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Profile An essay originally published in Gulf Coast’s Twentieth Anniversary Issue In mid-July during a summer when I wanted to remain in only one place, my mother called from upstate New York and asked, “Won’t you visit? You aren’t going to miss your father’s sixtieth birthday, are you? What about Matthew?” she asked, speaking of her first grandchild—my nephew—who was almost nine months old. “You should see him now. He’s trying to walk, and you should hear him laugh. Can’t you leave work for a while?” Hers was a selfless voice that strove to weave connections, that valued community and the continuity of tradition. Listening to her, I recognized how much I missed her sensibility. I recognized how much she as expressing a desire to create or uphold what would last beyond death. For a part of us always lives with the knowledge of death. This is what the Spanish philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno, in his essay, Man Of Flesh And Bone, calls “the tragic sense of life.” I have thought that my mother’s Asian American response to death, or her “tragic sense,” was to invoke a constant plea for family. Soon after my mother’s call, I departed from the heat and humidity of Houston, Texas. I drove north with my lover to the town of Granbury, near Fort Worth, where I left her so she could visit with her own parents. That next day I continued north on Interstate 35 and reached Oklahoma. The verdant hills and ripe fields of the farmland were beautiful, serene; the landscape soothed my eyes. I kept heading due north, and by early afternoon I reached Kansas. There the fields grew yet wider, opening up and rolling on like expressions of infinity. I felt the range of my vision was being tested with every glance. I felt benevolently inspired to imagine the lives and the excitement of pioneers forging westward long ago. As I began to feel the freedom and anticipation that so many Americans associate with traveling, I felt younger, somehow innocent. I felt very safe for a while. After heading northeast, I stopped for the night in the town of Emporia and looked forward to the rest of the journey on the scenic road. But the next morning, not twenty minutes up the highway, I spotted a Kansas State Police cruiser waiting ahead on mown grass. I was not speeding, but when the troop car pulled out and started to follow my pickup truck very closely I couldn’t help feeling at risk. The troop car swerved out, shot ahead of me, steered onto the breakdown lane, and allowed me to pass. It abruptly swung back out, then started to follow my truck again. I felt frightened, and any thought that I possessed the freedom to travel safely across the country began to devolve into a foolish notion. The troop car passed my pickup a second time, sped by a tractor trailer, and although I passed the tractor trailer and followed at what was a very cautious distance, the troop car immediately steered onto the breakdown lane and slowed once more. He waited until I passed by, then began to pursue me with flashing red lights. As I sat stopped along the shoulder and felt every other motorist’s eyes upon me, I saw the intense flashing red light in my rearview mirror and began to feel guilty. I started to believe that this incident was partly deserved, or entirely my fault: I should never have left Houston, but should have stayed there, tending to the relationship with my lover, living in my work, remaining in only one place. Yet I had the state trooper to contend with. To display the compliance that there must be, I removed my registration and insurance card from the glove compartment, and found my driver’s license in my wallet. I held these items outside of my driver’s side window and used the side mirror and watched the officer approach. When he reached my vehicle and leaned over, I saw he had short-cropped blonde hair and vigorous blue eyes. He was a shorter man, and as if to compensate for his height he had obviously weight trained to add muscle to his chest and arms. I judged from his smooth face that he was in his late twenties or early thirties, a man just starting out in life, younger than myself, and I thought, What reason could there be for stopping me? “I’m sorry for all the flybys,” he said, “but the first time I ran your license plate, nothing came back. I stopped you because you failed to use your signal to change lanes.” I sighed and asked if he was going to write me a ticket. “No,” he said, “I’m only going to give you a written warning. There’s no fine or court appearance.” Despite the absence of any anger or hostility in his voice, I didn’t trust him. Then he asked, “Where are you headed?” Now I still believed that there might not be any further problems. It had been established that I had committed no serious offense, and I held onto the idea that he might be able to see me for who I was. So I told him that I was a doctoral student who taught English and Asian American Studies at The University of Houston. I told him that I was driving to Iowa and Ohio to visit some old friends before vacationing with family in Albany, New York. Pointing to my bags, some fishing tackle, then a boxed computer and printer in the truck’s extended cab, I explained how I still needed to finish some research while on vacation. I spoke in a regretful voice, hoping that he might realize how I felt overworked and underpaid, as he probably felt. On that morning I wore a faded gray v-neck shirt, khaki shorts, Asics cross-training