Is this a case of driving while black, or driving while Democrat?http://us7.campaign-archive1.com/?u=793918b693d5496b1451e2986&id=e5fd898a1e&e=027cb1c747
Last night, when my campaign director and I left an event in middle Georgia, he offered to drive. Three blocks away, a police officer waited. As we drove past, he flashed his lights at us. Seconds later, his colleague pulled us over.
We were not speeding. We hadn't run a red light or a stop sign. No one had been drinking. But, Elliott was driving while black. That phrase -- "driving while black" -- had come up at our children's high school as part of a discussion of racism. Honestly, as a white male, I didn't take it seriously. But I do now.
The officer asked us both for driver's licenses -- even though I wasn't driving. He pulled Elliott out of the car for a breathalyzer -- which read .00, as he told the officer it would. When the policeman ran Elliott's license, he told us it was suspended. Elliott produced paperwork proving that was incorrect. The police officer took his license anyway.
Why does that matter?
Because the Supreme Court's Whren v. United States decision laid the legal foundation for DWB stops. And when those occur the week before an election, if the driver is compelled to forfeit his/her license, that voter is left without the ID required to vote.
That's a serious problem.
We spent the rest of the drive home talking about race relations and what it's like to be a person of color in the South. In minority communities, there is profound distrust of a system that permits an officer to confiscate the ID required to vote just before it's needed -- especially if the "violation" isn't one.
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