R.W.B.

I know I should ignore the people ranting about how we wouldn't be "targeted" if we weren't breaking the law.

But consider this:

Halbastram and I were traveling on I-55, leaving my mother's house & heading back to Kansas following some holiday.  Naturally, as with most holiday travel, there were plenty of officers on the highway.  We caught the attention of one trooper, who tailed us for at least a mile trying to run our plates before finally just pulling us over.  He approached the window and did his whole "license, registration" spiel and noticed that the insurance and his license were two different addresses (we had just moved from Manhattan to Lawrence and hadn't changed over our IDs yet).  For some reason, this prompted him to ask Halbastram to exit the vehicle and go sit in the squad car while he ran his ID.

After placing Halbastram in the car (with the police dog, no less), he then approaches my window and asks for my ID.  I hand it over; unfortunately for me, it was still an Illinois license.  As we moved to Kansas just to attend school, and my license wasn't expired, I just didn't bother because I didn't think we were staying here permanently.  He proceeds to play 20 questions with me, asking why we had two different licenses, where I went to school, how old I was, if we were married, where we were coming from, etc., i.e., questions he already had the answers to because he had just finished asking Halbastram those very questions before moving him to the squad car.

I don't exactly know what his game was, or what he was hoping to gather from that, but he kept Halbastram in the car for about five minutes before letting him go with a warning.

Why he had to remove him from our car to do so just baffles me, but I'm fairly certain race played a huge part here; and I feel confident saying that because I was harassed about my ID as a passenger once before, while riding with My Lady through Naperville.  And in the Naperville case, since my ID said "Chicago" while my lady's said "Joliet", this guy wanted to know what we were doing in Naperville.  As if it were utterly impossible for two people of different races from different towns to be friends on a little road trip.  Once we mentioned "college", he seemed a tad bummed that it wasn't something more worth his while.

And no, having a completely valid ID from one state while being a student in another is no reason to harass passengers.  What would have happened if I told him that I didn't have an ID?  Legally, I'm not required to have one on me as a passenger.

The point is, you don't have to necessarily be doing anything to arouse the suspicion of some; sometimes it's as simple as "riding in the car with your husband" or "being a black passenger in Naperville."

And yes, I know #notallcops; but #notallblackpeople also.