Driving while black (Traffic stops and Race)

Overview

Driving while Black, or DWB, refers to the racial profiling of Black individuals on roads and highways. It usually affects Black men, though some well-known cases have involved women. Driving while Black is frequently referenced as one of many dangers faced by individuals simply because of the color of their skin. Several high-profile cases in modern times have involved unarmed Black individuals killed by police who had stopped them for such minor traffic violations as a broken brake light or expired registration.

Much of the research and publicity about the issue focuses on the United States, but it has been documented in other countries as well. Research has shown that the rate of traffic stops of Black individuals is out of proportion to the population of the minority group. Studies show that although the US Black population is about 13 percent, a significantly higher percentage of Black drivers are stopped. A 2019 study of Montreal, Quebec, found that Black people, who make up about 9 percent of the population, were four times more likely to be stopped by police; Indigenous Canadians, who represent less than 3 percent of the population, were five times more likely to be stopped. Studies have found that law enforcement officers are much more likely to arrest Black people during traffic stops.

Police frequently seem to target Black drivers when looking for drugs. The New York Times reported in 2015 that Black residents of Greensboro, North Carolina, made up 41 percent of the population but were charged with possession of minor amounts of marijuana five times more often than white individuals were. However, national surveys show Black and white people use marijuana at almost identical rates.

Studies Raised Concern

National discussion of driving while Black emerged in the United States in the 1990s. Attorneys who represented clients arrested on drug charges on the New Jersey Turnpike hired a consultant to examine the issue in 1993. They found that while twenty-five Black individuals who had been arrested after traffic stops on a single part of the highway during a three-year period, no white individuals had been arrested. John Lamberth, then a professor of psychology at Temple University, conducted an extensive study that examined the racial makeup of people traveling on the highway and the prevalence of speeding. He found the rate at which Black people were stopped far exceeded their numbers on the highway and the rate at which they violated traffic laws. While 13.5 percent of those on the turnpike were African Americans and 15 percent of those speeding were Black, they represented 35 percent of the individuals pulled over. Black people were more than 4.8 times as likely as others to be stopped. Evidence in the case included police training videos that predominantly represented criminals as minorities. In March 1996 a judge ruled that the state police were violating the rights of Black people by targeting them. A few years later, the consultant conducted a survey in Maryland in an unrelated case for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that found similar results: 17.5 percent of those speeding on a highway near Baltimore were African American, but more than 28 percent of those stopped and more than 71 percent of those searched by state troopers were Black individuals.

In the aftermath of the New Jersey decision, many police departments began collecting data about traffic stops. Many states’ data showed that traffic stops more frequently involved Black individuals. More importantly, officers were more likely to conduct consent searches—which are conducted without any justification if the driver gives permission—when the driver was Black. However, contraband was more often found when the driver was white. Federal figures supported the findings of the studies. In 2011 the US Department of Justice reported that 12.8 percent of Black drivers were pulled over, while 9.8 percent of white people and 10.4 percent of Hispanic individuals were stopped.

The Talk

In many African American households, parents discuss driving while Black with their children. They often explain to boys and young men how they should act if they are pulled over by police and more generally how to act in public. Parents often refer to this as “the talk.”

Researchers have found that parents address the subject in a few main ways. Many work to instill pride of their culture and race in their children. They teach children that in some places and among some people, they will be viewed and treated as unequal. Parents may focus on the importance of striving for success. Some may foster mistrust of people of other races or discourage interacting with them. Finally, some parents simply do not talk about it with their children. Research shows that the latter two approaches, mistrust and silence, are most likely to negatively affect children psychologically, while instilling pride and an understanding of social imbalance better prepares them for life. Many parents say that they try to balance awareness of the dangers children may face with respect and trust in law enforcement in case they need help.

Parents often give their children specific instructions for being out in public and approached by police officers. These include keeping their hands out of their pockets, not wearing their hood up, not running if they are stopped, and being very still. When they are older, and especially when they will be driving or in cars, parents teach them how to avoid being noticed. For example, they should not play with the radio because the car might drift and prompt an officer to pull it over. They should also turn down the music so that it cannot be heard outside the vehicle. Some parents also teach them what they should do if they are taken into custody. For example, they should not sign anything. Black teens are informed that police officers often perceive them as being a few years older, so they must remember to be respectful and comply with requests or orders. However, parents note, even the most cooperative individual can be injured or killed.

Officer-Created Jeopardy

People are more aware of trials related to police killing motorists in modern times, due in part to social media. In some cases, officers are charged. However, they frequently are acquitted. The public questions these outcomes when evidence suggests that the officers were not justified in using deadly force. A concept known in law enforcement as officer-created jeopardy has been cited as a factor in many cases in which police officers were acquitted after shooting unarmed individuals. These are situations in which the officers put themselves in danger unnecessarily through choices they made. Such actions can put officers at risk, and as a result, they may resort to using deadly force to protect themselves. At trial, the case often centers around the situation when the officer decided to fire a weapon, not the decisions and actions the officer made earlier that may put the officer in jeopardy or to believe that he or she was in jeopardy. This line of thinking occurs because of a 1989 Supreme Court ruling known as Graham v. Connor that is used as a constitutional test for cases involving police use of force. The ruling says both that all circumstances of the shooting should be considered, and the officer’s split-second decision is most important. Application of the legal standard depends on the court.

