The Supreme Court and Racial Profiling, A Precedent for Prejudice

Ever since I first read Arizona SB1070, I’ve been telling myself that Arizona was alone in its desire to trample on my rights in the name of protecting our borders. I was surprised when I saw that polls showed that a majority of Americans supported the law. Perhaps people believe Jan Brewer when she says that she will not tolerate racial profiling and that the framework for the law is based on Federal guidelines, I was not so sure. I could see that there was a lot of room for abuse and hoped that eventually the Supreme Court would step in and ensure that I receive equal protection, under the 14th Amendment, from the discriminatory practice of racial profiling. Sadly, the more I read about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions dealing with racial profiling, the less confident I am that they’re looking out for my welfare.

The court has a history of permitting racial profiling. Let me take you back to 1944, one of the bleakest periods in American legal history, to Korematsu v. United States, the landmark decision which affirmed the constitutionality of stripping Japanese Americans of their belongings and sending them off to internment camps during World War II. This decision allowed racial discrimination in the name of protecting the nation from possible spies. Justice Frank Murphy in his dissenting opinion compared the rationale behind this decision to "the abhorrent and despicable treatment of minority groups by the dictatorial tyrannies which this nation is now pledged to destroy," i.e. Nazi Germany. I concur.

Let’s move forward to 1968, when the Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Terry v. Ohio. This decision allowed police officers to detain and search a person without a search warrant if the officer had a reasonable belief that the person was armed. The practice is now so common among law enforcement officers that the stop, frisk and search routine is known simply as a “Terry stop.” What does this have to do with racial profiling, you ask? Only that a disproportionately large number of Terry stops involved black and brown suspects. In the ABC network’s investigative piece, Driving While Black we see a group of three young black men pulled over for a Terry stop because they change lanes without signaling. They’re made to get out of the car, are frisked, separated and their car is thoroughly searched without their consent. The young men, who have all been pulled over before without provocation, claim it is a common experience among African Americans. In 1999, the New Jersey State Police admitted to stopping and detaining a disproportionately large number of black men using the Terry stop. The real infraction that these men committed is known as DWB - Driving While Black.

But back to what brought me here, specifically racial profiling as it relates to illegal immigration. In 1975 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the United States v. Brignoni-Ponce case that U.S. Border Patrol officers should be allowed to stop cars that were near the Mexican/U.S. border and question the occupants regarding their immigration status if the occupants appeared to be of Mexican ancestry and there existed articulable facts that warranted suspicion. Examples of these articulable facts include but are not limited to proximity to the border, the make of the car being driven, the dress and haircut of the driver. Talk about judging a book by its cover! So let me get this straight, if you have brown skin, drive an older car and don’t have expensive clothes prepare to stop?

Are these the federal precedents that SB 1070 is based on? If so what happened to “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."? That’s from the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, a document I treasure and respect. If SB1070 goes to the Supreme Court will the court acknowledge that racial profiling violates the 14th Amendment or will they continue to let fear of spies, of terrorists, of drug lords and illegal immigrants eat away at the very foundation upon which this nation is built? I suppose it’s more likely that SB 1070 will go down because the federal government rather than state government has the final word over immigration and naturalization laws but it would be a much sweeter victory if we could admit that racial profiling has been permitted for far too long.

The Yellow Star Protest

As a symbol of my own little private protest against AZ SB1070, I've been wearing a big yellow star on my clothes since Sunday in hopes of reminding people of the terrible things that can happen as a result of racism and racial profiling. The message on the star is simple: "Profile This!" The choice of putting the message on a yellow star was deliberate. I wanted people who I met in everyday life to link the “show us your papers” mentality and the racial profiling allowed under the new Arizona state law with the most insidious example of racial profiling that once occurred under the Third Reich. I wanted them to make the connection and think about how these seemingly little things can lead to something awful.


Historical image courtesy of http://aworldofprogress.com/the-yellow-star-of-arizona/

Sunday morning, as I walked out the door wearing the yellow star in public for the first time, I had an overpowering feeling of sadness. A strong sense of dread came from the awareness that I was making myself a target and I had to remind myself that I had chosen to wear the star, whereas Jews in Nazi Germany had been forced to wear it. I felt empathetic and a little afraid so I put on the mental armor. I walked tall, purposefully, with a serious look on my face. I wore my protest star with self-righteous anger and an expression that said “Don't fuck with me.” The result was that no one came near me. I wore the star all day without incident.

