perhaps it's easier to understand if we strip away our personal privilege. If I'm at an airport and a cop says "can I search your bag", I say "no thanks" because I'm a civil liberties nerd who has never been abused by law enforcement, so I don't see any downside beyond perhaps some verbal hassle and potentially missing my flight (which I can have the resources to recover from).

For a Black man, the equation is different. In college, I was in a car with a friend driving - a large Black man - when a cop pulled him over for *literally no reason at all*. The first thing my friend did, as the cop was walking up, was look me in the eye and tell me to keep my mouth shut. Cop demanded his papers, gave no reason for pulling him over, asked me how my day was going, and after wasting a bunch of time, sent us on our way.

I was *irate*. What the fuck was that? My friend said - that was any given Tuesday. And if I'd mouthed off to him, he would have walked around the car and found something to cite. (By "found" he meant "broken a taillight" btw.)

This was in the early 90s in rural NC and it was *mindbending* to me. And I think about that every time someone says "just don't consent". It's easy for us to say, when we're white and well-off and not the targets of the abuse.