I got pulled over this morning, kind'a. For dwb (driving while black) . . . just kidding. I hadn't changed my registration sticker and a cop followed me to the drive through of a McDonald's. He came out of the car and, first thing was that I noticed that he was black so I breathed a little easier. (I don't necessarily hold stereotypes about white police officers, it depends on what part of the country, I'm in. I happen to know many fine and very good white cops.) Well, he told me my registration had expired, thankfully I had the sticker in my car and informed him that I kept meaning to put it on but never got around to it. He advised me to do so immediately so that I don't get puilled over.

I haven't been pulled over in a long time. The last time I was pulled over, to the best of my recollection, was when I lived in Buffalo. We lived in Amherst, a fast growing suburb of Buffalo, which was been voted the safest city in America a few times. When my family first moved out there, there were only a few black families out there. My brothers and i got pulled over and followed by cops not infrequently. I tell you, I would get into a panic attack whenever I saw a cop car because i knew I was going to get followed.

The neighborhood was nice as were the people. Every now and then, people would do ignorant stuff like, young men in a car driving by would make the slash sign with a pocket knife, or little girls riding bikes would giggle as they rode past and say silly things like, "there's another one of them." My brother who was at the highschool, who had some academic problems at the time was considered as dumb, but an excellent athlete, he ran track at the state level and played basketball pretty well. My dad, of course, was furious at them, because their view point was that black kids were good for athletics but don't expect much from them academically. He made the point that both he and my mom have Ph.Ds from Stanford and UNC Chapel Hill, my brother is a trauma surgeon with certifications up the wazoo, and another brother is a computer engineer. I don't think that meant anything to them.

The community in Amherst has now changed and is a lot more diverse and so things are getting better there. I loved the Catholic parish that I was a part of, it was just that I was frequently the only black person at mass and almost always, people thought I was new, or never heard of the Catholic faith, or they would hand me missals to show me where we were during the mass. They were very well-intentioned and some openly expressed that they wanted and perhaps needed more diversity, but it is hard to deal with that week after week after week.

Moving to the DC area was a God send, it was great to see black faces everywhere and at Catholic churches. Being black in a Catholic Church did not mean that yours was a foreign culture to Catholicism. Anyway . . . I changed my registration sticker this morning.