The officer discerned that I was not American. Presumably, my accent provided the clue, although my lack of racial etiquette–mouthing off to white police officers in a “high-crime” area in the middle of the night– might have suggested that I was an outsider to the racial dynamics of police encounters. My assertion of my rights, my attempts to maintain my dignity, my confronting authority (each a function of my pre-invisibility blackness) might have signaled that I was not from here and, more importantly, that I had not been racially socialized into, or internalized the racial survival strategy of, performing obedience for the police.

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fuck, this is good!