The next day, I thought about what had happened and I decided that if I wanted the star to have any effect on people, they would have to get close enough to read it. I pinned my star on my tee shirt and tried on a friendly face as I headed out the door to walk my dog. Two neighbors stopped me. They didn't ask about the star right off, but glanced at it, trying to read its message discreetly as they talked about other things. One woman finally asked “what's that about?”

"I'm protesting racial profiling…" I replied, trying to open up a discussion without going on the offensive. She smiled, nodded her head up and down and said "yes" as if to say she understood or perhaps even agreed, but I couldn't qualify the nod because she immediately changed the subject. At the end of the second day, I was starting to feel ignored.

On the third day I was in full friendly mode. I went out of my way to say hello to neighbors, salespeople and strangers. I made sure I got close enough so that they could read my star and still no one would comment. At the market, a Hispanic man in the produce department wheeled over a cart of potatoes next to where I was standing and deliberately bent over to read my message. He looked at me and gave me a big grin but said nothing. That same day, a cashier at a Target store in Scottsdale smiled as she rang up my purchases, then politely and coolly handed me my things after reading the message on my star.

Last night, I was thinking that the whole star protest had been one big failed experiment and that the only one being affected by it was me. I had learned that to get people to even hear, or in this case, read what I have to say, I have to be non-threatening or they'd just ignore me, but I wondered if anyone had stopped to think about the message of the yellow star. I had no reason to think so.

I wore the star again this morning. I'm holding onto the hope that the people who read the star pinned on my chest are quietly, maybe even subconsciously digesting the message that racial profiling is wrong.

I Dare You

FOR ANY LAWFUL CONTACT MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE MADE, WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON.

Reasonable suspicion? I wonder what that means. I wonder what an illegal immigrant does or says to cause reasonable suspicion. What are the guidelines that law enforcement would use to determine reasonable suspicion? I suspect that if no guidelines are in place, skin color and income level will provide all the suspicion necessary for potentially harrassing Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Native Americans and other ethnicities who might fit the profile of a Mexican undocumented worker.

Last night when I got home I checked my Facebook and noticed that some of my friends had marched in the huge rally protesting Arizona's recently passed SB1070, a portion of which is shown above. The rally took place in L.A. but I'm in Arizona. I felt useless and frustrated at not being able to march side by side with them but as I set out to walk my dog, an idea came to me. A friend of my husband's, who happens to be a very prominent business owner in Arizona, was complaining about the new immigration law. The businessman, who is of Jewish ancestry, started talking about the similarities between the legitimization that this new law gives to racial profiling and the racial profiling done at the onset of the Nazis' persecution of Jews.

"They might as well pass out stars for people to wear on their clothes," he said. Of course, we don't have to wear stars because I'm sure law enforcement can figure out who is an illegal immigrant just by looking at us, right? I agree with the fellow who said that this law is not anti-immigrant, it's anti-Mexican, because if you have blue eyes and fair skin, you probably ain't getting pulled over by the sheriff; you European immigrants are safe in Arizona.

It must be the former teacher in me but I was all about the yellow stars. What if I were to wear a yellow star that said "Mexican" on my clothes? Would it remind people how dangerous racial profiling can be? Now, I'm not comparing this anti-illegal immigration law to the Holocaust. I certainly do not mean to trivialize the millions who died but I think it honors those whose lives were lost through inaction that we learn from the past. These are the little things that pave the way for tyrants. So, I thought to myself that I had to help people see the connection. I've cut out a star for myself which I plan to wear on my clothing when I go about my daily business.

It says simply: "Profile This."

It may seem like a quiet way to protest but I assure you in my mostly Republican, anti-immigrant community of Phoenix/Scottsdale, it's going to upset the apple cart and will take a lot more guts than walking with my friends in a march. So wish me luck and if you drive through Arizona or live here, feel free to make your own star and wear it on your lapel. I dare you!

It's More Mass Gluttony

Greg's in town this weekend and we found ourselves with a little play time on our hands this morning so we decided to make the half hour drive to Glendale, a quaint little town just west of Phoenix that's rich in thrift stores and Mexican eats. There's a neighborhood restaurant there that sells tasty bastardized cheddar cheese green chile tamales that scream pocho! every time you bite them, but I'm getting ahead of myself because today, lunch came after dessert.

