When I get pulled over by a cop, I always assume that I’ve been speeding, or have a tail light out, or maybe my tags are expired. Whatever the case, something I’ve done is the reason I’m being pulled over. And thus far, in thirty-two years of driving, that’s always been true. I haven’t always gotten a ticket—sometime I do, sometimes I don’t—but I’ve never been pulled over for anything other than what I was legit doing. When I see those red, white, and blue lights of freedom pop up in my rear-view, my first thought is always, “Oh, shit, they must have seen me doing… whatever,” or “What did I do?” But no other thought goes through my head, because merit-based traffic stops are my default setting.
When I start a new job, nobody looks at me and wonders if I was a “diversity hire.” They assume that I got the job based on my qualifications. For all they know, it may come out later that I cashed in a favor or networked to get the job (which I’ve actually never done, even when I desperately needed the money), but no one starts off thinking "special treatment" about me. My relative competence is at least assumed until proven otherwise, because my color and gender are essentially neutral, like the default setting for… well, at the very least, general averageness.
When I was a kid, and Crayola had a crayon color called “flesh,” I didn’t wonder if they meant Inuit flesh, or Punjabi flesh, or Nigerian flesh. They meant a flesh that was essentially identical to my own. Although it was a little peachy, to be honest, I’m much more ghostly than that. Seriously, I don’t wear shorts because my legs can be seen from space. But close enough, I guess. Everyone else could have "raw sienna," or “burnt umber,” or whatever, but I was the baseline that could simply be described as flesh, no modifier required. You know, kind of like all the Bandaids?Last year, the cops came to my house at one in the morning and roused me out of bed. I answered the door in a hoodie and my drawers with a very realistic looking BB-gun behind my back, because I was bleary-eyed and didn't realize it was cops at my door. They wanted to talk about stolen cell-phones that were pinging at my location. I quickly dropped the “gun,” on the pile of jackets behind the door and invited them in to talk. Perhaps because of my age, my genial affect, or the amicable invite into my house, they immediately arrived at the conclusion that I wasn’t running a stolen cell-phone ring out of my modest crackerbox home. When I pointed out the “gun” that I’d been holding and dropped as I let them in (because I didn't want them to find it themselves and mistake it for something else), they seemed a little chagrined that they’d come into the house of a man who technically had the drop on them without noticing it. But all they did was stand between me and my raccoon-pelting BB-gun for the rest of the conversation. They didn’t become agitated, or decide to frisk me.
They did ask me to guess at who might be up to something in our cul de sac, since the cell phones were definitely pinging in close proximity. When I suggested that it was the white-trash family with the mattress leaned up against their garage door—who came and went at all hours of the night, screamed constantly, blared music, and had the cops show up several times over the last year to quell domestic disputes and noise complaints—the cops glazed right over that. Instead, they wanted to know about the Mexican family with the used-car-lot's worth of vehicles in the driveway. I thought that was weird because I’d never seen the cops come out for Alejandro or his family for any reason in the eleven years I'd lived there. My only complaint was that one of Alejandro's kids had once hit my front door with a bottlerocket on the 4th of July, and they sometimes had Halloween parties that went late into the night. But the white-trash family was a constant problem, and I would have thought that the cops had known that based on the record of the half-dozen visits to that location over the past eighteen months.
Once, I was driving my buddy Marcus, his two sisters, and their three kids to an appointment in my truck. Marcus rode up front, and the sisters and their kids were in the bed of my little Mazda truck under the canopy. On the way home, I was speeding, got pulled over, where it was discovered that I was driving without my license because I forgot my wallet at home in my rush to get out the door and get them to their appointment. I didn’t have proof of insurance in the vehicle either, because I'm kind of a nitwit. Marcus and I were also higher than Snoop-Dogg (who I went to high school with, BTW), had a not-insignificant quantity of drugs in the cab, and had been smoking out of a pretty sizable dragon-bong when we got pulled over. God knows how we got away with that part, but we did.It was a whole odyssey, but in the end I didn’t get a ticket for speeding, which is why the cops initially pulled us over, and which I was totally doing. I also didn’t get a ticket for having no license, because I could recite my license number from memory (still can, even though I live in a different state now). And I didn’t even get a ticket for no proof of insurance either. On the other hand, Marcus did get a ticket for not wearing his seatbelt. The passenger seatbelt latch had a penny stuck down in it (because of the whole me being a nitwit thing) that prevented the belt from clicking in, which is why Marcus wasn’t wearing it. So... not even his fault, but he still got a ticket, while I got nothing for a host of things that I was absolutely doing wrong. It’s at this point that mentioning Marcus is a S’Klallam Tribe Native American becomes germane. It’s like the cop walked right by me to get to him.
