I have no arrest record and I’ve only ever had one traffic ticket. I’ve also been stopped by police 39 times. I was with my best friend—also not white with no arrest record and two traffic tickets—for many of the early stops. Like the time when we were teenagers and a cop drew down on us in the Biddeford Rite-Aid parking lot for having those little lazer light-up swords you get at a carnival. The cop said he thought they might’ve been real.

There was also the time six cops drew down on us as we were buying sodas out of a Portland parking garage soda machine. They were screaming, demanding to know what we were doing. Imagine having been through this enough times to know you have to feign just the right amount of panic because remaining calm and truthfully answering, “Buying sodas” would sound sarcastic and potentially set one of them off.

I’ve got 37 more like that, most in Maine and each one I thought was the end. My experiences are not unique here. Not at all.

They’re certainly not unique anywhere else in this country. Philando Castile was stopped by police in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area at least 49 times before they eventually killed him.

My experiences are not unique to my generation. My father also had no arrest record, somehow zero traffic tickets, countless stories involving law enforcement and each would make you marvel that he lived a single moment past six years old.

My grandfather was born in Texas during a time when police membership in the kkk was not a secret.

This is all to say, if you’re gonna keep talking about how “not normal” this whole thing is, at least have the decency to qualify it with “for white people”. Because what you’re seeing now is not only normal for many of us, it’s been normal for every generation of our families. And your continued surprise virtually guarantees this normal for our future generations, as well.