To continue the apparent theme of quoting famous rappers in our reading responses, this week’s reading of The New Jim Crow is essentially summarized in Jay-Z’s ‘04 single, 99 Problems. Though many of the lyrics would most likely not be deemed appropriate for a Macaulay blog post, in his second verse Jay-Z describes an incident that occurred nearly 10 years earlier, back when he was a notorious drug dealer. After being pulled over to the side of the road with “raw,” or cocaine, in his trunk, he is asked, quite condescendingly by the approaching police officer, “Son do you know why I’m stopping you for?”
Jay-Z, clearly possessing the “chutzpah and/or stupidity to tell a police officer to get lost” (the same trait that Professor Tracey Maclin argued most of us do not have), responds, accurately of course, “Cause I’m young and I’m black and my hat’s real low. Do I look like a mind-reader sir, I don’t know.” Fairly, Jay-Z is calling out the police officer for racially profiling a young black male and using the pretext of a traffic violation to accost and harass him, a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment that was, in fact, endorsed by the Supreme Court Decision Ohio v. Robinette. Jay-Z emphasizes the arbitrary nature of such a blatant infringement of his constitutional rights with the response of the “fictional,” police officer: “Well you was doing 55 in a 54. License and registration and step out of the car. Are you carrying a weapon on you? I know a lot of you are.”
Jay-Z, being well versed in historical and influential Supreme Court decisions, proves himself a “reasonable person,” (as determined by the U.S. Justices in Florida v. Bostick) by refusing to give his consent to be frisked, and otherwise violated. “I ain’t stepping out of s**t, all my paper’s legit”
The officer, not one to be denied, pushes further for consent, “Well, do you mind if I look around the car a little bit.”
Jay-Z, still quite aware of his Fourth Amendment rights, boldly retorts, “Well, my glove compartment is locked, so is the trunk in the back. And I know my rights, so you gon’ need a warrant for that.”
The officer, likely intimidated by the young and apparently intelligent black man in front of him, replies, frustrated, “Well we’ll see how smart you are when the K9 come,” reflecting the Supreme Court ruling that “walking a drug-sniffing dog around someone’s vehicle does not constitute a “search,” and therefore does not trigger Fourth Amendment scrutiny.”
Luckily for him, Jay-Z got away that day, and if his careers as a rapper, business mogul and sports agent do not work out, he would seemingly be able to fend for himself as a lawyer. His song sort of represents the difficulty in assessing the necessity of the War on Drugs, demonstrating both the racial prejudice inherent in much of police action and the fact that these “unreasonable and discriminatory stops and searches” are sometimes correct, however rarely that may be.
