Driving While Black : What To Do If You Are A Victim of Racial Profiling [Paperback]

Kenneth Meeks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 16, 2000

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."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It happens every day: at a seemingly routine traffic stop, a cop approaches your car with his gun drawn. You're checking out some clothes in your favorite store and notice you're being followed by security. Dressed in a business suit with arm outstretched, you watch as dozens of unoccupied cabs pass you by. A woman clutches her purse and hurriedly crosses the street when she sees you walking down the sidewalk towards her. For many African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and Asian Americans, such incidents are known as DWBs--Driving While Black--or examples of racial profiling. Kenneth Meeks's well-researched and disturbing book details the origins, practices, consequences, and solutions to this problem. "From a legal point of view racial profiling is tricky to prove," he writes. "Seldom do investigators recover a smoking gun with fingerprints on it. This is why a national movement has been launched by politicians of color and civil rights leaders to mandate that law enforcement agencies keep statistics of whom they are stopping, questioning, detaining, and searching." There are numerous case histories in Driving While Black, including Samuel Johnson's terrifying highway encounter with the New Jersey State Police, Amy Bowllan's Amtrak nightmare in Baltimore, and Yvette Bradley's airline ordeal, all of which involved racial profiling on a number of levels. Along with the instructive horror stories, Meeks includes nonconfrontational tips on dealing with profiling: stay calm, carry identification at all times, take names, never run, and never go to the same precinct that violated your rights to fill out a complaint form. Informed and impassioned, Meeks's book is both a practical guide and a call to arms. --Eugene Holley Jr.

From School Library Journal

YA-An invaluable handbook filled with precise information on what to do in this situation. Meeks discusses whom to write (including exhaustive address lists), what to say, what to notice when the profiling is taking place, what your exact rights are regarding searches, what profilers concentrate on beside race (class, dress, and age), and steps to take to reduce the risk of being a victim. Interspersed with this information are well-written, infuriating case histories of the practice on all scales and in all kinds of situations, from a 10-year-old black boy riding his bicycle being stopped and taken home by police officers who assumed that the bike was stolen, to Danny Glover's infamous inability to get a taxi in New York, to a woman forced to undergo an invasive body search at customs because drug smugglers supposedly wore hats like hers. Meeks also includes a copy of the Bill of Rights and an appendix of national organizations currently fighting racial profiling. That this title will be an indispensable addition to any YA collection is without question. The only question is whether or not to purchase a copy for your own glove compartment as well.
Emily Lloyd, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; 1 edition (May 16, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767905490
• ISBN-13: 978-0767905497
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,146,634 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book meets its stated objective well, November 30, 2000

By 

T. V. Davis "In the Desert" (Nevada, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Driving While Black : What To Do If You Are A Victim of Racial Profiling (Paperback)

I think the earlier review by Mr. Cooper missed the point of this book: What to do if you are stopped by the police, and more importantly, what NOT to do. The book was not written as a dissertation on race relations.

I personally have not been stopped by the police because of my race (to the best of my knowledge). However, as a Black woman who commutes to an upper class Anglo neighborhood every workday, I thought the book was very well done and informative. The section on your legal rights when you are stopped is worth the cost of the book alone. There is also a chapter called "Living While Black", which contains helpful information about what to do when dealing with the police in everyday situations.

The author is also careful to point out that one should not just jump up and say "I've been victimized because of my race", but should be careful to gather information that will be needed when making an official complaint. This is the smart thing to do. Which is better: To conduct yourself well (even in the face of stupidity on the part of a racist officer or store clerk) and be able to make a strong official complaint later or to be "right", indignant, and get arrested, ignored (who will listen to the complaints of an "out of control", angry Black person?) or even killed? We must rise above and be better than those who are so ignorant and ill-bred that they behave shamefully.

Should we have to put up with racial profiling? No! Have we gotten to "the promised land" over the past few years by simply complaining that things are unfair? No! Mr. Meeks is not trying to solve all of America's racial problems with his book. He is arming Black Americans with the knowledge they need to deal with racial inequities. For this effort, I applaud and recommend this book.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Small piece of the Pie, June 21, 2000

By 

Christopher Cooper - See all my reviews

This review is from: Driving While Black : What To Do If You Are A Victim of Racial Profiling (Paperback)

Mr. Meeks provides an excellent source of dissucssion on the topic of DWB. His use of stories to alarm and alert the reader are done in such away that it covers up the major problem that we are truely facing. Mr. Meeks un-intentionally creates a smokescreen - which blurrs the reader from trying to figure out how to solve the real problem- racism and prejudice.

The State of Missouri recently passed racial profiling legislation - requiring police officers to take down the CARD (Class, Age, Race, Dress) information of every person that is stopped. But the question that remains - and what this book does not answer or approach is what do we do with these numbers? These numbers will not tell us anything we know.

Even though Mr. Meeks suggest Civil Remedies to combat the problem - this is a solution - but many of the people who are victims of DWB are indigent and do not have the resources to challenge a police department.

Mr. Meeks provides the reader with a great way to deal with people when faced with DWB - his nonconfrontational approach provides us with a positive way to deal with the police and it can be used to other people we deal with on a regular basis.

My final comment on this book, is that it appeared to focus on Whites vs Colors - but we all have our prejudices. We all judge people by CARD standards.

Mr. Meeks book made a worthwhile effort on combatting the problem of DWB - but I think this issue is a small part of a larger problem.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Life skills material, April 17, 2002

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Driving While Black : What To Do If You Are A Victim of Racial Profiling (Paperback)

This book provides some valuable information, not only for Blacks, but other minorities, as well as people in lower economic communities. I am using it as a small part of a life skills curriculum, for at-risk youth. It certainly presented more concepts than I expected.