In April, police swarmed four people, three black, one white, after they finished loading their luggage into a car in Rialto, California. Donisha Prendergast, one of the crew’s two black women, captured the incident on her Instagram account. The scene was anxiety-producing, with multiple squad cars barricading the residential street’s exit.

When officers arrived, the group learned a neighbor alerted law enforcement to a potential burglary at the home they had rented through Airbnb. Police audio revealed an elderly woman saying she was scared by the “strange people” with luggage who wouldn’t look at her. Oddly, she named only the three black guests as suspicious in her reports to authorities.



Prendergast and her friends, Kelly Fyffe-Marshall and Komi-Oluwa Olafimihan were deeply upset by the incident and allege their rights were violated because they were “black in a white neighborhood”.



But the homeowner, Marie Rodriguez, cleared the guests while siding with her neighbor. She told the San Bernardino Sun her temporary tenants were to blame for the misunderstanding. “It was based on their rudeness and lack of good nature that caused her to call the police. It had nothing to do with being black,” she explained.



We cannot be sure about what motivated the original 911 call, but Rodriguez’s claim highlights how black people are unduly burdened by the social expectation that we always be on our “best” behavior. It is not enough for a black person to keep to ourselves and cause no harm. We must perform deference, grace and respectability lest we be subject to a wide range of punishments.



In the Rialto case, the young people did nothing but fail a test of compulsory congeniality. There are countless reasons why they might have chosen not to engage the onlooking resident, but none of those are satisfactory when, in mainstream society, non-white people must constantly prove we deserve to be in every predominantly white space.



Many black children learn this lesson early. To navigate white spaces successfully and maintain connection to their cultural communities, they have to become shape-shifters by learning the verbal and non-verbal norms of different worlds. Then they must understand how and when to deploy them.



Those children mature and become adults for whom code-switching is second nature. We do it in every part of our lives, from the most mundane interactions to the most consequential. And the negotiations required to ensure that neither our words nor actions can be misinterpreted is exhausting. Black people who wish to move in white worlds become experts at self-surveillance. Complete comfort is not possible when you must constantly second-guess your instincts.



Lately I’ve noticed how I smile and adjust my body language in an effort to avoid drawing unwanted attention in places where I am the only black woman.



It is a sad fact made more tragic by the reality that black people have been doing this for generations. These short-term transformations have long been a feature of black life. Paul Laurence Dunbar expounds on the psychic toll of pretending in We Wear the Mask. The poem, published in 1896, recounts how emotional dishonesty becomes a tool for survival. Dunbar writes that black Americans smile “with torn and bleeding hearts” to underscore that the safest option for many black people is to maintain a sunny disposition that belies our interior lives.



The policing of black Americans is racial harassment funded by the state Read more

Though black people are uniquely vulnerable to the behavioral norms that make way for harassment. We are not the only group that suffers. All people of color are subject to this kind of coercion.



Last month, two Native American teens, Thomas Kanewakeron Gray and Lloyd Skanahwati Gray, were removed from a campus tour at Colorado State University because a mother called 911 to say the boys made her “nervous”. She believed they were out of place because of their inability and/or refusal to answer her questions acceptably. Campus police cleared the Gray brothers of wrongdoing, and the university admitted the error. But the ability to call police to enforce minor social norms is a demonstration of power, and a clear message was sent about who that public university campus belongs to.



Racist conditioning denies people of color the opportunity to be given the benefit of the doubt, so neither bad days or social awkwardness are allowed. Continuing to force the most marginalized to endure the consequences of white fear is unjust. We will not know freedom until we can choose for ourselves how we show up in the world. When minor disputes about arbitrary rules of social engagement can easily become life altering or even fatal, there is no choice.



Currently, there are no consequences for needlessly hassling people of color over imagined infractions that cause minor discomfort. Perhaps there should be.