Driving While Black: Highways, Shopping Malls, Taxi Cabs, Sidewalks: How to Fight Back if You Are a Victim of Racial Profiling

(Paperback)

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A practical handbook for people who want to be safe and do something. Racial profiling does happen. And while cases where victims find themselves looking down the barrel of a policeman's gun make the six o'clock news, dozens of less extreme, yet troubling, examples occur every day. Cabs that whiz by only to be seen stopping for "safer"-looking people just up the block; being asked for multiple pieces of identification when making purchases with credit cards; being followed around a department store by salespeople and security while never being asked if they need any assistance; being detained for hours and extensively searched in an airport or train station--Driving While Black clearly defines the system officially known as CARD (class, age, race, dress) and offers advice about how to handle potentially life-threatening situations with the police, as well as recourse for readers who suspect their civil rights have been denied due to racial profiling. A book written to save lives, Driving While Black is not just for people of color, but for anyone who likes to wear a baseball cap, baggy jeans, sneakers, and a tee shirt and finds they are often treated like a "suspect."

Reviews

"From the front seat of a police cruiser, racial profiling is not racism. It's a tool--and cops have no intention of giving it up."
--The New York Times Magazine

Author Bio

A journalist for more than a decade, Kenneth Meeks is now Managing Editor of Black Enterprise magazine. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.