Post-Racial Society Exhibit A

Ah, the marvel of the post-racial society that some people think Obama represents ...

In an item related in many fundamental ways to the protests yesterday, the New York Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the NYPD for its “stop and frisk” practice on behalf of a New York Post reporter, Leonardo Blair (pictured here, photo from NYPost). In an ironic twist, the New York Post, a conservative rag owned by Rupert Murdoch, the same day ran an editorial in favor of the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” policy, asserting that any decrease in this racially biased practice would result in “crime and chaos.” The reality of living in a police state - and make no mistake, New York City is a police state - is that you never leave home without ID. If you don’t have state-issued ID on you, then you’re subject to being detained by the police until they can “verify your identity.” And, once they stop you, even without probable cause, they collect your name, address and date of birth for their database. But of course, it’s a policy that doesn’t get applied equally. As a white woman that frequently passes for straight, I often skate past those sorts of searches. My fellow New Yorkers who are black and brown, like the reporter in the NYCLU’s lawsuit, are not so fortunate. Leo Blair, a Jamaican immigrant and graduate of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, tells his own story of what happened when he was stopped by the police

[...]

Most black men, and many black women and Latino men and women, in New York have a story similar to Blair’s. Very few white people have similar stories. And, there is data that gives a fuller picture to the racial disparity of “stop and frisk” racism. According to data released earlier this week, New York City police officers stopped more people on the streets during the first three months of 2008 than during any quarter in the six years the Department has reported the data.

In 2007, the NYPD stopped about 469,000 New Yorkers – almost 1,300 people every day. Eighty-eight percent were completely innocent. Though they make up only a quarter of the City’s population, more than half of those stopped were black. Another 30 percent were Latino. Though whites make up more than 35 percent of New York City’s population, they were only 11 percent of those stopped. In 2006 and 2007, blacks and Latinos were the target of about 90 percent of the nearly one million stop-and-frisk encounters.

This victim of this injustice, recalls the account ...