On another occasion, I asked a cop that I play poker with if the pocket knife that I carry could be considered a concealed weapon. I showed it to him and he said that since there’s a spring-assist on the blade, it could technically be considered one if it was all the way down in my pocket and not hooked on the outside edge by the clip, which is how I always carry it. Then he concluded by saying that it didn’t matter anyway. “A guy like you is never going to have an encounter with a cop that ends in you being searched.” I was almost insulted. What did he mean, “A guy like you?” How dare you, sir?! I used to be the guy you called when you wanted to buy an eighth. I coulda been a contender!
All of these things are examples of what lefties mean when they say “privilege.” I’m not sorry for these things, because I don’t have an ounce of white guilt in me. I don’t feel responsible for what a bunch of people I never met do to another group of people I never met. I only feel responsible for my words, my attitudes, and my actions. These things are immutable facts of my existence, like my height, or my eye and hair color, that I can’t change and wouldn’t even if I could. Well... OK, I’d add a good two or three inches in height, and a whole lot more hair if I could. But otherwise, I’m pretty OK with the hand I was dealt in life.
I’m glad I was born into the great, loving family that I was. We’re not rich, but we're close-knit and they did the best they could to raise me with good values and dedication to ideals of honesty, work ethic, and generosity. I’m glad I was born in America during one of the most prosperous times in the history of our country and the world. I neither asked for these things, nor did I earn them, but I appreciate them and know full well what an amazing blessing they are. I think that’s something to feel grateful for, not ashamed of, because if it’s wrong for me to have them, it’s wrong for anyone else to want them. But just as I don’t feel guilty about immutable facts of my existence, I know it’s evil to judge anyone else by immutable facts of their own existence.
I’ve been pulled over maybe a dozen times in thirty-two years of driving. Philando Castile was pulled over every three months for fourteen years straight, right up until the point he was killed in a routine traffic stop. Which means he was either the worst driver in the history of ever, or he was being pulled over for driving while black. The cop that pulled me over—while speeding with no license or insurance—did haul me out of my vehicle, but didn’t cuff or frisk me. If he had, I’d have gone to jail for at least two years, because I had three joints in my pocket and several ounces under the seat, and back then Washington state had mandatory minimums for possession with intent.
If I looked like Philando Castile, Eric Garner, or George Floyd I think anyone would agree, that story would likely have had a different ending. I mean, I may not have been presumed innocent in that situation, but I was at least presumed harmless, and therefore not in need of cuffing or frisking. I’d also bet my eye-teeth that if it had gone the other way, Marcus and I were standing next to each other in a court room facing those exact charges together, our sentencing would not be handed down equally. After all, our tickets weren’t handed down equally. That, to me, is “privilege” for lack of a better term.
And we absolutely do need a better term. Privilege is too loaded with connotations that don’t apply to most Americans. Silver spoons, limousines, and private jets. You’re never gonna sell that to any of my blue-collar buddies, most of whom live in double-wides, work fifty hour weeks, and drive ten-year-old cars (mine is 13-years-old). Too bad there isn’t a term that means "presumed innocent by default, presumed competent by default, presumed harmless by default, and presumed to be an individual judged by their own actions, instead of as a representative of a monolithic group of people who all share identical qualities." Maybe we should get the folks over at Webster’s working on coining us a new term.
Because I hold those truths to be not only self-evident, but inalienable rights granted to us all by our Creator. But instead, they are treated as privileges, granted only to some by those that govern. Until life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are default rights enjoyed by all, we’ll never know peace.
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