Driving While Black: Welcome to the Club, Tyler Perry

This past Sunday, Tyler Perry posted a lengthy status update on his Facebook fan page (Why doesn’t he have an actual blog?) explaining a recent run-in with the police where the filmmaker/entrepreneur says he was harassed and feared things could take a “turn for the worse.” The incident occurred as Perry was leaving his movie studio and, as a security measure to prevent being followed, he made a left turn from the right lane and was subsequently pulled over for the illegal driving infraction. By his account, the simple traffic stop spiraled into scary waters after the police officers, who both happened to be White, thought something was “wrong” with Perry for thinking someone was following him.

As one of the richest people in America (regardless of color) with an estimated net worth of $350 million, Perry has every right to be concerned with being followed. However, I can understand how making such a claim could appear “crazy” to someone who’s unaware of the movie mogul’s status–as was the case here. Still, the officers’ actions, according to Perry’s depiction, appear to have been extreme and exaggerated, but that doesn’t negate the fact that Perry was in the wrong.

From his own admission, Perry made an illegal turn that caused him to be pulled over. As most people of color can attest to, being approached by an officer of the law in such a situation can be nerve racking, regardless of whether you’ve done something or not. We’ve heard too many stories of overzealous patrolmen roughing up or opening fire on a driver during a routine traffic stop.

Perry’s second err of judgment was not properly explaining himself. I’m not saying that he should have tried to use his celebrity to get out of a ticket he deserved, but simply saying you thought you were being followed without context does look suspect. According to Perry, though, the officers continually badgered him with questions without offering him the opportunity to respond in depth.

His third err was losing his cool and blurting, “I think you guys need to just write the ticket and do whatever you need to do.” While I understand Perry’s frustration and wanting to get the ordeal over with, driving while Black requires much more tact. It’s sad to say, but the advice his mother gave him about dealing with the police still rings true today.

Perry wrote:

My mother would always say to me, “If you get stopped by the police, especially if they are White policemen, you say, ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘No, sir,’ and if they want to take you in, you go with them. Don’t resist, you hear me? Don’t make any quick moves, don’t run, you just go.”

I can relate to Perry’s mother’s perspective. I’m not sure when I picked up this survival skill, but as a Black man in America I follow suit religiously. Back in my college years, a group of friends and I were driving two cars deep on our way back to Queens from a pool hall in Long Island. I was behind the wheel of my mother’s car, a beat up Cutlass Supreme, following my friends who were leading the way in the vehicle in front of me.

As we approached this one intersection, I noticed a police car creeping up beside me and rather than pulling up to the walkway, the officer left his car parallel to mine. I could feel his eyes peering into my car, but I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong so I paid him no mind. Still, I couldn’t help but feel tense at the fact that this man with a gun was staring at me.

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Just as the light turned green, I was blinded by the officer’s floodlights bursting in from the left side of my car. Unfamiliar with what that meant I proceeded on with traffic as my friends in the car ahead crossed the intersection. Then, he flashed his sirens and instructed me to pull over. I immediately complied, making my way over to the shoulder lane and waited to find out what the problem was.

As the Nassau County officer, who happened to be White, approached the driver’s side of my vehicle I rolled down the window and he immediately hit me with, “Why were you playing with your headlights?”

All I was doing was waiting at a red light listening to music with my friends so I had no idea what he was talking about. “I didn’t touch any lights,” I replied, completely baffled.

“I saw you.”

“But…,” I caught myself, as I heard a similar voice as Tyler Perry’s mother’s go off in my head: Don’t give this man any reason to accuse you of being anything other than a Black man driving in Long Island.

The officer asked for my license and registration, which I slowly retrieved for him. While he was running my information through the system, my friends and I spent the next five minutes trying to figure out what we did to prompt this traffic stop. For the life of us, we couldn’t figure out what that was, other than being Black while driving.

When the patrolman finally returned, he handed me my documents with a warning, “A car is not a toy, Mr. Samuel.”

I clenched my jaw and bit my tongue, only managing to utter a half-hearted, “Thank you.”

The cop returned to his car and peeled of, leaving me feeling vexed at the idea of being stopped for what I saw as nothing. It wasn’t until we caught up with our friends in the other car at a neighborhood diner that I discovered why the officer pulled me over. Apparently my friends in the car ahead had noticed my headlights kept flashing off and on periodically while we were driving, but thought it was just me playing around. I knew for a fact I didn’t touch the lights, so when I got home I asked my mother if anything was wrong with the car and she revealed that it had some electrical issues that caused the headlights to flicker, which she forgot to mention when she gave me the keys.

Similar to Perry, I was technically in the wrong but that still didn’t stop me from feeling like it was a racially biased incident. Sure, I wasn’t driving a luxury car but I was a person of color in a White neighborhood. At the end of the day, no matter how rich or poor you are, when it comes to (mis)perception that’s what it all boils down to. Those police officers had no clue who Perry was and to them he was just another Black man (read: suspect).

While we’ve definitely come a long way in terms of acceptance (i.e. a Black man named Barack Obama being appointed President of the United States), we still have a long way to go. American culture is rooted in racism and no matter how many of us make it that alone won’t change the system. Tyler Perry might have a lot more money than me but our skin color is the same. When the fancy cars, suits and money is all stripped away and he’s just another man that’s Black while driving (or walking) there’s no separating someone like him from someone like me or a 17-year-old boy on his way home from buying a bag of Skittles. Well, the only difference is both Perry and I were able to walk away from our incidents and live to write about them, if only we were all that lucky.