Racial profiling? So what else is new? I was born on the South Side on June 7, 1921. I attended McCosh Elementary School, which was largely black but also had some black teachers. I attended Englewood High School, which was half-and-half but had no black teachers. My parents bought me a Ranger bicycle when I was a pre-teenager, but every time I rode it out of Woodlawn, I was stopped by the police who asked me if I owned the bike.
I was a sergeant in the all-black 349th Field Artillery Battalion out of Ft. Sill, Okla. We had white officers. On the troop ship going over to England, the troops were issued comic books only. We protested and finally received magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s, which some of us were accustomed to reading at home.
Much later, when my wife and I drove our son to the University of Iowa in Iowa City, it was assumed that my son would need remedial training. They couldn’t know, or want to accept, that my son was a gifted student. He went on to get on the dean’s list at Iowa.
That was some of the racial profiling that I observed. I have no idea of the invisible racial profiling that may have occurred.
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for those groups that are now protesting about racial profiling. They should check with the 20 percent of Americans who know all about racial profiling.