shoes, and polarized sunglasses. My haircut was short and neatly-trimmed. It was, by far, a clean, professional image. That and how I was a doctoral student, worked hard, and was en route to visiting my family—I exemplified the model minority. When the trooper returned to my driver’s side window and handed me the written warning along with my license, registration, and insurance card, he did not admonish me to drive carefully and release me. “Allen,” he said in a deceptively amiable voice, “can I search your vehicle?” I asked why. I was becoming angry. But in the part of myself that has always tried to remain observant and rational, I knew that because of my out-of-state license plates and my Asian features, and because of how I was traveling from Houston to New York, that he suspected I was delivering drugs. He answered my question with: “You aren’t in a hurry, are you?” The Rodney King incident flew into my thoughts, including the picture of how officers bludgeoned King with batons. I imagined being marched from the side of the highway, flung down into an irrigation ditch, and having the toe and heel of a black leather boot pressed hard into my spine. Or the trooper might have radioed for another trooper, then fabricated a charge or planted drugs on my clothes or in my truck. As angry as I felt, and as much as I wanted to protest, I told him I wasn’t really in a hurry and assented to a search. “I need you to sign a form,” he said and motioned for me to step out. In the next instant, I stood on the side of the highway, my eyes beholding the Kansas fields that had earlier inspired me to feel the freedom and anticipation of traveling. How quickly that feeling had vanished was disconcerting. I felt powerless and vulnerable. Contemplating that moment, I have since thought of Thomas Jefferson’s writing at the beginning of The Declaration of Independence, of how “all men are created equal.” I have not thought of how Jefferson intended for his famous phrase to be read, for he was only addressing European American males; rather, I have recalled Senator Charles Sumner’s interpretation of Jefferson’s famous phrase, for it was Sumner who insisted, in 1802, that Jefferson’s words actually meant, “all men,” with no respect to race or color. Certainly, that morning in Kansas, when the trooper brought the form out and compelled me to sign it, he did not view me as “all men.” He viewed me as psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s other. For I signified everything the trooper was not; from his perspective, I represented what is feared and exists to be conquered. He led me around to the passenger side door. “Start with the computer box,” he said. I asked if he expected me to pull off all the masking tape securing the top. “Yes,” he said and smiled. Imagine the indignity of having one of the symbols or instruments of your life of learning set down on the side of the highway in the gravel and dirt to be inspected for illegal contents. Imagine the further indignity felt upon also being told to set the printer down on the side of the highway, followed by your luggage. I hated him for his covertness, his cowardice, for not once voicing his suspicions. I watched without recourse as he unzipped one of my Cordura travel bags—an old graduation present from my parents—and then ran his hands, his fingers, between my folded t-shirts. As he searched through the last of the t-shirts, I told him to pick it up. He did. One the front of the t-shirt there was a print of stick-figure children of all colors, their hands joined, and also the words: “Not one more. Making Children, Families, and Communities Safer From Violence.” I asked the trooper to turn the t-shirt around. He saw on the back the emblazoned cartoon and national campaign figure of McGruff, the crime dog, and the slogan: “TAKE A BITE OUT OF CRIME 1-800-WE PREVENT.” In an assertive voice, I told the trooper I wasn’t the drug type. Still, he ordered me to open a tote bag. Inside he found Asics running shoes, quarter socks, DeSoto shorts and mesh tops. I told him that I ran five and ten kilometer road races, that I still lived partly like the athlete I had once been. “What’s in that bag?” he asked, pointing to another piece of my luggage. I opened my black, three compartment shoulder bag that contained almost twenty hardcover books. Each book, across the top of the pages, bore the black ink stamp: “University of Houston Libraries.” After repeating that I was doing summer research, I asked if he thought I could have the time to sell drugs with so many books to read. His expression, a mask of procedure, feigned indifference, and he told me in an irritated voice to open a small knapsack. There were fishing reels, a few fly boxes. I stated that if I ever had any real time off, I spent it on rivers or lakes or down at the Gulf of Mexico, as far as possible from the city. “Your reels are nicer than mine,” he said. He gazed at one of my fly rods and commented, “That’s a fancy case.” His voice bore distance and resentment, as though it were difficult for him to perceive my becoming part of an aspiring middle class. I asked him if he fished for largemouth bass and crappie, which are commonly caught in the mid-west. I told him I was going to do some fishing for channel catfish and flatheads on the Skunk River in southern Iowa for a few days, and especially at night. I was still attempting to establish a human connection with him, despite how there has never been a shared history between Asian Americans