For Tyre Nichols, Patrick Lyoya, Daunte Wright, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, and countless others ‘Driving While Black’ has become an extreme sport. Image courtesy of Defender Network
by Aswad Walker
What do Tyre Nichols, Patrick Lyoya, Daunte Wright, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Walter Scott, Samuel DuBose and countless others have in common? A police traffic stop ended in their death. Of the names listed, only Castile, a licensed gun owner, had a weapon; a fact that he informed the officer of when asked, yet less than 1.7 seconds later he was shot and killed.
Black people need not bungee jump or skydive to experience the “exhilaration” of danger. Driving While Black has become for African Americans, an extreme sport.
Texas Black Drivers Targeted
And it all stems from police targeting Black drivers, stopping them at far greater rates than any others – stops that may not end in death, but account for the over-arresting of Blacks in proportion to their numbers.
A report from the Texas Civil Rights Project analyzed 2022 traffic stop data from the Houston Police Department and found that police pulled over 81,026 people specifically for non-moving traffic violations, like driving with an expired registration sticker.
According to the report, “Houston’s Black drivers accounted for nearly 42% of these stops — despite the fact that about 23% of Houston’s population is Black, according to census data.”
For context, of HPD traffic stops, Hispanic drivers made up about 31% while white drivers accounted for about 25%.
Additionally, the report found that Black drivers made up nearly 60% of the 2,733 arrests that occurred after these stops while white and Hispanic drivers accounted for roughly 19% each.
Black Drivers Targeted Nationally
And this disturbing reality is national.
Encounters with police during traffic stops, including minor infractions, disproportionately harm people of color, according to data collected by Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group, which argues that armed police should not be involved in many of these cases.
