When I linked to a study showing police stop Black drivers more often than speed cameras, I wrote:

There’s no denying DWB is real; I’ve experienced it myself multiple times.

Here’s one example. I originally wrote this in June 2008 for my now-defunct personal blog. I’ve updated temporal references appropriately, and lightly edited for clarity.

In late 2005, my buddy Ron and I and several other coworkers volunteered for Habitat for Humanity. Ron had asked our company to sponsor an event for the Black employees association, which included buying several boxes of pizza for the volunteers. By the end of the day, there were a lot of half-empty boxes no one wanted, so Ron decided to take them home.

We plopped into my Nissan Altima for the drive back to his place in Mountain View; me, with my baseball cap turned backwards; Ron, many boxes of pizza on his lap; both of us shabby from building houses. As we’re approaching our exit on the freeway, we notice a cop car trailing us. My immediate comment to Ron was “I bet you he exits with us” and, sure enough, he does.

But then, he passes us on the left and pulls a couple of cars ahead of us. As we wait for a light to change, I think, hey, it was just a coincidence, no ulterior motives.

We turn onto Ron’s block and park. Ron gets out, and I notice there are flashing lights behind us. Ron looks back, his hands filled with pizza boxes, and asks, somewhat incredulously, “Did he just pull us over?”

Yep. He sure did. He’d apparently waited until we turned, then flipped on his lights and followed us.

The cop gets out of his car, strolls over to us and asks for my license and registration, which I dutifully hand over. A well-trained question crosses my lips.

“What seems to be the problem, officer?”

His answer will go down in the annals of justification history: “I noticed your front license plate was missing.”

I glance over at Ron, then back to the cop.

“I know,” I say evenly. “Is that a problem?”

“There are people who steal the front license plates from cars, and put them onto similar vehicles. If you do a plate check, it seems to match.”

“So,” I ask coolly, “you wanted to warn me that my front plate was missing, in case it had been stolen and used on another, stolen, car?”

“That’s correct.”

I took a breath.

“Well, I only have the one,” I fibbed with a small smile, knowing full well the second one was on the back—and had been for some three years.

“Sometimes they come stuck together from the DMV, and you end up with both on the back.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that,” I responded with faux concern. “I’ll have to check that when I get home!”

At some point during this conversation, I’d gotten out the car so the cop could show me the missing plate I already knew was missing, and was standing with Ron, both of us rolling our eyes at each other in disbelief. 

I eventually thanked the officer for his concern and assured him that my front license plate hadn’t been stolen (since one had never been placed there), and that I’d be sure to check my rear plate for a second one stuck to the first.

I also felt compelled to slip in during the conversation, in my best “I’m an educated black man: Your worst nightmare” voice, that we both worked for Apple, had just come from volunteering at Habitat for Humanity after having bought a dozen pizzas for the crew, and were taking the rest home. Just to let him know that he wasn’t dealing with a couple of punk-ass kids.

I asked if there’s anything else we can do for him, and bade him farewell, and we watched, shaking our heads, as he returned to his vehicle and pulled away.

Here we were, two intelligent, well-paid, well-spoken Black men in somewhat shabby clothing, pulled over by a cop who’d followed us on the freeway, run our plates and found nothing, but—still suspicious of two disheveled Black men driving a well-maintained car and carrying several boxes of pizza—“found” a reason to “inform” us that our front plate was missing.

Purely as a courtesy, of course.

If only we didn’t have those pizzas.

I’ve known Kira, the daughter of my good friends Ron and Irene Lue-Sang, since she was a day old. She was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) nearly a decade ago. Since 2015, the Lue-Sang family have helped raise funds to end T1D by walking in the annual Breakthrough T1D Walk (formerly JDRF). They’re fundraising ahead of the next walk on October 13, and I’m asking for your help in reaching their goal of raising $10,000.

If you’re unfamiliar with T1D:

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is an autoimmune disease that is diagnosed in both children and adults and has nothing to do with diet or lifestyle.

As the Lue-Sangs note on their fundraising page:

When you have T1D, your body stops producing insulin—a hormone essential to turning food into energy. Managing the disease is a constant struggle that involves monitoring your blood-sugar level, administering insulin, and carefully balancing these insulin doses with your eating and activity.

Kira wears a continuous glucose monitor to check her blood sugar levels, and an “insulin infusion set”, which, Ron explains, are:

steel needles that stay embedded in her thigh or tricep to slowly do the work of providing the insulin her pancreas no longer produces.

Managing T1D is challenging for anyone; it requires constant attention: measuring carbs, checking blood sugar levels, injecting just the right amount of insulin around meals, adjusting throughout the day as needed, replacing those steel needles and sensors every few days…. It’s a lot, especially for a teenager who just wants to be a teenager. As Ron put it,

There’s simply too much life to live for an active teenager to be bothered…. 

But bother she must, because failing to be vigilant every day could mean having

blood sugars so low that she shouldn’t walk around unaccompanied, or blood sugar so high for so long that she might not be getting insulin at all. Either situation could end in her passing out, ending up in the hospital, or damaging her internal organs (eyes, kidneys, heart) a little bit at a time.

Parents may expect to argue with their kids about various dangers in life (like riding a motorcycle, or driving too fast), and to be dismissed as being overprotective and paranoid. As a T1D parent, those arguments unexpectedly shift from “Check your mirrors before changing lanes!” to “check your blood sugar before starting the car!”

Elizabeth Stone said that having a child is “to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

Raising a T1D teen must be like having your heart roar off to school on a motorcycle every day.

The work Breakthrough T1D does helps further the science of living with T1D. Ron tells me:

One hundred years ago, science had barely discovered insulin. Before that, people with Type 1 Diabetes just wasted away a few months or years after diagnosis. 

Ten years ago our standard of care was pricking Kira’s fingers to check blood sugar levels at least four times a day and injecting insulin by hand. We’re grateful for the advances technology has brought, including modern insulin, continuous glucose monitors, and insulin pumps. But we believe—it’s an article of faith—that there are still more advances to come, if only we pursue them. 

If you can, please make a contribution to Breakthrough T1D to help them pursue those advances. Any amount helps, whether it’s $1, $10, or $100. No parent should agonize over the health of their kid, and no kid should have to stick steel needles into her thigh.

The Lue-Sang family thanks you, and I thank you.