DWB

abbr.

Driving while black — when a car is pulled over by a police officer for no other reason than the driver is black.

Example Citation:

Many young (and not-so-young) men, black or brown, know what it's like to be stopped by a police officer for doing, well ... nothing. It's called DWB — Driving While Black.

And it doesn't stop at being stopped. According to a recent study from the Justice Department, African-Americans and Hispanics reported that police used force or threatened to use force against them twice as often as whites said they did. After years of denying racial profiling, law enforcement officials all the way up to U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft are conceding there may be a problem and that it must be fixed.

— "Let the record speak," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 26, 2001

Earliest Citation:

Kendall Jones, Fishbone's resident intellectual, leans forward in an old folding chair, hair in little dreads, clad in a satin Spike Lee promotional jacket. He looks a little angry...

Jones tells a story about being arrested in West Hollywood on a "DWB" — "driving while black" — offense.

— Jonathan Gold, "Fishbone's new line," Los Angeles Times, April 7, 1991

Related Words:

Affrilachian

deconstitutionalization

DWT

DWY

first preventers

flying while Muslim

linguistic profiling

racial battle fatigue

racial profiling

Categories:

Acronyms and Abbreviations

Race

Cars

Law and Order