Racial Profiling At the Intersection of Ignorance and Hate

April 4, 2012

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2012 Raymond Lucas - Rev 6.1


R Lucas 1975 R Lucas 2010
Which One Gets Racially Profiled?.........BOTH!
I saw the police cars out of the corner of my eye as they pulled in head first, right up to the
point of breaching the curb.
It was spring 1976, the sun was beaming and my girlfriend wanted to go shopping in
Georgetown before my shift began at Westinghouse Defense Electronics that evening. I was 20
years old and a Labor Grade 9 Electronics Technician making good money. And, I was excited
for the opportunity to show off my relatively new economic independence to my girlfriend.
Simultaneously, the squad cars stopped while officers emerged from the vehicles with the cars
lightly bouncing in slow motion from the abrupt stop. That familiar sick feeling came over me,
as it often did while in the presence of white people sending out signals of disdain for my
presence like a powerful radar beacon; a beacon saying with abundant clarity that You Dont
Belong Here!
I began executing an auto-internal program - a review of my routine checklist that had been
hardwired into my brain like firmware in a mainframe, sourced from the teachings of my
parents, especially, my father, on how to behave around white people:
No sudden moves!
POSE NO THREAT! Not even the perception of a threat!
Dont show anger!
Monitor your volume and tone of voice.
Be respectful and humble.
Scan the environment for potential witnesses.
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2012 Raymond Lucas - Rev 6.1

Remember that intellect can be interpreted as arrogance and disrespect to some white
people, especially the REALLY ignorant ones.
Checklist 1 automatically branched to checklist 2:
NO SUDDEN MOVES!
POSE NO THREAT! Not even the perception of a threat!
DONT SHOW ANGER!
What did I do wrong?
Did the person I am with do anything wrong?
Are there any other Black people around
What is the demeanor of the Police Officers?
Are there any friendly faces in the crowd?
Maintain a total awareness of your expressions and posture.
I remember my father once saying to me after recognizing that I was very adept at expressing
my anger with regard to a blatant racist incident we were watching on TV, would you rather
be RIGHT or DEAD? But, I had done nothing wrong and this dehumanizing and demoralizing
situation on a crowded street in Georgetown was unfolding in front of my girlfriend like the
opening scenes of a Blaxploitation movie setting up a heroic character to make the white man
pay for a horrible transgression on the Black Man! However, my mind was not entertaining
Payback. I was yet wondering whether I would even live to see tomorrow or lose one of the
most precious things I had come to love and appreciate so much My Freedom!
One of the officers aggressively approached me and said, Give me your license! Without a
word, I slowly reached in my left back pocket, with my left hand and retrieved my wallet. My
hands were shaking as I slid my license out of one of the plastic windows and other cards and
pictures fell to the ground. While fumbling with my scattered wallet contents, I reran my
second auto-programNO SUDDEN MOVESPOSE NO THREATSHOW NO ANGER... The
other three officers, all white, stood leaning against the cars, arms folded, looking on with
approval at the performance of the lead officer. While still holding my license, the officer
pulled out a pad and pen, scribbled some information from my license and handed it back to
me. I gently took my license, and for the first time since this ordeal began, I very politely asked,
Excuse me officerWhy do you need information from my license? And, he replied, while
scanning my girlfriends face and returning his eyes towards me with a menacing glare, We just
want to know where to find you if anything turns up missing in Georgetown! The police
watched us as we walked to the car while I executed my auto-program in a continuous loop.
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2012 Raymond Lucas - Rev 6.1

The ride back to Baltimore was more miserable than any trip in my lifetime. My girlfriend and I
said absolutely nothing no reassurances, no flaring rage and cursing that would normally be
expressed in a post racial incident like this, just silence. This was clearly one of the most
embarrassing moments of my life that challenge my manhood beyond anything I have ever
experienced. My girlfriend and I never, ever talked about it, and I cant say with any certainty
that this event and the aftermath had no impact on the demise of our relationship.
I could fill volumes recounting the thousands of racial profiling scenarios from police stopping
me for Spot Checks DAILY in the 70s, to customers not allowing me to fix their computers while
serving as a Customer Engineer for IBM in the mid 70s, to customers and fellow managers
assuming that one of my employees was the boss rather than me when we entered meeting
rooms to conduct business! However, recounting the many scenarios is not productive and my
experiences being profiled are certainly not unique. I share these demoralizing experiences,
not only with other Black Men, but with men and women from a wide variety of minority and
ethnic backgrounds.
Ignorance and Hate are destructive forces by themselves, yet when combined, generate levels
of devastation that are often off the scale and beyond measure. And, since I truly believe that
Racial Profiling lives at the intersection of Ignorance and Hate, I conclude that Racial Profilers
are most often Ignorant and/or Hateful SOBs!



Racial Profiling thrives at the intersection of Ignorance and Hate, and the real cost of this
despicable discriminatory behavior is incalculable. Consider the massive amount of brain
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2012 Raymond Lucas - Rev 6.1

power required by racially profiled victims to safely and successfully navigate through the
gauntlet of Ignorance and Hate to get through any given day. All of the additional programming
and subroutines I had to use to be successful in life expended brain power and resources that
should have been dedicated, in the case of my employment, to the job I was being paid to do. I
can conclude from this that I was able to be very effective and incredibly successful using
significantly less brain capacity then my white counterparts, who in most cases, made more
money than I did. Multiple times in my IBM career, my salary had to be adjusted because it was
significantly out of balance with my white peers. One instance resulted in a 22% increase in
1979!


