I’ve been racially profiled once or twice before, but I never thought it would happen in Chicago. I look white, and the police here generally leave white people alone. But today, I was proved wrong.
I visited a fantastic old-timey diner in Bridgeport with my friends Sam and Katrina, where we got a full dinner for three for $20, with tax and a generous tip. We had taken the Red line up, but I suggested that because of the White Sox game, it would be best for us to take the #8 Halstead bus down to Garfield, where we would pick up the 55 bus and take it back home. After spending some time in the fantastic Richard J. Daley library, (which featured an incredibly charming picture of the mayor at the Southside St. Patrick’s day parade, wearing a green tie and a jaunty green hat, and a beautiful yellow rules poster which declared Harold Washington’s mayoralty) we decided to walk south on Halstead and wait for the #8 to catch us. This worked, as we had only made it two or three blocks when the bus came rumbling into view. It slid past us, but we caught it, and hopped aboard.
We happily took the bus further South, toward Garfield, chatting about the fabulous dinner we had had and the opportunities in Geography for the next year. We discussed how disgusting it was that as Geography majors, we couldn’t get the class taught by the department chair, Michael Conzen, through add-drop. And then, when the Bus announced “Garfield Boulevard, 55th Street” I pulled the cord, and we got off.
Katrina, Sam, and I crossed the street, and got caught by the light in the central, grassed-over boulevard. We kept up our discussion, but turned it towards a fantastic mural, which looked like it could have been right off the streets of Sao Paulo, with O Christo Negro Redentor and a superb Giraffe, as well as a technicolor display of blinding intensity. We crossed the street again (it’s a boulevard, you have to cross it three times) and started towards the bus stop. Then, I heard a police siren. My head leapt up, I looked around, and a blue and white Chicago Police Department SUV was blocking our path.
“Black and White, your night’s allright, White and Blue, sucks for you,” I thought immediately. I was ready to be arrested and beaten for the jaywalking I had just done, or perhaps some other silliness. Maybe he thought I was a member of the IRA, off to spread the Good News of Republicanism with the P-Stones. I do have an interest in Sinn Fein, and I do enjoy Irish music. But instead the Chicago Policeman decided to ask us a question.
“Do you know where you’re going?” he asked, straining to keep his nightstick in his belt.
“The University of Chicago,” I said, passing up the opportunity to make a witty retort about how I was heading to my dealer out of surprise, not discretion.
“I was worried about you,” he said.
I’m white. I can pass for Persian or Hispanic, but only with my full beard, which isn’t quite in yet. Katrina and Sam are also white. But we didn’t have cameras on, or anything else which might have suggested tourism (My UC Davis sweatshirt was zipped open, making the inscription unreadable) and we had clearly just gotten off a bus, and were about 50 feet from another bus stop. It was silly as all hell.
What’s still my favorite N.W.A song? It should be obvious. Ren said it with authority.
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