I'm a firm believer in dessert after every meal and I'd push for dessert after every snack too but my bathroom scale won't allow it. It just so happened that this morning as we were driving out to Bitzee Mama's for lunch, we drove by Cerreta's Candy Company. Cerreta's is a real throwback to the days of mom and pop operations, in fact, the store is decorated with murals of the Cerreta family. The patriarch, Jim Cerreta is a real life Willy Wonka who raffles off Golden Tickets and assigned each of his sons to one of the departments: chocolates, caramels, creams and the retail store. The candy factory has been around for forty years and most of the machinery is original or only slightly modified. Tubes and hoses run along the ceiling and walls, carrying molten chocolate to giant vats where it is carefully measured into plastic molds of hearts, Santas or rabbits, depending on the season. They also have some unusual molds, such as bones and feet.



Cerreta's offers free daily tours of the small factory and we'd tried to take it once before but had come at the wrong time. Today the sugar gods were smiling and we walked in right at 10:00am, just in time for a tour. We were the only two people waiting for a tour and I was certain they'd send us away but instead, a sweet smiling lady came over and started telling us all about the factory. My eyes grew as large and round as lollipops watching the thin sheets of caramel being chopped into bite sized squares, then shooting down a conveyer belt to be wrapped in cellophane and dropped off the end into neat little white boxes. Just when my inner Veruca Salt was about to be unleashed, the tour guide offered us a sample of some warm, fresh caramels that we popped into our salivating mouths and I was sent floating in heavenly bliss.



We ate our way through the various departments then hit the candy store where we sampled more, including some yummy prickly pear cactus brittle. I selected a bag of a strange looking confection called Arizona Gold; it's crunchy but light and airy like cotton candy that's been through boot camp and has gone from soft, pink and bouncing to a firm honey gold.

We buzzed out of there riding our sugar high to our lunch stop where we packed away the green chile tamales, chips and salsa, cheesy refried beans and rice then complained on the way out about our bulging panzas and our inability to move. I felt like my belly was going to pull me off balance and tip me over as I wobbled along the Glendale town square.

On our way home Greg and I looked at each other as we approached our favorite Arizona panaderia, should we stop, hadn't we eaten too much already? What the heck, as long as we were in the neighborhood we might as well get some pan dulce. We showed some self contol and only purchased half a dozen pieces of conchas, cuernitos and elotes.



It was a great day for pigging out because like the song says "Everyday will be like a holiday when my baby comes home..."

Ghost Town Travelogue

It’s beginning to look a lot like Halloween. Not that I need a special reason to start crafting with skulls, ghosts and other ghoulish creatures, but each autumn I feel my love of the dark side rekindled. When I lived in Glassell Park, I used to have my house done up in Dia de Los Muertos decor year round. My walls were painted with bright, bright colors and a permanent collection of devil masks, calaveras and little skeleton shrines were on display regardless of the season, which led my mother to place cut out paper crosses on the foreheads of my "demonios" for my own protection, but I digress...I really meant to talk about Halloween.



This past weekend, we drove up to Jerome for their annual Ghost Walk. We had been to a Ghost Walk last year in Prescott and I’ve started to wonder if this is a uniquely Arizonan tradition. I’ve taken ghost tours in different cities but usually they involve a tour guide relating spooky stories as the group visits various locations purported to be haunted. It’s done differently here.

In Jerome, we began our evening by meeting in the town hall where we were sorted into small groups while a trio of musicians sang about death, murder and phantoms. Each group departed from the town hall and from there we went to different locations around the small town. At each location, we were met by the "ghosts" of Jerome who told us the details of their own passing. The actors were costumed in period dress and put on a little skit reenacting the significant moments leading up to their deaths. It was fun and entertaining.



I’ve written about Jerome before. It is a colorful place, as befits a mining ghost town that refuses to rest in peace. Inhabited by the type of people who would inhabit a ghost town, it is quirky, spooky and artistic. The ghost walk was fun, but not scary at all. Walking around Jerome on any given night is much scarier. There are places here that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. If you ever drop by, take the unpaved road up to The Jerome Grand Hotel and have a drink at the Asylum. If you should plan to stay and don’t mind a sleepless night, you could get a room at The Jerome Grand Hotel, The Connor Hotel or The Inn at Jerome, all of which are reputedly haunted.



I like to actually sleep, so The Ghost City Inn with its homemade peanut butter cookies suits me just fine, although it is also reportedly haunted. The last time we visited, we ate at the Haunted Hamburger, but this time, we opted for the delicious veggie burgers at the Mile High Inn & Grill. Locals say that just about every place in Jerome has its own spirits. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, it's a good place to visit anytime of year, but especially when there is a chill in the air and you're in the mood for some spooky fun.