Driving while black
"Driving while black" is a sardonic description of racial profiling of African-American motor vehicle drivers. It implies that a motorist may be stopped by a police officer largely because of racial bias rather than any apparent violation of traffic law. It is a word play on the phrase "driving while intoxicated".
Origins
The phrase "driving while black" has been used in both the public and private discourse relating to the racial profiling of black motorists. The term rose to prominence during the 1990s, when it was brought to public knowledge that American police officers were intentionally targeting racial minorities to curb the trafficking of drugs. For example, New Jersey released state documents in 2000 which showed police training memos instructing officers to make racial judgments in order to identify "Occupant Identifiers for a possible Drug Courier" on the highway.The phrase was magnified after the ruling of Whren v. United States, when the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that police officers may stop any motor vehicle operator if any traffic violation has been observed.
Subsequent media coverage of the phrase "driving while black" since the 1990s has been expansive and more common. The phrase is often used in anecdotal accounts of racial profiling of motor vehicle operators as well as statistical and legal analyses of racial profiling, a notable example being the case of Tolan v. Cotton.
In 2014 Portland lawyers Melvin Oden-Orr and Marianne Hyland created an app named "Driving While Black" in which users can record police and alert people when they are stopped by police on the road. It also supplies users with information on how to handle a traffic stop, including their legal rights and "best practices" for "how to be safe". The American Civil Liberties Union released a similar app called "Mobile Justice" in which users can record and upload videos to the ACLU office.
The phrase DWB was amplified through social media by which African Americans can record police encounters and disseminate them to a large audience. The phrase was used in the media after the deaths of African Americans Sandra Bland and Philando Castile, both of whom were stopped by police while driving.
Studies
Nationwide
In 2019, as reported by NBC, the Stanford Open Policing Project found that "police stopped and searched black and Latino drivers on the basis of less evidence than used in stopping white drivers, who are searched less often but are more likely to be found with illegal items." The finding emerged from data-mining nearly 100 million traffic stops dating from 2011 to 2017 and recorded by 21 state patrol agencies, including California, Illinois, New York, and Texas, and 29 municipal police departments, including New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and St. Paul, Minnesota.Florida
The American Civil Liberties Union reported that in 2014, Florida-resident black drivers received nearly 22 percent of all seat belt citations even though they made up only 13.5 percent of that state's drivers. Seat belt compliance was 91.5 percent for white drivers versus 85.8 percent for black drivers, a difference too small to explain the different rate of ticketing between black and white drivers. The ACLU analysis showed that black drivers would have had over 14,000 fewer seat belt citations if they were ticketed proportionally to total drivers in Florida. The rate that black drivers are ticketed more often than white drivers is four times more in Escambia County, three times more in Palm Beach County and 2.8 times more in Orange County. In Tampa, black drivers received 575 seat belt citations versus 549 for white drivers even though black people make up only 23 percent of Tampa's population.Illinois
On April 18, 2003, the Illinois State Senate passed a bill that mandates Illinois law enforcement to maintain racial statistics regarding traffic stops. The bill originally mandated the statistics-keeping to continue until 2007, but the bill was extended and traffic stop statistics will continue to be maintained indefinitely. An ACLU analysis of the 2013 Illinois traffic stop report found that African Americans and Latinos are "twice as likely" to be pulled over by police even though whites were more likely to have been discovered with contraband in their car.Maryland
In Robert L. Wilkins, et al. v. Maryland State Police, et al., the ACLU sued the Maryland State Police for racial profiling of then defense attorney Robert L. Wilkins. Part of the settlement agreement between the parties held that the state of Maryland had to maintain racial statistics regarding its traffic stops, making Maryland the first to do so. The case started a "national conversation on racial profiling" and was seen as a large victory by the ACLU. Lamberth conducted a study again in the state of Maryland, once again finding evidence of racial discrimination in traffic stops, although the scope of his study was more limited.New Jersey
In New Jersey v. Soto, a case where Superior Court Justice Robert E. Francis consolidated 17 claims of racial profiling in traffic stops, Dr. John Lamberth of Temple University conducted a study to determine the level to which racial discrimination occurred on the highway in the state of New Jersey. Lamberth found that cars driven by African Americans accounted for about 42% of the total drivers pulled over out of a total 43,000 cars. However, cars operated by African Americans accounted only for 13.5% of the total cars on the road.New Jersey later received public attention for its racial profiling on the highway in 1998 when police wounded three men during a traffic stop, all of whom were either black or Hispanic, prompting then New Jersey Governor Christine Whitman to let a federal judge monitor the NJ police. As a result, thousands of documents were released to the public, displaying ample evidence that police were instructed to use race-based tactics to identify and stop possible drug couriers on the highway.