and European Americans, despite how there have never been mutual alliances, but exclusion laws, internments, glass ceilings, restrictions based upon over representation, and ever evolving stereotypical images. Indeed, from Supreme Court rulings on immigration and citizenship, to the matter of hate crimes, there has not been a long or distinguished history of fairness, but only a lack of trust—or suspicion—between Asian Americans and the law. I was not surprised, then, when the trooper pointed to the truck bed and said impatiently, “I need to see what’s in that tool box.” Tools, I told him, were all he would find. He still searched the box. After not finding anything, he walked around to the tailgate, bent down on one knee, and inspected the spare tire stored below. I told him that he shouldn’t even bother. He couldn’t stop, though, and as he examined the tire for over a minute I rearranged my luggage. Finally, facing each other, we stood like farmers with our hands resting on the sides of the truck bed. “It was because you were packed light,” he said, needing in some way to justify his search. I heard scant regret or slight apology in his voice, but that did not matter. I shook my head in disgust and walked back to my driver’s side door, wanting very much to regain my composure for the long distance I had left to travel. The hopeful and ameliorative side of me would like to believe that due to the small amount of regret or apology I heard in the trooper’s voice, and since I had talked fishing with him, that his judgments and expectations might have been altered. But I am certain that is not what occurred; I feel confident, instead, stating that the trooper is still waiting out on that long, lonely stretch of Kansas highway, stopping drivers for no real violations, searching without probable cause. For his behavior was that of the rugged individual, one who seeks conflict and lives by aggression. His response to the knowledge of death, his “tragic sense of life,” causes him to seek heroic fame, to attempt to create his own legend, or to make, at all costs, the most significant drug arrest, a story that we might even see reenacted on television, say, on a program like “Stories of the Highway Patrol.” Therefore, if he succeeds, his story will loom large and be remembered for many years; one man’s deeds shall live far beyond the grave. Two days beyond Kansas, I woke early in the cold morning and prepared to fish on the Skunk River. Since we would be setting bank poles and trot lines on a remote stretch of shallow water, I asked my friend, Tony, if he thought I needed to buy a fishing license. “Don’t worry,” he said. “The local game warden won’t be out. He’s old and fat. All he does is sit and drink coffee at the diner.” I asked Tony if he was going to buy a license, or if he already had one. “No,” he said. “I don’t. Why bother?” The sick feeling from the knowledge of how I could be viewed still resided within me: I thought about how common it was, how accepted it would be, if most men from that part of the country were to see someone like myself fishing on their river. I knew the judgment, the scrutiny, that I would provoke. Although the delay would keep us from reaching the fishing camp at the most desirable hour, I directed Tony to drive to Iowa City. He tried convincing me of the innocuousness of the Skunk and emphasized the sedentary habits of the warden, but I still didn’t allow him to head to the river. We stopped first at Paul’s Discount Store where I opened my wallet at the front counter and purchased my license. Some months later, in September, I heard of the “DWB,” the “Driving While Black or Brown” bill proposed by Senator Kevin Murray of Los Angeles, California. The will would have required the California Highway Patrol and major police and sheriff’s departments to record detailed information on the practice of stopping people on the basis of race, including the number of minorities searched and detained. I wondered how many California motorists might have, like me, preferred that it be a “Driving While Black or Brown or Yellow” bill. I wondered how many Americans badly wanted for the bill to pass. When Governor Gray Davis vetoed it, he said that he found so-called racial profiling “abhorrent,” but that the DWB “would cost too much and place too heavy a burden on lawn enforcement.” What cost? What burden? Sumner’s view of “all men” must thrive everywhere, whether in California or Kansas. Why shouldn’t there be, for everyone, the freedom of traveling? What is a profile, but a racial bias, a stereotype? I don’t wish to feel cordoned off, to feel like I have to remain in one place, but for myself and many people of color I have spoken with, that is, for the time being, part of our being American. It is part of our sense of the shape of this democratic society. We must imagine and create something different, for none of us feel like patiently waiting. Note: “In 2001 President Bush selected Lawrence Greenfield to head the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which tracks crime patterns and police tactics, among other things. But (as Eric Lichtblau of The Times reported in a front-page article yesterday), Mr. Greenfield is being demoted because he complained that senior political officials were seeking to play down newly compiled data about the aggressive treatment of black and Hispanc drivers by police officers.” By Bob Hebert, in The New York Times, August 25, 2005.

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