Acting White: Racial Profiling Examined

There are three types of racial profiling that I am aware of: prelude, performance, and curtain. Prelude profiling is when the police stop you because of what they think you might be up to - a 'hunch'. Performance profiling is, once stopped, they treat you as if you have definitely done something illegal, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. Curtain profiling is what happens after you have been groundlessly detained, present no evidence of foul play, but nonetheless merit a parting shot to remind you who is in charge and to keep your nose even cleaner in the future.

Harvard Professor Skip Gates seems to be a victim of performance profiling, with a boneheaded dose of curtain profiling for good measure. The prelude profiling would be understandable, given the call-in description of two black men with back packs forcing open a front door. The performance profiling ignored the old well-dress man with a cane and proper ID, regardless of his temperament. The curtain profiling executed the ‘don’t no black man loud-talk me this way no matter who he thinks he is’ ignorant police response, whereby Gates is arrested and hand-cuffed.

While I suspect that black men have statistically attracted some lower level of prelude profiling given the crime statistics, and my own experience growing up in a black neighborhood. Black men HAVE NOT earned performance or curtain profiling, and the police need to be held accountable for this mistreatment. So if Gates wants a pound of flesh from the Cambridge Police, so be it.

Perhaps I feel this way partly due to my own profiling moments, of years past, still vivid. As a teenager I owned a late model Trans Am and suburban police would continually flash their beacon lights on me, to see if I would comply or initiate a stolen car chase, even though my car was not reported stolen. Once I pulled over they would turn off their lights and continue like nothing happened. In another incident, the entire Sausalito, CA on-duty police force showed up at my apartment because they ‘didn’t know me’. Lastly, I made the front page of the business section of the Boston Globe when the Mass. State Police detained my brother in-law and me as a drug smugglers because we fit the ‘profile’, black with light carry-on luggage from NYC (yes, that's what they said).

Some people will say that Gates over-reacted, but not me. I know, as does he, that whatever his treatment that day, it is a hell of a lot worse for many others, black, or poor, or just vulnerable, and not family with the guy with the badge and gun.

James C. Collier

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