RIDING WHILE BLACK: RACIAL PROFILING IN AMERICA

Imagine you’ve just picked up your teenaged grandson and are driving along - when the cops pull you over. Were you speeding? No. The cops think your grandson might be robbing you!

Sounds absurd, right? Welcome to racial profiling in America. This is exactly what happened to Akil Carter in Wisconsin in 2018. He’s Black, his grandmother is White; he was in the back seat, she and a friend were in the front - and someone had called in an attempted robbery of two elderly ladies, by a Black suspect, in a car that matched theirs. The officers who pulled them over handcuffed Carter and held him in the back of their police car for six minutes while they tried to satisfy themselves that he really was a relative and not a criminal. Last year, a federal jury ruled that the officers had done nothing wrong.

Fair enough, you might argue - it was the ‘concerned citizen’ that did the racial profiling, and the officers’ duty was to check. But studies have found that Black and Latino drivers in the US are more likely to be searched, ticketed and arrested during traffic stops compared with White drivers.

This can have tragic consequences. For example, in 1999, Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Guinean immigrant, was shot 41 times by NYPD officers - who mistakenly believed he was reaching for a gun.

But deadly racial profiling doesn’t just happen at traffic stops. In 2012, Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, was shot and killed in Sanford, Florida by local ‘community watch’ member George Zimmerman, who claimed Martin looked ‘suspicious.’

There are countless other cases in all spheres of life. This clip contains video of Akil Carter’s arrest. Let us know your reaction in the comments.

Video credit: @cbseveningnews