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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 19, 2011)
Books BOOKS “Challenging people to Shape a better future now” State-Sanctioned Racial Profiling: A Daily Assault 12 Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today b ernie f oSter Founder/Publisher b obbie D ore f oSter executive editor Edited by Gregory S. Parks and Matthew W. Hughey Introduction by Lani Guinier J errY f oSter account executive l iSa l ovinG news editor b rian S timSon reporter D aviD k iDD graphic Designer m oniCa J. f oSter Seattle office Coordinator J ulie k eefe & S uSan f rieD Photographers The Skanner Newspaper, established in October 1975, is a weekly publication, published each Wednesday by IMM Publications Inc., 415 N. Killingsworth St., P.O. Box 5455, Portland, OR 97228. Telephone (503) 285-5555. E-mail: info@theskanner.com World Wide Web site:http://www.theskanner.com Fax: (503) 285-2900 the Skanner is a member of the National Newspaper Pub lishers Association and West Coast Black Pub - lishers Association. All photos submitted become the prop- erty of the Skanner. We are not re spon - sible for lost or damaged photos either solicited or unsolicited. © 2011 the Skanner. ALL RIGHTS RE SERVED. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITH- OUT PERMISSION PROHIBITED. by kam Williams Special to The Skanner News I n “The Rage of a Privileged Class,” Ellis Cose carefully chronicled the assortment of frustrations experienced by educated Blacks upon entering the corporate world. In “12 Angry Men,” a dozen brothers are allowed to give full vent to their feelings about anoth- er indignity routinely suffered by the majority of African-American males, namely, racial profiling. Unless you’ve been subjected to such un- Constitutional treatment, you are unlikely to be very sympa- thetic. After all, it is reasonable to think that if some- one’s not break- ing the law, they presumably should have no problem cooper- ating with the cops for what ought to amount to a momentary inconven- ience. But I could write at length from personal experience about the trauma inflicted on my psyche by the time I was 25 by a decade of being routinely stopped and frisked by police about once a month or so, and always on the flimsiest of pre- texts. Back then, the prison industrial complex was undergo- ing a mammoth growth spurt thanks to the so-called “War on Drugs,” which was really just a rationale for feeding the corpo- rate beast with the bodies of mil- lions of non-violent, Black offenders. And judging by the accounts related in “12 Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today,” the situation hasn’t improved much over the interim. Here, a 35 year-old family man recalls how he was Here, a 35 year-old family man recalls how he was recently strip-searched right in front of his neighbors by NYPD detectives who suspected him of possessing narcotics page 4 The Portland and Seattle Skanner January 19, 2011 recently strip-searched right in front of his neighbors by NYPD detectives who suspected him of possessing narcotics. When they didn’t find any contraband, they left him to pull up his own pants without as much as an apology. Just as humiliating was the ordeal of the “head of the ACLU’s racial profiling division who was himself profiled at Boston’s Logan Airport coming home from a racial profiling confer- ence.” Then there’s the case of U.S. Congressman Daniel K. Davis, who was ostensibly guilty of driving while Black after doing his weekly radio show back in his Illinois district one evening. When Congressman Davis had the temerity to ask why he had been pulled over, the incensed officer not only gave him a phantom ticket, but inexplicably took away his driver’s license for good measure. Despite his grey hair and advanced age, Davis wasn’t exactly surprised by the incident, since he says that, “Over the years, I have been stopped by the Chicago police so many times I couldn’t count them.” The solution? Black Harvard Law School graduate Bryonn Bain sarcastically proposes the passage of a Black Man’s Bill of Rights, 10 tongue-in-cheek Amendments to the Constitution. But the rest of this eye-opening tome’s entries adopt a much more serious tone to drive home ever so effectively the salient point that state-sanctioned racial profiling amounts to a painful assault on individual dig- nity and a serious impediment to the collective American Dream of a colorblind society.