By most American standards, I have been very successful having had a fruitful and incredible
career with a Fortune 100 company and a wonderful home that I share with a phenomenal
family. And, although I dont have wealth of a Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey or their limousine
drivers, for that matter, author, Malcolm Gladwell has convinced me in his book, Outliers, that
the timing of many of my experiences along with specific timeline events, uniquely positioned
me for success. For example, I learned at a very early age, the necessary nuances for effectively
dealing with white people. In 1960, my brother and I integrated the youth bowling league at
Johnny Unitas Colt Lanes in Woodlawn, Maryland. I learned how to navigate in my native Black
world during the week, in school, and my bowling white world on the weekends. I learned
several VERY powerful lessons that continue to serve me to this day:
1. Kids are not the problem when it comes racism. We just wanted to have fun.
2. People respect you if you are very good at something regardless of what color
you are.
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3. People worship you if you are the best at something regardless of what color you
are.
4. You can keep people WAY off guard when you make hard things look easy and
treat big accomplishments like they are no big deal. Translation Look Cool!
5. White Kids have the power, through their interaction with Black Kids, to
challenge and change their parents racist ideals.
6. All white people are not evil.
In twelve years from age 5 to 17, I went to my Dealing with White People class every Saturday
and many Sundays missing very few classes throughout that entire period.
In 1970, I was asked by a white guy that I beat in a tournament, to join his team in a Sunday
Traveling League, not knowing when I accepted that I was the only Black guy in the league. This
is when I learned another important lesson that color is irrelevant when people want to win!
And, win we did. I was also very proud of the fact that I finished with the highest average in the
league while watching cautious and reluctant white parents being taught about decency by a
bunch of testosterone saturated teenagers.
I really appreciated the opportunity that Mike gave me, but, I dont know if he really
understands how impactful and significant this experience shaped the way I approached my life
resulting in great success.
Racial Profiling is a symptom with ignorance and hate serving as root causes. I try not to reflect
on what could have been for me, unencumbered by the vile effects of racism and prejudice.
But this would be premature since I am still on my journey. And, I still seek to be the best at
everything I do.
Collateral Benefit of Teleworking in the 21
st
Century
During my last fifteen years at IBM and IBM companies, working from home became the norm
ushering in occasional 80 hour work weeks filled with email, phone calls, texting and
conference calls. Weeks would go by without ever going to an IBM office or a customer site.
And, as cool as that might sound, it can be isolating, depressive and very destructive to family
life if not managed effectively. This is a world where you may work for a manager for as long as
two years and never meet them in person, or support customers around the world, only getting
to know them on the phone and through email.
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With virtually no budget for travel, and customers, across as many as 7 time zones, my virtual
persona and footprint revealed no indication of my race in this pre-Facebook world in the
90s and across the turn of the century. Customers only cared that there was a helpful,
accountable voice on the other end of the line, or an email providing a solution to their
business critical problem. It was some time before coming to the realization that my Auto-
White People Engagement Programming was getting only limited use, freeing up unused brain
capacity for the work I was being paid to do! But I am still very adept at challenging racist
behavior while very casually and publicly embarrassing the perpetrator.
I had always intuitively known that Ignorance and Hate came at an incredible cost. And,
realizing the change in my productivity from the face-to-face world to the Teleworking world
brought incredible clarity to the cost of racism for me.
Powerful Lessons Learned
It is important to note that the purpose of this writing is not to draw attention to Raymond
Lucas, The Victim of Racial Profiling and Racism. My intent is to help people, especially young
Black males, see that they have choices with respect to how they handle the grossly inequitable
barriers they WILL face from the day they are born, until the day they die.
Consider this. If another person and I are walking down separate, but parallel roads bound for
a destination that will make our lives better, and someone continues to throw obstacles on, just
MY road trees, deep valleys, boulders, whatever. I then have two choices:
1. Stare at each obstacle or look towards the sky and scream at the top of my
lungs about the unfairness of the situation, or
2. Learn and develop as many of the skills that will leverage my ability to
navigate around each obstacle to get what I want.
Choosing 0ption 2, first, is the true secret to my success. And, the rewards of subtly moving
your colleagues or competitors to the understanding that you beat them, even with their
advantage of white privilege, yielded victories so sweet that I still taste them today.
Options we identify when solving problems, like the two options above, are not always a
either/or choice. Did I express my disdain regarding unfair treatment of me or others?
Absolutely! But, I found ways to do this in non-threatening, intellectual ways, and was most
successful when my references in these discussions reflected some negative economic impact
to the perpetrator or the company. Over my years at IBM, I developed significant credibility
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along with an unshakeable level of Integrity that made people listen when I spoke! I also found
that issues of gaining or losing GREEN most always trumped issues of someone being BLACK.
One of the most powerful lessons that I have learned (more so, from 33 years of marriage than
32 years with IBM) is that You Cannot Really Change People. You Can Only Change Yourself!
Next Steps
Bottom line, Racism and Racial Profiling is just WRONG. And NO ONE should lose their life,
have to bury their child, suffer injury, or have to perform unnatural acts because of it. Although
we can provide consequences for wrong behavior with legislation, this only addresses a
symptom. But, to address this problem at the root, each of us has to change ourselves. So,
until we do, I support Senate Bill S.1670, End Racial Profiling Act of 2011,
introduced by Senator Benjamin Cardin, D-MD


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raywlucas@gmail.com