Driving While Black

Not dissimilar to the USA, the UK has a growing problem with the phenomena: ‘Driving While Black’ or DWB. Most Black-African, Asians, Caribbean’s- are familiar with the term ‘Driving While Black’ which sees Black drivers being disproportionately stopped by the police for being, well, Black.

Stopwatch, a coalition of organisations and supported by Operation Black Vote, suggests that:

We estimate that there were approximately 5.5 million vehicle stops in 2010-11, approximately five million of which did not involve a search and therefore were not covered by the recording requirement"

Research commissioned by the group based on British Crime Survey data between 2008 and 2011 also found that black people had reported higher levels of car stops in the past year than white people and that "the disproportionality could not be explained by any other social or demographic factors".

Almost every Black person has their own story or knows someone with a story to tell, but three cases in recent years came to public prominence. The singer Jamelia, who a few years ago screamed via social media:

‘The police make me f****** sick… The amount of times I’ve been pulled over for nothing is ridiculous… racism is alive and kicking people. They checked everything… including my tyre pressure (all legit). They then went on to say they don’t see how this can be my car!. They didn’t know I was Jamelia when they approached me, they just saw a black girl in an Adidas tracksuit and cap, in an expensive car.’

More recently the murdered brother of Stephen Lawrence, Stuart Lawrence legally challenged the police after being stopped in his car more than 25 times.

Finally, I remember well the case of Black Power List head Michael Eboda, who was not only stopped whilst driving Black, but confronted by a Special Arms Unit with weapons being pointed at his head.

The racial profiling of Stop and Search on the street has clearly been shown to be ineffective and counterproductive. The phenomena of ‘Driving While Black’ is having a similar effect. If correct, the numbers being caught up in this dragnet approach –millions- are staggering.

We need to log and monitor these stops, and at some point, sooner rather than later police officers need to be tested, and challenged about their views of Black people. That way we’d root out the worst offenders and bring under control the humiliation that all too often comes with ‘Driving While Black’.

http://www.stop-watch.org/

Simon Woolley