Independence Day

Happy Fourth of July, everyone. Well, it wasn't so happy for me in the end. You see, I had taken my daughter to a cookout/BBQ and we ended up staying long after it was over. After the fireworks, we watched television and talked and we were going to stay overnight with friends, but the noise was too much and I couldn't get any sleep so at one o'clock am, I packed up my daughter and we began to walk home. She had many balloons and other things from her 4th celebration. We didn't dare take a chance on a friend driving us since everyone had been drinking, so we walked, yes at 1 am. The shock of our lives, when a police officer, who had been trailing us, made a u-turn as we were exchanging bags (I took the stuff that she deemed heavy). The police officer, young white male of the Montgomery County police department, in Maryland (squad car #0541), asked what we were doing? ???? I thought it was obvious that we were walking... so I asked what he meant??? He said "what are you doing? Are you decorating that house?" Of course, I was most perplexed, so I answered, "What?" And he nastily said, "For the third time, what are you doing. Are you vandalising that house?" Now, I am a 40 year old African American woman, with my very young teen daughter. Neither of us has ever been arrested, nor been involved in anything illegal. We had red, white and blue balloons ( a bunch of them), we were wearing red, white and blue and all we did was LOOK at the houses as we walked by, since a lot of people were still up and out. We were only about 15 minutes from our own home. Although I had an attitude, I told him, "this is my daughter, we are coming from a 4th of July celebration and we are going home". He curtly said," have a happy 4th of July," and sped off, but not quick enough before my daughter got his license tag number ! This is a classic example of racial profiling and I am very upset about it and I don't feel "free" nor that I could honestly say I am going to actively celebrate "independence" day next year. I might be arrested for being Black in a wealthy, white negihborhood, which I happen to live in. I feel we have lost enough civil liberties without this kind of nonense. Now my child has to experience the age-old problem of racism. Perhaps she was aware of it before, but not such outright, blatant racial profiling. She has always had White friends, as have I, but this was a new one for us both. It has changed our perception a bit, and I am not sure I want to impede on her burgeoing perception of the world. We have had many problems in the past 3 1/2 years with the police, mainly, I believe, as part of the USA Patriot Act. That night, I saw my daughter's eyes change. I saw her see something she never saw before. I saw in her eyes the death of a belief. She had believed many innocent things and was happy in her inexperience. The night her mom was treated like a criminal for walking down a street we had walked thousands of times, killed my daughter's innocence. I refuse to try and resurrect it. Just recently, we saw how Oprah Winfrey was treated, (although the store was closed, they usually accommodate celebrities after hours), and other such incidents which let African Americans know we are getting 'too big for our britches'. I could name a thousand and one incidents I have experienced and/or witnessed in my lifetime and those whom I know and love. My daughter's innocence was killed, there is no way to bring it back.