High Price

a way that hid the racist stereotypes that were so obvious in 1914? Starting in graduate school, I slowly began to question everything I thought I knew about drugs, in light of these disturbing parallels and the clearly racially driven origins of the drug laws.

    Collecting data for my PhD research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
    An experience I had myself at the NIH, where I’d started work on my PhD after completing my master’s degree in Wyoming, also made me think more about this. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the main branch of the agency looks like the medical center on a major university campus. It’s a self-contained world, with dozens of boxy high-rise, hospital-type buildings and labs. It even has its own bank, the NIH Credit Union, which is located in Building 36. That was about a hundred yards from the main clinical center where I worked, in Building 10.
    Walking over to the bank, I was your classic absent-minded scientist: my mind focused on the samples I was working on and the data I needed to collect rather than on my surroundings. At the time, I had joked with friends that I was afraid of losing my social skills because I was spending so much time alone or with rats—but I was actually a bit afraid that it might be truth rather than just humor. I was entirely wrapped up in my work.
    As I left the credit union after depositing my paycheck or getting some cash, two men approached me. They were looking at me so intently as I came out of the door that my first thought was that they were gay men trying to pick me up. I was dressed in a dark purple sweat suit that was fashionable among young black men at the time and had my big laminated NIH ID hanging prominently from a lanyard around my neck. I had a bank statement in my hand. I noticed the men’s intense stares, but at this point, I was still thinking about my lab work.
    When they approached me, however, they identified themselves as police; the NIH campus was so large that it actually had its own force. One said to me, “A crime just happened and we want to know if you can help us.” I said, “Sure, absolutely, whatever I can do.” I had no idea that I was the suspect. I identified myself as a doctoral student conducting research and offered them my bank statement.
    Nonetheless, the two officers told me that there’d been a strong-arm robbery near the bank and that the perpetrator was wearing dark clothing. That is all I was told. I assumed that the suspect was black but didn’t learn this from the police. Nor was I told the suspect’s height, weight, or any other identifying characteristics. What was apparent was that the two officers, who seemed to be in charge, were brown-skinned: a black guy and a Filipino.
    Of course, it would have been rather stupid for a bank robber to return to the scene of the crime for another transaction—let alone provide a bank statement full of identifying information—but that didn’t matter. Being a young black man wearing dark clothing was enough for me to “fit the description.” Nor did it matter that the officers themselves were minorities. In many instances like this, because institutional racism is so pervasive in some police organizations, the behavior of minority officers is more egregious than that of their white colleagues, in part because everyone in the organization knows what gets reinforced (rewarded) and what gets punished. The risks of mistreating me are far less than those of mistreating a white counterpart, who may be the son or relative of some “important person.”
    The police asked: would I consent to walking in front of one of the campus buildings so the victim could try to identify me? They wanted me to participate in an impromptu one-man lineup, something that is notoriously unreliable. I didn’t see any choice other than to agree. I walked toward the police cars that I now saw across the parking lot and was told that the crime victim was watching from one of the windows. They had me turn one way, then another so that the person could get a better view. After about twenty minutes, they let me go, saying that the victim hadn’t recognized me. The whole thing was excruciatingly embarrassing, being conducted in the center of campus where any of my friends or colleagues could potentially have seen it.
    By the time they let me go, I was in part relieved and in part working to tamp down my anger, something I’d had to become extremely skilled at by this point. I went