‘I’m not a devious villain’: black men in Japan speak out about racial profiling
- Amid accusations Japanese officers often stop and quiz black men, the National Police Agency recently issued an advisory instructing them not to base decisions about suspects ‘solely on appearance and clothing’
- Some black men, in the country for years, say they are frequently questioned, which humiliates them and potentially damages reputations
And it has left him convinced that the warning issued by the United States Embassy in December that Japanese police appear to be applying “racial profiling” in who they choose to stop, question and search is absolutely correct.
“A couple of years ago, I was working as an English-language teacher at a public school near where I live in Hamamatsu City and I had just finished classes for the day,” he said. “I was walking to the bus stop right outside my school and I saw a police patrol car go by. I looked down at my phone for a moment and heard ‘excuse me’ from an officer.”
Gizmo, who is originally from the West Indian islands of Trinidad and Tobago but spent time in his teenage years in New York and Arizona, is still clearly angry about the subsequent exchange.
“In seconds there were four officers around me, really close and in my face,” he said. “They asked for my identity card, they wanted to look in my bag and then they asked if they could frisk me.
“This was going on right outside the school where I worked. There were students walking past and parents arriving in cars to get their kids and everyone was looking at me and I thought to myself that they were all probably thinking the same thing: ‘The police have got another troublemaking foreigner’,” he said.
“It was humiliating. I told the police that I had not done anything wrong and that they had no reason to search me, but their response was that if I was not doing anything illegal then I had nothing to worry about when they searched me.”