The ACLU has released a study concerning Minnesota and what is clearly a racially driven bias in
how law in meted out.
The numbers show a startling disparity in the way police enforce low-level offenses, particularly in the neighborhoods within North Minneapolis, South Minneapolis, and the city center where more low-income and minority communities live. Black people in the city are 8.7 times more likely than white people to be arrested for low-level offenses, like trespassing, disorderly conduct, consuming in public, and lurking. Native Americans have it no better. They are 8.6 times more likely to be arrested for low-level offenses than white people. Although the ACLU tried to do a similar analysis for the city’s Latino population, the police did not reliably include the ethnicity of the people arrested in the data officers recorded. Similarly, the ACLU tried to obtain data about officer-initiated suspicious persons stops that did not result in an arrest, but the Department informed the ACLU that it does not systematically collect that data.
My guess is that they don't collect that data because they don't see color. One of the more insidious qualities of institutional racism is the banality of evil it unveils. When people use terms like "race card" (and others like it), they are frequently trying to say that small things are getting blown out of proportion. Mountains out of mole hills so to speak. While I don't agree with this sentiment on any level it might be helpful for those individuals to see how things work.
An arrest, even if it doesn’t end in a conviction, is a restriction on liberty, and its consequences often snowball, especially for poor people of color. A low-level arrest, according to District Court Judge Kevin Burke of Hennepin County, which contains Minneapolis, “can end up taking somebody who just got a job at Taco Bell and have him fired because they missed work because they were in jail for driving after a suspension case.”
Once ensnared, the criminal justice system continues to squeeze poor people of color. “Because they missed [work], they’re now behind in their child support,” he says. “Because they’re behind in their child support, the county attorney’s office will try to hold them in contempt, to hassle them to get them to pay child support. And so it’s really a very ineffective way of dealing with human behavior.”
What some might term "misunderstandings" with law enforcement build up. There are real day to day liberties that people who are not black take for granted in our society.
Like, being able to hang around in a public place while waiting to pick up their young children from school.