The Patriot Post® · Driving While Black

By Burt Prelutsky ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/78799-driving-while-black-2021-04-03

For decades, I have heard black men complain about being hassled by cops, about being made to pull over for some chickenshit driving violation.

They would blame the police officers, but they should have been blaming God. It’s not the cops who created them without any of the usual distinguishing features. When an entire race has black hair, brown eyes and black skin, it’s not so easy telling them apart.

It’s unfortunate, but if a 7-11 is robbed by two black guys, and you and a friend happen to be driving in the neighborhood, the cops are likely to stop you, even if you explain you’re on the way to Bible class and don’t want to be late.

I mean, unless the robbers are 6-foot-6 or weigh 300 pounds or happen to be Denzel Washington and Will Smith, what are the cops supposed to do?

But that’s not systemic racism, that’s life.

If you want to play the victim, you can call it a case of driving while black (dwb), pretending the police are motivated by racial prejudice. But that won’t wash with fair-minded people, whatever their race.

When I first started driving at age 16, I got stopped almost before I’d turn on the ignition in my dad’s ‘51 Chevy. It wasn’t a case of driving while Jewish (dwJ), it was because I looked like I was 13 or 14. So it was actually driving while looking underage (dwlu).

I was a teenager and yet I understood the cops were just doing their job. It was an inconvenience, but because I never gave them any lip or attitude, it was a painless experience. And once they checked and discovered that I had a legitimate license and wasn’t joyriding in a stolen car, they sent me on my way.

It would make for a nice change if blacks would put themselves in the other guy’s shoes for once and recognize that, except when it comes to thugs like BLM and race-baiters like Barack Obama, Maxine Waters, Al Sharpton and Stacey Abrams, white people don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about black people. They have livings to make and families to support.

We certainly do not sit around and plot how to keep you on the bottom rung of society by denying you an education; we’re not stopping the parents of a black child from getting married and raising that child; and we certainly don’t begrudge you a job that doesn’t involve peddling illegal drugs, carjacking or invading other people’s homes. You do all that by and to yourselves.


In keeping with the theme, Joe Neuner sent me the following:

A black 10-year-old asks his mother to explain Socialism and racism.

“Well, child,” she replies, “Socialism is when the white folks work every day so we can get all of life’s necessities for free.”

“But, Mama, don’t the white folks get angry about that?”

“Sure, they do, Honey. That’s called racism.”


In the meantime, two of the most ignorant members of the Senate, Tammy Duckworth and Mazie Hirono proudly announced that until Joe Biden began nominating more women and Asian-Americans for senior positions in his administration, they wouldn’t vote to confirm any additional white people. That’s in spite of the fact that denying someone employment in the federal government based on race is a violation of the Civil Rights Act, even when, for once, it’s Caucasians being discriminated against.


It must have come as a shock to Joe Biden when the president of Mexico, Andrés Obrador, didn’t back up his lie that Donald Trump is responsible for the mess at our southern border. Obrador, instead, laid the responsibility solely in Biden’s lap.

Biden immediately placed Kamala Harris in charge of cleaning up the mess. This way, when she fails, he has plausible deniability. People who are convinced that Biden is non compos mentis may themselves be a few bulbs shy of a chandelier.


In the meantime, Biden is taking total credit for dispensing the vaccines, while ignoring the pivotal role his predecessor played in providing him with all the vaccines he’s bragging about.

He reminds me of mediocre movie directors like Robert Altman who regularly denigrated the essential role of the screenwriter by promoting the fiction that he and the actors made it all up as they went along.


Of all the lies told by Democrats over the past few months, perhaps the silliest came during Biden’s highly publicized press conference when he stated that half the Republicans in the country agreed with his agenda. I was hoping that someone would ask him to name just one. But no such luck. Still, if he’d named Bill Kristol, I’m not sure Kristol would have denied it.


Far too many Americans today are like those spoiled scions we used to hear about who’d inherit fortunes created by their fathers or, more often, grandfathers, through no effort of their own, and then fritter away millions on booze, drugs, gambling tables and gold-digging floozies.

We are all scions in our own way. We inherited America and today, tens of millions of us are trying our hardest to turn it into a facsimile of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Castro’s Cuba and Xi Jinping’s China.


We can all shake our heads and bemoan what the Socialists are doing to our beloved nation, but were all you parents and grandparents paying attention to the bilge the members of the teachers’ unions were pouring into the empty heads of your youngsters?

Did you bother refuting the lies they were told about the creation of this wonderful country? Or were you far less interested in the kids’ teachers than you had been in their babysitters?

When I consider the youth of this country and their general contempt for the land of their birth, they strike me as the sort who, as children, read about Jack who traded the family’s cow for a few beans, and the impatient farmer who killed the golden goose, and thought the moral of the stories was to model themselves on the two fools.


Whenever we come across an example of divine justice, we like to share it. That’s especially the case when it shines a spotlight on liberal hypocrisy. So, thanks to Kevin Stroud for passing along the following.

It seems a black member of the Illinois State Senate, Elgie Sims of Chicago, sponsored legislation that would eliminate cash bail for those arrested for felonies.

But before the legislation could take effect, Sen. Sims was threatened by a man with a gun.

The man was arrested. But when his bail was set at $1,500 Sims was outraged that the felon could be released for such a mere pittance.


Arthur Lourea shared a meme that pictures a pistol with the caption “From here on out my firearms identify as cordless power tools.”


While the removal of Dr. Seuss books is depleting the shelves in the children’s section at the library, Simon & Schuster is rushing to fill the void with a page-turner titled “Dr. Fauci: How a Boy from Brooklyn Became America’s Doctor.”

I think I’ll wait for the sequel: “How America Finally Woke Up to the Fact That Dr. Fauci is an Egotistical, Publicity-Mad, Fraud Who Doesn’t Know His Covid From a Hole in the Ground.”


Being an optimist at heart, I came away from watching a two-minute video Bob Hunt sent me with the final 15 words resonating with me: “The happiest people don’t have the best of everything; they make the best of everything.”


Finally, Mike Niederberger wrote to ask: “Why are politicians and Supreme Court justices being paid.? They’ve been on a fifteen-month vacation.”

I replied: “You’re right about the do-nothing justices. But the politicians, I’d argue, have been busy little bees….and sons of bees.”


You can email Burt directly at [email protected].