TRANSCRIPT
Last week, I went from New York City down to Washington DC for a psychology conference. When the conference was done, I went back to Union Station, the bus station, the main bus station in DC, and I had about an hour and a half before my bus came. So I walked over to the US Capitol. I had my backpack, and I had my little guitar, and I sat on the step of the Capitol. There was almost nobody there, and I played guitar, the national anthem, and I played America the Beautiful. I just thought about what is this country? What is America? I love America. This is my home. This is my homeland. This is the homeland of my parents and my grandparents.
I also thought, well, how has America gone wrong in so many ways? America seems so screwed up and lost, and I really was in a very contemplative place. Well, afterward, I got someone to take my picture. Also, there was a tourist walking by. I said, “Well, you mind taking a picture of me?” It just seemed like sort of a magical thing to be sitting on the Capitol playing these American songs.
Well, as I was walking back to the bus station, but still pretty near the Capitol, I was on the sidewalk, and two policemen pulled up on motorcycles, and they asked me to stop. So I stopped, and I got all nervous, and I became very uncomfortable. They said, “Um, we would like to search your bags. We’d like to see what’s in them. Can we?”
I got so scared. I was surprised at my reaction, but I became frightened. I felt intimidated. There was nothing illegal in my bags, but part of I think why I became scared is ’cause I wanted to tell them, “No, no, you can’t search my stuff.” But at that moment, I was like, well, what if they caused me more problems because I say no? I’ve got to get back. I don’t want to miss my bus, and I know police can hold people up. They can do all sorts of things to make it last a while, and I’m going to miss my bus back. I have to get back to New York. I had obligations here.
So I thought about it, and I was like, well, there’s nothing illegal on me. I don’t have anything bad on me. I didn’t do anything wrong. So I said, “Okay,” and I let them, and they looked through my stuff. I felt humiliated. I felt angry. I felt upset. I felt violated. I felt like, why are they doing this to me?
I asked them, “Why? Why are you doing this? Did someone call you about me?” I wondered if it was ’cause I was playing guitar on the steps of the Capitol. And they’re like, “Well, you know, you did look suspicious, and you had bags, and sometimes, you know, people walk around here with stuff that looks bad, you know, or might be bad inside of their bags.”
They weren’t actually very nice about it. I mean, they were kind of vaguely polite, I guess, but they really weren’t when it really comes down to it. I really felt sickened. When it was done, I left, and I walked back to the bus station, and I got in line waiting for my bus. I was all riled up, and there were black people in line in front of me and black people in line behind me. Suddenly, I thought, I wonder how they would respond to this.
So I started talking about it with the people around me in line, and I asked them, “Is it okay that I bring this up and share something that just happened?” They were actually curious, and I told them what happened. I wasn’t sure if they would criticize me. I wasn’t sure if they were going to say, “Oh, come on, get over it.” But I was actually surprised. Their reaction was quite different. One after the other was extremely sympathetic. First, they said, “I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
Then they all said the same thing, one after another. They said, “Now imagine if you were black, especially if you were a black man. This happens to us all the time.” Even two of the women I talked to said, “This happens to me a lot.” They get searched a lot. I thought about it. It was like I couldn’t deny it.
Now, I wasn’t dressed so great after the conference. My backpack doesn’t look that fancy. My guitar case is painted, and it looks a little messy. I thought that’s probably why they targeted me, because maybe I looked a little bit rougher. Maybe they thought I had drugs on me, but it wasn’t for the color of my skin.
When I really think about it, I have talked to a lot of black people who do get searched on a fairly frequent basis, do get searched by the police. What I found is that moment of me getting searched by the police, two policemen, two big white policemen, is I had empathy for what other people go through if this happens to them on a regular basis.
I asked the people who I was talking with in the line for the bus, “How does it feel for you when you get searched?” And then they said, “Humiliated. We feel angry, frustrated, pissed off. Want to act out sometimes, want to say something, but no, if I do, it’s just going to be worse,” etc., etc. It was like down the line, it was like this is how I felt.
I thought, when was the last time that I got searched? Well, incidentally, I just came back from living in China for three months. I was doing all sorts of wild stuff there. Not once did I ever get searched. A year ago, I actually was in Israel. I hitched all over Israel, hitched in and out of Palestine. Never had to show identification once. Never got searched at all.
Two years ago, I lived in South America for six months, hitchhiked all around South America. Never ever got searched. Never happened. Actually, two times the police did pull over for me. Once in Chile, and it happened once in Argentina. The police pulled over, and they asked me where I was going. And you know what happened both times? They said, “Oh, we’ll give you a ride.” We had a nice conversation in Spanish. They were super polite with me.
One time, I think they took me about, I don’t know, 50 km. Another time, they drove me about 70 km. So it’s not like this happens to me very much. I couldn’t remember the last time that I got searched by the police. It happened to me a couple of times when I was hitchhiking in Europe. It happened to me once in Australia, and it was a very unpleasant experience.
I thought, well, I’ve been searched maybe three or four times in 25 years. There was one guy I talked to in line in the bus station in Washington who says he gets searched sometimes every week. I thought, what would the effect be on me if I was? And by the way, he wasn’t dressed super thuggy. He was dressed basically probably better than I was.
I thought it’s pretty obvious he’s being searched by his color, that maybe they’re going to find something on him, or maybe they’re just liking to harass him. I thought, what would be the effect on me if I was searched regularly? If I was searched, let’s say, twice a year, or twice a month, or twice a week? I think I would become extremely resentful.
I also think about that book, Black Like Me. It was probably the greatest book I ever read on race relations in the United States. He was a white journalist from the north who went down to the South. If my memory serves me, I haven’t read it in probably 20 years, but he went down to, I believe it was Mississippi or maybe it was Louisiana in 1959. Still a lot of segregation, tons of racism, really horrible things were going on there.
What he did was he took a pill that made his skin—he was a white guy—it made his skin literally turn very dark brown. He shaved his head so you couldn’t tell what type of hair he had. He put on some makeup that made some of the parts of him that didn’t look totally black look black. He really…
Passed for a black guy. Black people thought he was black. White people thought he was black. And it was a fascinating story. He had a totally different insight into what it was like to be black in the South from a perspective of a white person. And it was an extremely popular book, and it opened my eyes.
Now, he only did it, if I remember, for a right, he did it for a few weeks, maybe a couple months. So, of course, his experience with being black is going to be very limited. And I wonder, like, my little, little experience of being bothered, if just one experience that took 10 minutes with the police had an effect on me that opened my eyes. I wonder what would it be like to get bothered all the time.
I really wonder. And I think, I think myself, probably a lot of other people too, who are more like me, probably would have a lot more sympathy for what it is like to be a minority in America if we were treated like that more often. If we were treated with a lot more disrespect, if we were violated, if we did have to go through humiliating experiences. Because really what I felt was I did feel violated.
[Music]