DNA of the Black Experience

"When you go from being a black boy to a black man, you start to understand police will use deadly force on you. I could sneeze and get shot to death."

By Anyi Howell

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Youth Radio’s Anyi Howell says for many young black males, being detained or harassed by police can be like a rite of passage into adulthood. He's experienced police harassment since he was ten, and as the years pass by, it's not slowing down. In this personal essay, Anyi reflects on being wrongfully detained by the Oakland police on his way to work.

The first time I fit the description of a suspect, I was ten. And the more I was stopped for conversations with police, the more I began to make adjustments in my life. I had to learn not to stand outside the house with nondescript cups, or ride four deep to the club.

Some of my friends like to keep all the registration papers in their glove box ultra updated. Others get nervous about how many people in their backseats are wearing ballcaps.

For as long the term racial profiling has been around, fools have been denying the phenomenon exists. But I contend every black man in America at some point will be racially profiled or harassed by the police. It's a part of the DNA of our experience in the United States.

One morning last spring, while I was parking my car at the BART train station, a police officer looked at me and ran my license plate. He entered a false number, and my Oldsmobile Royale Brougham '88 came back as a stolen Honda. So now, I’m a car thief. My friend Elmer and I weren't prepared for what happened next.

Elmer (on tape)
Our conversation was interrupted very rudely and abruptly... In the distant background, I hear a voice of a police officer saying, “Everybody move aside...” And I turn around to see the barrel of this officer's hand gun staring me down face to face and he tells me to step back and stand on the concrete.

He say, "You know brothers like you guys, I know how 'yall get down, 'yall steal cars..." He's not talking to us like citizens, he's talking like we're convicted criminals he's delivering to Massachusetts for multiple murders.

Anyi
The BART Police Officer realized his mistake on the triple check, and after embarrassing himself, he let us go. That wasn't the first time a police officer came at me sideways. But I was floored by the reality that an officer's simple mistake was enough for him to approach me at gunpoint.

The situation is so bad, I know brothas who are putting magnets and stickers on their cars that read, "Support Our Troops" because they think displays of patriotism will stop them from getting profiled.

That strategy would only work if you could slap a "Caucasian" bumper sticker on your black self. But please believe when I got my new car I went to the auto parts store, I bought a case of oil, transmission fluid, and a couple of American flags. You know, just to keep my car running.

When you go from being a black boy to a black man, you start to understand police will use deadly force on you. I could sneeze and get shot to death. The next time police harassment happens to me, I’m demanding a certificate of release. It’s a document saying a person was detained but not arrested, and then let go. Almost like a receipt for racial profiling. More than just another story to add to my experiences with out-of-pocket police.