Ernest Cline Quotes

I've physically seen profiling. I've seen me walking up the street with my friends, and the police officers get out of their car and bust the hell out of my friends. And they can't do anything about it, and the cop gets back in his car and drives off.

If you've never feared the police - if you don't get a dull ache in the pit of your stomach when you see red and blue flashing lights, even when you know you're not doing anything wrong - consider yourself lucky.

I know what it means to be stopped by police. I've been stopped by police a lot.

I'm pretty sure that wasn't Oscar's first time getting harassed or held-up by authorities. And over time you start to feel some type of way when you get pulled over. "Oh, I gotta go through this. Again."

I got pulled over when I was behind the wheel of a Porsche in Philly once for what we call DWB - Driving While Black.

Every now and then I'm in a situation where someone doesn't recognize me, and I experience racism. Things like not being buzzed into a store or sitting in first class on a plane and having someone ask to see my ticket four times.

I can be standing in Barneys with my coat and purse and my selections, and some white woman will say, 'Can you get this in my size?' What she sees is a black woman, and her service button goes off.

Black boys became criminalized. I was in constant dread for their lives, because they were targets everywhere. They still are.

When you live in a world in which juveniles are much more likely to be stopped—or if stopped, be arrested, or if arrested, be adjudicated—if they are Black, then all of the indicators associated with prior criminal history are going to be serving effectively as a proxy for race.

I'm outdoors a lot, so I get dark. Guess who gets stopped? I've been pulled over, and they ask, 'Where are you from?' I say, 'Montana.' They say, 'Are you sure? And I say, 'I'm reasonably sure I'm from Montana, but you know, this is a dream life.' You start on this shtick with them and it's fun.

I believe that Trayvon Martin's life might well have been spared if many of us who care about racial justice had raised our voices much, much sooner and much, much more loudly about the routine stereotyping and profiling of young black men and boys.

I think the majority of police are really good people and really good at their jobs, but that doesn't change the fact that with any interaction I have with them, I'm viewed as a potential threat.

Sometimes I'll be somewhere, and the cops will show up to kick me out and end up just asking for a photo.

I used to get stop-and-frisked every time I walked out of my house.

I've been harassed by police my whole life and seen people who looked like me treated like animals at the hands of law enforcement.

I have been pulled over, and I have actually worried, 'Is something going to happen to me even though I am a law abiding citizen?' That is a real fear and is something that we have to come to grips with.

I am followed in department stores. I have walked in dressed professionally or dressed in jeans, and I have walked into stores, and instantly, security is on my back.

I can't think of an experience I've had with police that I felt was based on race, which is one difference between England and the U.S.

Here's a fact: I absolutely understand the humiliation of being stopped for no reason other than driving while black.

As long as I've been playing, they never say I done anything. They always say that some white guy did it.

I lived in Chicago, in a shady part of town, and the cops would always stop me since I'm Mexican and I look like the other dudes. Style played a part in it. You're not really going to dress in a suit in a tie.

I also acknowledge that prejudice runs very deep in our society. And, in the real world, discrimination rears its ugly head in the shadows, where it's very difficult to root it out.

If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon.

Reardan is the rich white farm town that sits in the wheat fields exactly 22 miles away from the Rez. And it's a hick town I suppose filled with farmers and rednecks and racists cops who stop every Indian that drives through. During one week when I was little dad got stopped three times for DWI- Driving While Indian.

We've all had some level of injustice, whether 20 years in prison, or 20 minutes sitting in your car waiting for a police officer to determine your future. Or even a few moments in an elevator with some woman clutching her purse thinking you're going to rob her ¾ regardless of celebrity, that has happened to me.