something else. Complaining minorities, so the refrain goes, have chips on their shoulders.

Nothing violent happened. But this incident showed me something about bias and perception. Though it’s common to hear race described as just one “factor” in profiling, it’s a factor that seems to outweigh all others: age, education, class, occupation, and just plain common sense–remember, rental bike. It’s utterly exasperating to realize that how hard you work, how much money you have, where you went to school, who your friends are mean nothing at crucial times. The values of colorblindness and merit–which conservatives, including black conservatives, rely on in other race-based debates, for example those about affirmative action–wouldn’t even save Clarence Thomas on the street in these moments: Cabs will pass, police will stop, and as we painfully know, neighbors will shoot.

 

Kevin Noble Maillard is a law professor at Syracuse University.  Teaching courses in Family Law, Wills and Trusts, and Social Deviance and the Law, he is a frequent writer for the NY Times and appears on MSNBC.  You can follow him on Twitter:  @noblemaillard