Chapter 13 surveys and assesses the different ways in which election laws and practices impact racial equality in the political process and the distribution of resources and power that stems from those elections. Topics include voter ID laws, felon disenfranchisement, and racial redistricting, as well as immigrant political incorporation and language access. Themed boxes include recent court cases on voter ID, specific voting rights cases, and noncitizen voting.

Shakespeare’s White Others’ conclusion engages The Comedy of Errors to reaffirm how race always matters. I argue that The Comedy of Errors’ concern with mistaken identity resonates with the modern Black experience. While considering my book’s preoccupation with the effects of racism, othering, anti-Blackness, and racial profiling, I turn to Patricia Akhimie’s Comedy of Errors criticism to consider how one can be “bruised with adversity” not just physically, but also psychologically. The conclusion’s title plays on the name of Shakespeare’s comedy because, as I see it, anti-blackness and anti-Black racism position white people, including white others, in opposition to Black people in what feels like a comedy of (t)errors: a space that is a genre of its own and akin to Negro-Sarah’s funnyhouse environment in Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro. Racial tribulation is a life sentence tied to the Black existence.

Asian Americans play a prominent role in the state surveillance story, because Asian Americans play an ambiguous role in both international relations and domestic race relations.4 Although people of Asian descent have been arriving in the Americas since before the Civil War – Asian soldiers fighting on both sides of the internecine conflict – Asian immigrants and their American-born descendants, whatever their formal status and however assimilated, have been portrayed as “sojourners” only temporarily resident in the United States and likely to return to a homeland to which they have remained stealthily loyal.5 The persistent theme has been that Asians are inassimilable into American society, whether by biology, culture, or their own collective choices. The assumption that it is contradictory to be both Asian and American has been used, explicitly and implicitly, to justify discrimination against Asian Americans.

Justice Marshall* delivered the opinion of the Court.

In this case, we decide whether it is consistent with the Fourth Amendment for a police officer who observed a traffic violation to use that violation as the justification to perform a racially-selective traffic stop, or as the pretext to investigate a crime for which the officer does not have probable cause. We answer that question in the negative.

Kami Chavis utilizes KRS-One’s 1993 song “Black Cop” to consider the contradictions inherent in being a black police officer. The song reveals the complex role that black police officers play in the subjugation of black communities. In the song, black officers are portrayed as utilizing the same street justice and harassment as their white counterparts to “oversee” black people, just as plantation owners and enslavers used black overseers on plantations to keep enslaved people subjugated. In fact, the lyrics suggest the deliberate use of the black officer to effectuation the continued oppression of the black community. The George Floyd death was the last ember to land upon a long-burning fire that would spread throughout the country. In response to protests against police brutality, several municipalities made significant and broad changes to their police practices. Among these changes are demands to diversify the police, arguing that if there were just more black officers, this might ameliorate the complaints of racial profiling and police violence against blacks. However, a careful analysis of Black Cop and its enduring themes require us to examine this proposition.

Henry Chambers synthesizes analysis of Jay-Z’s 2003 song, “99 Problems”, as well as Chamilionaire’s 2005 “Ridin’” and 2007 “Hip Hop Police” as means of understanding police racial profiling. The songs analyzed in this chapter discuss policing black men. Though the songs are more than a decade old, they are just as relevant today as when they were released. They tell stories of interactions between police and black men, describe how such interactions do proceed, and suggest how they should proceed. The artists indirectly comment on freedom by discussing how police should treat someone they may not like or may envy but who the police have no basis to believe is engaged in criminal behavior. Indeed, the songs suggest police have an obligation to police properly even if the suspect may in fact be engaged in criminal behavior. However, the songs are somewhat surprising in that they seem to suggest black men will typically be hassled by police but that black men with resources may be able to fearlessly assert their rights to not be policed unfairly in some circumstances. The songs provide strong material to explore what policing should look like in the current age.

Democracy is under attack through immigration workplace raids. Labor unions have finally come to realize that noncitizen workers – documented and undocumented – are their future. ICE raids have been timed – particularly by the Bush and Trump administrations to thwart organizing efforts. Through a process of demonization and commodification of immigrant workers, the public has been conditioned to ignore the racial implications of ICE raids. But even a cursory examination reveals the racist effects of these enforcement efforts. However, on closer analysis, it reveals how these attacks are an attack on democracy as well. ICE raids are an attack on labor organizing, which in turn represents an assault on the freedom of association, freedom from discrimination, a strong middle class, and democratic acculturation.

Chapter 5 presents the results from a national survey experiment in which we manipulated racial/ethnic cues in an ambiguous news vignette depicting a potentially threatening situation at an airport. Compared to whites, African Americans and Latinos exhibited substantially higher levels of outgroup empathy and more favorable attitudes toward Arabs. In reaction to the experimental vignette, African Americans and Latinos were more likely to side with the Arab passenger and find the additional search and questioning by the airport security officer unreasonable than were white respondents. They were also more likely to support civil rights policies and commit to political action to protect the rights of targeted groups in this threat context. These reactions occurred even though African Americans and Latinos perceived themselves to be at greater personal risk from terrorism. Group empathy helps explain the racial/ethnic differences in attitudes and reactions we observed here.

The Supreme Court mistakes submission for consent by constructing an alternative reality where police behave like the proverbial Officer Friendly. Court opinions direct judges to blame the victims of unconstitutional policing for submitting to police instead of exercising their rights. These fictions camouflage police aggression and racial profiling and allow it to thrive. Once we get rid of the consent doctrine, Terry v. Ohio must fall with it. The Supreme Court should review Terry’s balancing act, admit that the case was based on the false premise that people can choose not to cooperate, and this time include what we now know about the harms that flow from stop-and-frisk. Instead, the Supreme Court blew the chance in 2016 in Utah v. Strieff. Instead of overturning Terry, the Court expanded the government’s authority to control our liberty and our bodies. Because we can’t look to the courts to fix this, it’s more important than ever that readers recognize that stop-and-frisk leads the way in sapping constitutional rights. Legislators and progressive prosecutors, with the support of the public, can effectively abolish the “consent” excuse for violating the Constitution and end stop-and-frisk as we know it.