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What a Tennessee Speed Trap Tells Us About America
“Youse Just the Ones We’re Looking For”
I’m going to talk about Tennessee in a story that involves race, but maybe isn’t racist. Racism isn’t always documentable because the standard now is to prove intent while ignoring the results. It will be a minute before I get to the Tennessee speed trap; I wasn’t even the one who got stopped. Hopefully, you’ll be patient.
A lifetime ago, I went to college in Tennessee. After growing up in Minneapolis, MN, I attended Fisk University, an HBCU in Nashville. In Minneapolis, we had several Black churches and a couple of Black high schools. Still, white people controlled everything that mattered—my high school existence involved taking the city bus across town to Marshall University High and transferring once downtown.
The public bus system is a great place to observe people. I generally caught my first bus, the 9B on 42nd Street and 4th Avenue, at 6:30 am. Most of the same people rode every day. My white classmate, Julian, had usually gotten on two blocks earlier. We’d attended school together since first grade. Terri Lewis got on at 39th Street; when they didn’t get a ride from their Uncle Vern, brothers Robert and Lee Johnson got on at 36th Street. But it was the strangers from whom I learned the most without speaking. Those who dragged…
