4 The Hampton Roads Messenger Editorial


New York Times Reports on Disproportionate Number of Traffic Stops of African Americans?


know: African Americans are dispro- portionately stopped by police.


BY ANGELA JONES The New York Times recently


published the results from a study that the newspaper conducted on data collected by the police department in Greensboro, North Carolina. Now, when a mainstream media outlet


like the New York Times


releases information that appears to be in support of uncovering African American's plight in the United States, I tend to do a double, if not a triple take.


the study,


According to the results of African Americans were


involved in 54 percent of the traffic stops although they make up only 39 percent of Greensboro's population. Their conclusion is what we already


The study also mentions statistics about the disproportionate number of times African Americans are searched during traffic stops although searches of automobiles driven by African European Americans are more likely to uncover drugs or weapons. I am less concerned about what the report did say than I am about what it did not say. Why did the report not mention that the city of Greensboro is home to the largest historically black college in the country, North Carolina A&T State University? It also neglected to mention that Greensboro is one of the few cities where more than one HBCU is located. Bennett College is also located in Greensboro.


mentioned in the New York Times article


Another important was that


the mastermind


behind 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, lived in Greensboro when he attended college at NC A&T. The CIA cited his traffic run-ins with law enforcement in Greensboro, as a college student, as one of the primary reasons that he despised the United States.


An excerpt from the NPR


article "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Isolated U.S. College Days" dated November 18, 2009:


After just a semester at Chowan,


Mohammed thought his English was good enough to move on. So he


fact not


transferred to North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro. It's Rev. Jesse Jackson's alma mater. And it's where Mohammed began studying mechanical engineering.


When he wasn't in class, Mohammed appeared to spend his college years in a kind of self-imposed isolation — about five miles off campus on a residential,


was partially


NPR reporter Dina Temple-Raston correct when she


stated that "Mohammed never really experienced America." He experienced America from the


African American, an HBCU student in


Greensboro,


street. He and the other Middle Eastern students rented


apartments and turned one into a mosque, according to Sammy Zitawi, a friend of Mohammed's at the time...


Sheikh


As much as he tried, Khalid Mohammed couldn't


wall


himself off from America completely. In the summer of 1984, he was involved in a car accident. He had been driving with an expired license and was taken to the local jail in Greensboro.


The ceilings in the jail where Mohammed was held are low. The bars on the cells have been painted so often, they look thick. The inmates wear orange and red jumpsuits and leg irons.


Zitawi said his friends at A&T


were hauled off to jail all the time. "There are so many reasons for them to take you downtown," he says. "For any reason they take you downtown."


Back then, Zitawi says the Middle Eastern students at A&T had the unfortunate tendency to view traffic laws as strictly optional. In fact, he says even he spent some time in jail — for speeding. "I felt like an animal being there," Zitawi says. "They lock you behind cages. I was so scared. Never again. It will never happen again. It gave me a good lesson."


Zitawi learned a lesson, but what did Khalid Sheikh Mohammed draw from his time in America? The conventional


wisdom has


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long been that the best way to get people overseas to like the U.S. is to have them experience it for themselves. And yet, a recently released CIA report claims "Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's limited and negative experiences in


the United States —


including a short stay in jail — almost certainly helped propel him on his path to become a terrorist."


But the truth is, it seems that Mohammed never really experienced


America. He


kept himself apart and then found what he wanted to find. And it appeared Mohammed couldn't get out of America fast enough. He finished his engineering degree in two-and-a-half years.


tree-lined several


North an


students are researching which college they


I can guarantee should attend,


this information


regarding how African American motorist are treated in Greensboro will appear. Perhaps that is why city leaders were so eager to support the article being written. Even after having a lawsuit filed against the city for racial discrimination by African American police officers, the city obliged the reporter's request to ride along with an officer and be interviewed for the article.


Was the release of the New York


Times research findings an effort to deter more African American students from attending North Carolina A&T and Bennett College in Greensboro, a city with one of the largest concentrations of African American students in the country? This research confirms that HBCU students are being and have been targeted by the powers that be for decades.


the


It has long been a concern that state


of North Carolina would


like to combine North Carolina A&T with the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.


Administrators have


been hired at A&T who have sketchy backgrounds and attempts have been made to weaken and sabotage A&T in many ways, similar to what has been done at Norfolk State University. Norfolk State is also located in a city with another state school, Old Dominion University. In fact, one of the same admonished


administrators who left A&T, was hired at Norfolk State.


I thank God for not only my ability to write but just as important, my ability to read between the lines. We have to do everything in our power to protect our HBCUs; our ancestors have poured too much into HBCUs and the students who attend them to just let others take them from us. Do not just look at the surface of news reports, look at the big picture. The Times research reveals that HBCUs are powerful and efforts are being made to take that power from us. HBCUs give African American students a place to study where they will be in the majority; a place that can bolster their sometimes bruised self-esteem.


The NY Times research, when


compared with the November 2009 NPR article cited earlier, also reveals that racist tactics of police departments can breed terrorists. We all have a responsibility to ensure that this does not happen. We have to demand equal protection under the law for everyone, including HBCU students, as the United States Constitution commands.


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that


perspective of an Carolina


experience much like the experience of HBCU Alumna Sandra Bland in Prairie View, Texas.


when


Volume 10 Number 4


December 2015


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