On White Privilege

If there was ever a hobby absolutely guaranteed to get you up-close-and-personal attention from police officers every so often, geocaching is it.

Cachers spend a lot of time hanging around in weird places looking for hidden containers.  You'll see us near guardrails and bridges and telephone poles and in corners of parking lots, or poking around in patches of woods or in parks.  Sometimes the police officer will spot you himself.  Other times a concerned citizen will call them because they've seen you somewhere and are wondering what you're up to.  (This is a perfectly legal activity, for the record.  The containers are all hidden on public property, or with the owner's permission on private property.)

Most officers I've run into have heard of geocaching.  The ones that haven't have generally been polite and receptive to the explanation, although they sometimes still run my plates.  A couple have even pitched in to help me find the container I was looking for.  One that I met recently was actually a geocacher himself!  I emerged from a bush near a light post to see him pull up and roll down his window.  I was expecting to have to go into my standard explanation spiel, but his first words were, "Is there is a cache in there?"  Whew.

Another recent interaction was a bit (or a lot) more Big Brotherish.  I was out with a friend.  We spotted a Tupperware container tucked in the end of a guardrail and brought it back to the car to sign the log.  (The whole point of this game is to find the hidden container, sign in and then replace the container for the next finder.)  He went back to return the container alone while I looked at the map to see where we should go next.  Apparently somebody spotted him doing that, and decided that since the guardrail in question was maybe 200 feet from a small local bridge, we were trying to blow up the bridge.  Good grief.  Anyway, maybe 15 minutes later his cell phone rings, and it's the police.  He was driving that day, and I gather they used his license plate info to track him down and get his phone number.   Long story short, we explained what we'd been doing, exactly what was in the guardrail and where, and, oh by the way, that the container had been there for TEN YEARS already without anything blowing up.  They never called him back, so I guess they checked it out and verified that we were telling the truth.

Now here's the thing.   Both of us are Caucasian and very non-threatening looking.  My friend has neatly trimmed gray hair and is nearly 60.  I look like the middle-aged soccer mom that I am.  And the car he was driving that day was a Range Rover, fer crissake.  We don't exactly look like a stereotypical pair of troublemakers.  I think it's safe to say that the color of our skin, our general appearance and the cars we drive get us the benefit of the doubt whenever police officers interact with us.  We are fortunate that way.

I have one friend who looks for all the world like a stereotypical Vietnam vet, although apparently he isn't.  Big guy in his 70s, long flowing white hair, bushy beard, bandanna.  Always looks like he just got off a Harley.  Another friend, a line cook at a diner, drives a beat-up car and is so skinny he could easily be mistaken for a drug user.  Both of them have been hassled a lot.  The first one won't go near any park that has a playground anymore.  Guess too many concerned moms have called the cops on him.  The second has actually had his car (fruitlessly, I might add) searched for drugs multiple times.  And both of them are Caucasian, too.

Where I get polite questions, and other white friends get hassled, darker-skinned people doubtless would get arrested or shot in today's America.  Can't imagine why there aren't many minority geocachers.