Kentucky
The Louisville Metro Police Department has received negative public attention for "hyper-policing" to fight violent crime in the West End of Louisville. In 2016, Jefferson County Circuit Judge Brian Edwards threw out evidence obtained in a traffic stop saying he is "well aware of the troubling levels of gun and drug-related violence in west Louisville." Edward added, "this does not mean that citizens driving in west Louisville should be subjected to a lesser degree of constitutional protection than citizens driving in other parts our community."In 2019, Tae-Ahn Lea sued LMPD claiming that his civil rights were violated when he was pulled over, searched and handcuffed by officers, after he allegedly made a wide turn. The case became controversial after 1 million views on YouTube. Police officials said that they aggressively stop motorists in high-crime areas in order to reduce crime. But in its investigation of the story, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported that studies show increased traffic stops do not reduce crime.
Examples
A number of well-known African Americans have described experiences they characterize as of being racially profiled in their cars and some have related it to the phenomenon of DWB.In his memoir, The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist, prominent astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson recounts his many encounters with police on the road and their ambiguous reasons for pulling him over. After learning about other African American physicists who have had similar encounters, he writes, "we were guilty not of DWI, but of other violations none of us knew were on the books: DWB, WWB, and of course, JBB."
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only African-American Republican in the Senate, spoke on the Senate floor in 2016 about how he experienced racial profiling while driving in his car, adding "I do not know many African-American men who do not have a very similar story to tell – no matter their profession, no matter their income, no matter their disposition in life."
In 2015 comedian Chris Rock posted a series of different pictures on Twitter of himself in the driver's seat of his car while being pulled over by police, captioning one of his posts, "Stopped by the cops again wish me luck." The posts came just a year after racial profiling in the U.S. had become a salient topic in the public following the killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown by police. CNN's Don Lemon stipulated that "Chris Rock may be in the middle of a case of Driving While Black."
In 2016, tennis player Serena Williams made a public Facebook post in which she spoke about the fears she had for her nephew after he had driven her to her matches. Likely referring to the death of Sandra Bland, she spoke about her worries that her nephew might be harmed by a police officer after being pulled over. The New York Times documented her post in an article titled I Won't Be Silent': Serena Williams on the Fear of Driving While Black".
Other prominent African Americans who have recounted their personal experiences of racial profiling include but are not limited to Barack Obama, Johnnie Cochran, Will Smith, Gary Sheffield, and Eric Holder.
There have also been accusations of excessive force by police officers against black drivers. In this example, a police officer tries to explain a fear of blacks: Breaion King, an African-American elementary school teacher, was stopped for speeding in June 2015 in Austin, Texas. Officer Bryan Richter ordered King out of her car, and then threw her violently to the ground while arresting her in a parking lot. King felt the officer's reaction was because she was responding too slowly to the officer's orders. She was charged with resisting arrest as well as speeding. When another officer, Patrick Spradlin, was driving King to jail, he answered the question of "why are so many people afraid of black people". Spradlin's answer was because of "violent tendencies" adding "I don't blame" white people for being afraid of blacks "because of their appearance and whatnot, some of them are very intimidating". Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo found the incident disturbing and put both officers involved under investigation. Prosecutors dropped the charge of resisting arrest, but King still had to pay a $165 fine for speeding.