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

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.""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 MagazineA 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.Understanding Racial Profiling

In 1959, a ten-year-old boy named Sam was riding his new bicycle through the racially mixed town of Hempstead, Long Island. It was a beautiful spring day for the little boy, who had waited since his January birthday to ride his birthday presenlƒ,