My Own Arizona Hypocrisy

However, I do have to confess to an epiphany this weekend that made me feel like a self-righteous hypocrite. Having spent some time being mad at Arizona, writing criticism of their law, their impulses and their attitude, I was brought up short when coming home from visiting friends near San Diego. As we drove through the Immigration Checkpoint, about 75 miles north of the Mexican border, I remembered every other time I had driven through. Not once was I ever stopped. The uniformed immigration agent just looked in the window and passed us through. The only people we ever saw pulled over to the side had brown skin.

We have done for decades in California what I objected to Arizona doing--and I never really noticed. I saw but I didn't see. I may have to call off my boycott and smug sense of superiority, for I am guilty of tolerating what I find intolerable in another state. Whether the stopping of brown skinned people by the state or the federal government, the 14th Amendment promises equal protection and due-process for all. Most of us would agree that "driving while black" should not be probable cause to be stopped by the police. Well, living while brown should not create the demand to produce your papers or else.