Life is not fair.

Why is Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. the one at the White House having beer when in actual fact, I am smarter than him?

Like Collin Powell and other minorities in America, I know there is racial profiling. I have been a victim of it. I also know there are rouge police officers who are pumped up by the gun around their waists. I have seen them in action. I have no illusion that all these vanished with the election of Barack Obama as the president of the United States.

While I have never been arrested at my home, I have been pulled over by the cops several times. As it is, I do expect that each time I am on the road. So here is what I do.

In my car, I always have a country music disc and a classical music disc. They usually are in the 6th and 7th disc compartments. When I am driving, I often listen to R&B, pop, rap or reggae music. But the moment I am pulled over by a cop, I press disc 6 or 7. If I am in a cosmopolitan environment, I press 7. If I am in a rural environment, I press 6.

By the time the cop gets to my window, Tupac has stopped cursing. Mozart will be conducting or Don Williams will be crooning, ‘we should be together/we should be walking side by side.”

In all instances, it has thrown the cops off. By the time the music filters into their ears, it throws out the profile of a black man in their minds. A cop expecting Li’ Wayne to be screaming in a black man’s car will be thrown aback. Don Williams?

Often I notice the cop take his hand off his gun as he bends down to ask in a calm tone, “Sir, do you know why I stopped you?” Sir? Only Mozart can earn a black man a Sir.

The other day, my car had a flat tire on an interstate highway. The cop who pulled up behind me was so impressed to hear Bach playing in my car that he went and brought out his jack to help me. “We do not normally do this,” he said to me, “but I will make an exception here. You seem like a nice guy. Where are you from?”

Oh, I am smarter than Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. But why is he the one at the White House having beer while I am here loading Elvis into my CD’s 8th compartment just because I am planning to travel to the South?