During the early 1980s, I was a young hot Latino living in Miami, Florida. One summer, I decided to take a road trip north to visit my old stomping grounds, New York City.
I jumped in my cherry red Capri and roared northward on I-95. I was a few miles away from my destination, somewhere on the New Jersey Turnpike—windows rolled down, my shoulder-length hair flapping in the wind, El Gran Combo blasting from the 8-track cassette player I mounted under the ashtray.
That’s when I saw the flashing red and blue lights in my rearview mirror. ¡Coño! I pulled over on the turnpike’s shoulder and awaited the dreaded ticket, the bump in my insurance premiums.
A state trooper with a chiseled jawline and mirrored glasses approached me. “Son,” he politely asked, “you know why I stopped you? You were traveling five miles over the speed limit.”
“Sorry, officer,” I meekly uttered. Then he made an unexpected request. “Do I have your permission to search my vehicle?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I sheepishly replied. With that, he scoured through my car and combed through my bags as I stood there watching helplessly.
Finally, I inquired what the probable cause was that prompted him to search my auto. He responded that sports cars driven by Latino males with Dade County license plates were suspected of transporting cocaine to the northeast.
Remember, we are talking about the early 1980s. Think of the 1983 film Scarface starring Al Pacino.
Finding no narcotics (Whew!), he just gave me a speeding ticket, wished me a good day, and sent me on my merry way. Before racial profiling ever made the headlines, before stop-and-frisk entered the public consciousness, I learned what it meant to be a suspect simply for driving while “under the influence” of being Latine.
Profiling
The practice of racial profiling was so normalized on the New Jersey Turnpike by the late 1990s that State Police Chief Carl A. Williams claimed it would be naive to believe race was not an issue in crimes involving drugs. Because, after all, traffickers of marijuana and cocaine were most likely members of minority groups.
This was not the first time I was stopped and frisked by law enforcement.
The first occurrence was when I was a fourteen-year-old walking home after my night shift at Burger King. A police cruiser spotted me, made a U-turn, and pulled right in front of me.
This time, without asking permission, the officer simply rummaged through my backpack. Again, nothing was found.
As he allowed me to continue my journey home, he simply advised that I shouldn’t be walking the streets so late at night. I wasn’t sure if his counsel was for my benefit, to keep me safe, or for the benefit of my Euroamerican neighbors dealing with the perceived fear of a Latine boy prowling in the night.
Today, most might find these two confrontations with law enforcement and the subsequent other encounters I have had troublesome, an abuse of power toward a young Latino. But more problematic than these officers’ attitudes and actions was my response.
As a teenager continuing my walk home and as a young adult finishing my drive toward the Big Apple, I simply thought: “Thank God the police are being vigilant in protecting society from potential criminals.” I did not feel discriminated against; I did not feel anger. I did not feel abused.
What I felt was gratitude for being ethnically profiled. I felt appreciative that the police were keeping our community safe.
My mind was so colonized I did not, I could not, see how my identity was being constructed through the gaze of those who saw me as less-than. I accepted their perception, which defined me as a threat to society. This madness, caused by my geographic displacement, resulted in the acceptance of the Eurocentric worldview concerning the criminality of all Latine bodies, including my own.
I’d learned to be grateful for the harassment. I disciplined myself to domesticate my Latine body to conform to how the Eurocentric gaze normalized and legitimized my identity as having lots of problems, of being a rapist, of bringing drugs.
Since childhood, those of us residing on the underside of U.S. history have been taught to see and interpret our identity through the eyes of a culture which privileges whiteness, heterosexuality, middle-upper class status, and patriarchy. Seeing myself through Anglo eyes so normalized the dominant worldview that I accepted it as truth, without question. It was a “truth” which reinforced my so-called abnormal and suspicious nature.
The Consequences of a Colonized Mind
If I am honest, regardless of all my liberative publications, my mind continues to be colonized. The first step of liberation/salvation becomes learning how to see myself with my own eyes, a process I am still learning. Such consciousness-raising leads to questions Anglos never need ask.
Whenever someone from the dominant culture is pulled over, they usually interpret the situation in one of three ways: I was speeding and got caught; the police officer is having a bad day; or the police officer didn’t make their ticket quota for the month.
But when I get pulled over, there is a fourth possibility to consider that those of the dominant culture never need to deal with. Was I pulled over because I’m a Latine? Maybe I was speeding, maybe the officer is having a bad day, maybe the officer didn’t make their quota.
It doesn’t matter if any of these reasons are true. I am left with the nagging suspicious feeling that maybe, just maybe, the real reason was that I’m Latine. Such suspicions are deadly.
Some of you might be tempted to dismiss me as being overly sensitive, but here is the documented fact: Racism and ethnic discrimination shorten lives. They function as chronic social determinants of health, triggering continuous biological stress responses that, over time, damage the body.
Living in this country as people of color is literally killing us.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, and a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.