The New York Times investigated deadly force used in traffic stops for a 2021 report. The paper noted that officer-created jeopardy appeared to be a factor in many cases. Some examples include standing in front of moving vehicles or reaching into cars through open windows. Often officers were aggressive. Footage from dashboard cameras and body cameras recorded officers immediately making threats when they walked up to cars to address the drivers. In some cases, officers surrounded unarmed sleeping motorists with drawn weapons; startled awake, some motorists tried to drive away, only to be shot. Sometimes, officers reacted aggressively to relatively minor alleged crimes. In one 2019 case, Oklahoma state troopers chased a man suspected of shoplifting a bottle of liquor. They forced his vehicle off the road and opened the door of the slowly moving SUV. Dashcam video recorded the troopers as they shot the driver from both sides, killing him. A sheriff in Tennessee ordered officers to shoot a motorist with a suspended license. He was recorded on body-camera footage saying he did not want them to damage the police vehicles by ramming the driver’s car.

Highly Publicized Cases Raise Awareness

In modern times, many cases of Black individuals being killed by police have become well known, largely because of the ready availability of cell phones and social media use. This has increased awareness among the public of the experiences of many minorities including racial profiling and driving while Black. Among these are two cases in Minnesota: Daunte Wright, who was pulled over for expired registration tags, and George Floyd, who was pulled from a vehicle when he was suspected of passing a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. Wright was shot by an officer who said she had thought she was firing a Taser. Floyd was suffocated when officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck. Wright was killed while Chauvin was on trial. These cases were rarities in their outcome. Chauvin was found guilty of murdering Floyd, while Kim Potter, who shot Wright, was convicted of first- and second-degree manslaughter.

A 2016 case in Minnesota became widely known because part of the traffic stop was broadcast live on Facebook. Philando Castile, a thirty-two-year-old Black man, was driving in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, with his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds. In the back seat was her four-year-old daughter. Castile was stopped by a police officer who later testified that he thought they looked like people who had been involved in a robbery days earlier. Castile told the officer he was licensed to carry a concealed weapon and had a firearm in the vehicle, and the officer told him not to reach for it. Seconds later, the officer fired seven times, shooting Castile five times. Reynolds began livestreaming the aftermath. Reynolds said he had been trying to pull his license, not a weapon, from his pocket. The man died later at the hospital. During the trial, the officer said he believed Castile was reaching for his weapon and feared for his life. He was acquitted. During the trial, it emerged that police had pulled Castile over fifty-two times between 2002 and 2016. Police had charged him with eighty-six minor traffic offenses, most of which were dismissed.

Further Insights

Although driving poses some risks for many African Americans every year, the automobile has a significant place in Black history. Historians have noted the evolution of automobile ownership and travel in the United States as a factor in the civil rights movement. The automobile provided freedom of movement that was important both practically and symbolically.

In the Antebellum South, white people controlled the movement of Black people as a means of controlling their labor. Groups roamed while looking for Black people to ensure that they were traveling with the permission of enslavers. Laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act permitted enslavers to pursue people even into the North. Following the American Civil War, Black people in the South were severely restricted in their travel by Jim Crow laws. Buses and trains were segregated, and many businesses such as restaurants, gas stations, and hotels refused to serve them.

In the early twentieth century, automobiles became increasingly commonplace on the roads, and as the decades passed, they became more affordable. For many people, owning a vehicle was a status symbol. For Black Americans, it was much more. Many were blocked by redlining and discriminatory banking practices from purchasing homes but could buy cars. An automobile was also a key to safer travel. Enterprising individuals began publishing travel guides for Black drivers. These identified establishments that were safe and often included Black-owned small businesses such as boarding houses and repair shops. Still, drivers could never be certain what they would encounter, and frequently carried all the bedding and food they might need for a journey in case they had no safe place to stop. They also packed what they could in case of a roadside emergency because in such situations they were vulnerable. Ownership of an automobile assisted many Black Americans in another goal—moving North during the Great Migration.

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested multiple times. His first arrest was in 1956 in Montgomery, Alabama, when he and hundreds of other Black drivers were helping participants in the city’s bus boycott through an organized carpool system. Police claimed he was driving 30 miles per hour in a 25-mile-per-hour zone. King was one of hundreds of people arrested for driving while Black.

About the Author

Josephine Campbell earned her BA in psychology and communications from King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. She worked in journalism for twenty years and has worked in educational publishing for more than a decade. She also has experience as a parenting education caseworker and has worked as a substitute teacher.

Bibliography

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