Rakim Quotes

When I get stopped by the police, I keep my hands on the wheel. I'm not going to move.

I went to Zimbabwe. I know how white people feel in America now; relaxed! Cause when I heard the police car I knew they weren't coming after me!

I was eight years old when I got the talk about what to do if a police officer stops me. I was 15 when I was face-down on the curb for the first time.

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 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.

Coming up in the Bay Area and being African American in a city that has a history of complex issues of violent crime, interaction with the police is always intense. That's something you have to learn. My mom taught me at a young age that if ever a cop stops you, you put your hands up and freeze - don't move.

I'm a black man in the United States of America, so I always feel like there's a target on me.

As a black man, you run from the cops. It's different now, but back when I was coming up, you run.

I've never been arrested. I've been stopped, searched and had a gun put to my head by the Chicago cops.

I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder

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.

We listened to Donald Trump speak at the debate about 'Stop and Frisk.' I don't think it's a good way to go through life. I don't think that's going to solve any of our problems. It's actually going to make racial tension a whole lot worse, and it's going to make us feel like we're singled out.

When you have a cop approaching your car with his hand on his gun, I know it may be protocol, but us being the people we are, you automatically feel as if you're a criminal. So where's the respect then? You probably won't respond the correct way. So how do we find a common ground then?

If I see a cop, it's not like, 'Oh, there's a cop who's gonna keep me safe.' It's more, 'There's a cop who might be having a bad day, so don't make eye contact.'

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.

Most people who are not of color, their parents didn't need to tell them how to act around police or what to do if they ever got pulled over. Never, not once. We are taught that in the black neighborhoods. I've been profiled and pulled over, so it's not like I don't know.

I think that the response to the OJ Simpson trial was based on a kind of sensibility that emerged out of the many campaigns to defend black communities against police violence.

I think most people, in their lifetime, have seen somebody who has the ability to use force lord it over other individuals. I see a lot of those videos, and I am disturbed by people being yanked out of their cars, and it seems to be a disproportionate amount of young black men. I'm disturbed by it.

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.

I love cops. I think you have to walk in their shoes to understand, you know when they use violence, Michael Brown in Ferguson, a classic case.

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.

Three men at McAlester State Penitentiary had larger penises than Lamar Pye, but all were black and therefore, by Lamar's own figuring, hardly human at all.

They [the police] learned something from them Harlem riots. They used to beat your head right in public, but now they only beat it after they get you down to the station house.

When I was a kid, there was kind of a given that there were some really bad, racist police out there. That's just what America was like when I was a kid.

What stands out to me in America was all the police vs. citizens turmoil. It's decades of bad policing, bad schooling, racism, bigotry and other factors finally spilling into mainstream culture. I would like to see America evolve on how the laws are enforced on the streets.