Reginald Andrade, a longtime University of Massachusetts Amherst employee, was a victim to racial profiling Friday morning when an anonymous caller told police he looked “agitated” as he entered the school with a duffel bag after a workout.
UMass Amherst Police received a voicemail on their tip line requesting that they check on a “very upset young man” walking into the school. Officers determined, after speaking to Andrade, that there was no safety threat — he was carrying exercise clothes in a gym bag, which likely raised the caller’s suspicions.
This is clearly an incident of racial profiling. In the tip, the caller mentioned immediately that the man was “African American,” second only to his gender. Yes, race is an identifying factor that could be useful to police in locating the man, but the caller mentioned Andrade’s race before giving any explanation as to why they felt threatened by him.
If you’re inclined to defend the caller for trying to keep their campus safe, you’ve never had to deal with a situation in which some fundamental aspect of your appearance — that you cannot change — is cause for other people to see you as a danger.
Concern about a duffel bag might be understandable given a recent rise in school shootings, but if a white person carried a duffel bag into a school building, would there have been the same response? Consciously or subconsciously, the caller was influenced by Andrade’s race.
The “if you see something, say something” policy on college campuses allows discrimination against groups that are assumed to be more dangerous than others, encouraging students to call in tips to the police based on nothing but their own racial prejudice. In reality, the majority of mass shooters in the United States are white men. While it’s worth acknowledging that a duffel bag can be a way of transporting weapons, at what point do we draw the line?
Just two weeks ago, a black man was killed by a Dallas police officer in his own apartment after she entered his apartment, believing it was hers, and panicked. A search warrant was issued to collect evidence in Botham Jean’s apartment, and marijuana was found — we all know where this is heading.
It’s an incontestable fact that Jean was murdered due to the wrongful suspicion of a white woman. But the Dallas PD is using the 10.4 grams of marijuana found in Jean’s home as a distraction from this fact, a way to say to the public, “Look, he actually was dangerous. He fits right in with your perception of a drug-possessing black man. We didn’t kill an innocent person.”
Nevertheless, they did. And an anonymous caller at UMass Amherst altered someone’s life in a way that no consolation prize of a coffee mug and keychain can fix.
The UMass Amherst chancellor wrote that Andrade was greatly distressed to have been treated with such suspicious — understandably so. The caller may have genuinely believed they were helping keep the campus safe, but they didn’t stop to consider the impact their unfounded suspicion would have on an innocent man.
Andrade told The Daily Collegian that he was “cool and calm and composed” during police questioning, though the situation was disturbing for him. That Andrade had to maintain emotional focus to preserve his own safety in the face of a threatening situation points to how black men bear a constant weight of dealing with others’ reactions to their existence. He was forced into a distressing situation by someone else’s irrational suspicion, and he knew he would only make it out safely if he remained composed.
Andrade may never go to work again without thinking about what he’s wearing, making sure he isn’t carrying anything that could be deemed suspicious by someone watching him and, after all that, wondering if the simple fact that he’s black will raise fear in others, no matter how much attention he pays to his appearance. He may never be able to go to work again without wondering whether the students that he has been serving for 14 years feel threatened by him.
