When we had it good

So for no good reason, I was browsing CNN when I came across this. From CNN: Black and shopping in America:

(CNN) -- For Atlanta native Leah Wells, it's the humiliation she remembers most.

Not long ago, Wells sent me a note and forwarded a letter she had just mailed to Glenn Murphy, chairman and CEO of Gap Inc. The letter detailed what happened when Wells and two girlfriends decided to ditch the gym during an office lunch break and do some "power-shopping" instead. The three young women, all in their 20s and all black, ended up detained for shoplifting.

Sad to say, but it's a common refrain from black people in this country. All of us know someone who has, or have ourselves, been stopped for no apparent reason while driving or been searched for fitting a description.

It happened to my brother Orestes. A Harvard medical student at the time, he was visiting a friend in Brooklyn, New York, when he was stopped and searched by officers late one night. He "fit the profile" of a robbery suspect. They dumped his belongings in the street and made him lie face-down. What infuriated him was that no apology ever followed when it became clear the cops got it wrong. It seemed no one felt that one was owed. My brother was seething when he told me the story. It happens all the time.

And it happens across the geographic and socioeconomic spectrum: rich, poor and in between. What surprised me most often during our production of "Black in America" were the universal stories of blacks followed or profiled. It was shocking to me.

So many parents told me of sitting down with their sons starting at 12 years old to tell them what to do if pulled over by the police so as not to get shot. I don't imagine many white parents even think such a conversation is necessary with their teenage sons.

What's the impact of that on America? What's the impact of that on young black kids who don't see themselves in mainstream media associated with academic achievement, success, hard work? It's hard to know, but it cannot be good.

I'm the product of a white father who's Australian and a black mother who's Cuban. They married in the United States in 1958 but had to leave their neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland, because interracial marriage was illegal in that state. By the time my little brother Orestes was born in 1967 -- the sixth O'Brien child -- the Supreme Court finally changed the law and lifted the ban on interracial marriage. When I tell that story in speeches, older folks in the audience nod their heads while younger ones gasp. It was illegal for my parents to marry, and it wasn't all that long ago.

We're a multi-racial nation that has, quite fortunately, never had to go through this. While some might say we're racist against non-Malays, there has never been such prejudice that makes interracial marriages illegal, or that results in racial profiling. Let's be happy that we've never had to go through that.

That being said, I think that such a society is developing as large numbers of migrants come across our porous borders, and crime rates skyrocket. How many of us see Indonesian or Indian men and assume that they're very poor and might rob us? I walk a little faster when I do at night. Just yesterday, I was on my way home and I saw a police car pulled over talking to what appeared to be three Indonesian/Malay pedestrians. The pedestrians were apparently showing the police some papers. Immigration papers?

Are we in danger of becoming racists?