Michael Morse tells a cute story about how he used his one phone call from prison to explain to his future wife why he had missed their date.  Before going on read how he tells it and come back.  Here’s the summary with the key details for this post.

Morse was racially profiled as some other white guy and asked for ID.  That turned out to have consequences, because he had missed a court summons for driving with an expired license.

I can testify from experience that these sorts of things happen to young men who are still trying to figure out how to balance respect for the rules with the challenges they present.  So, you take a risk, and sometimes that leads to the next step in enforcement.

Now change his race, and way people would tell the story changes.  The way the participants engage in the incident changes, too.  Maybe indignation even turns into confrontation and tragedy.  Then political drama increases the likelihood of conflict in other cases.