I am a 6′4″ (shrunk to 6′ 3 1/2″), middle-aged, mostly bald, white male, of athletic build, and advanced education. Gotta say, that over my 46 years on this Earth — 24 in Canada, 2 in Europe, and 20 in America — my relations with cops have been very, very smooth. Almost like the cops I’ve met are “my guys”.

Here’s my most recent story. A couple of years ago, I got a speeding ticket. It was my first in a decade. And before a couple of speeding tickets I got in the late 1990s around the time of my divorce, it had been 14 years since my previous speeding ticket. Until testosterone started declining in my 40s, I was usually one of the fastest cars on the road.

I used to track the patterns of cops looking for speeders (e.g. end of the month), and recognize the make and model of undercover vehicles (e.g. Caprice Classics). But even with this counter-surveillance, I got the feeling that I just did not fit the kind of profile the cops were looking for. Now I’m content to just follow the speed of traffic.

But a couple of years ago, I was pulled over going 65 in a 50 zone, rushing to a meeting. I was driving my beat-up 1990 Honda Accord. It’s dirty inside and out. I work at home, shave rarely, and dress somewhere between casual and slovenly. At the time I was pulled over, my insurance was paid up, but my tags were 2 or 3 years expired. (DMV hadn’t sent me bills, and I never noticed the tag on my car receding over time.)

Anyway, the young, short, white cop who pulled me over parked ahead of me. After a couple of minutes, he walked back to my car, and stood at my window. He mentioned my speed and the problem with my tags, seeking an explanation. I’d say his demeanor was cautious, but not defensive. I mean, I probably fit a profile right then and there of a sort of scofflaw white guy. So he didn’t know what he had on his hands.

He didn’t ask me to get out of my vehicle. Just asked me to explain. So I explained.

He went back to his vehicle and wrote me up. As I remember it, he wrote down my speed to 55, and gave me the option of driver school which would eliminate any fine or points. Told me to get my tags taken care of right away. I thanked him, and told him I would do so. He drove away. So did I.

One extra fact: This was in Los Gatos, California — a very wealthy, very white, low crime town.

When he drove away, I got to thinking about my black classmates back at law school who described being pulled over regularly for “driving while black”. Being treated brusquely, at best, by the cops.

This is when I started becoming aware that my own smooth experiences with law enforcement are one small sliver of the sorts of experiences other Americans have.

Have to say the same about my two white, attractive wives. I’ve spent 20 years and counting with these two women (in sequence; not parallel ). Never did I hear from them any stories about being unfairly treated by the cops.

I can say with a certainty, given my experiences in life, that if I, or either of my wives, had been in Prof. Gates’ shoes when Officer Crowley asked us to step onto our porch, not in million years would any of us have thought “I’m in danger” or felt the hair on the back of our necks rise. I have no fear of being treated unfairly by cops — unless they are rabid.

I mean, cop asks me to step outside, I’d do it. Comply with a pat down. I’d have no fear of the cop slipping some crack into my pocket and then booking me for possession. I just don’t think that sort of thing is in my cards.

But that’s irrelevant to the experience of Gates.

That’s what I believe about the stories of everybody else. I mean, maybe you and I happen to enjoy the benefits of positive racial- or gender- or height- or body-type- biases. But that’s not true for everyone.

Gates experienced a very negative bias directed toward him the instant Crowley laid eyes on him. I know that because Crowley asked Gates to step outside, in a very swanky neighborhood. I’m talking about before Gates went ape-shit, throwing his hissy fit.

The only time in my life I have felt the sting of instant, negative bias is when I go shopping in my dirty work clothes, unshaven. I almost always get asked for ID when using my credit card at those times. But I never get asked when my clothes are clean.

So that’s why I like going out with ragged, dirty clothes. I get to feel even just a smidgen of what life is like on the “other side”. Black folk in America can spend their whole lives on the “other side”.

That’s why it was so cool for Obama to say the other night that “I would get shot” if he was caught trying to get into his current house. It was a  funny thing to say, and it deeply endeared him with all the black people who still live on streets of America, far below his cloistered palace of Oz.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Obama is a fricking genius. Obama: Please, please don’t get shot before you’ve turned this country around.