Driving while white

A while back, Robert' car failed its annual inspection, mostly because of a few broken lightbulbs. Instead of a number on his sticker, he got a big fat red R (for rejected, I think, probably not for Robert).

Robert assured me that he had 60 days to address the issue. A week ago, his car went into the shop to have the work done.

On Sunday, we were driving through a local wealthy suburb on the way home from delivering my mother to the airport. It was a quiet day, not too much traffic, but we were in a short line of cars. We went past a side street out of which shot a police car, lights blazing. Everyone pulled over and then one by one drove off. The cop was after us.

Robert rolled down the window and handed over his license and registration. Turns out it was a slow day, indeed. The cop had noticed the big fat red R. He wanted to know why the car had failed. He told us that we were supposed to fix those problems immediately. (I later read the fine print on the sticker, and yes, you have sixty days to fix emissions issues but you're supposed to get everything else fixed right away.)

Eventually, we were given a warning (because it was Sunday and the cop realized that we couldn't have gotten an inspection right then).

I remember thinking at the time that it was a good thing we're white and older and boring looking.

And then on Monday, news broke that a world-famous Harvard professor had committed the ultimate crime of breathing while black. Actually, he'd come home from a trip, realized his front door was stuck, come in through the back, then applied a little English to the front door. Cops were alerted to a possible breakin. They arrived, looked at his ID, lured him onto his porch, and promptly arrested him, basically for being rude. Charges were dropped recently, but not before this became a national, if not international, incident.

Ah, justice.