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We're talking about two different situations depending on whether we're talking about the lax team or the taxi driver.

Based on my three years living in corrupt as hell Illinois I'm referring to the fifty-year-old stereotypes I heard about how southern courts treat black people, i.e. the taxi driver. Except this time, rather than some white racist back-county sheriff and judge, it is a guilty white liberal educated in the state's finest university and a half-black DPD that's doing the persecuting of the black man. So Nifong and the DPD's actions are cutting against that stereotype. They're supposed to know better.

I take your point about the DA's actions against the yankee carpetbagging lax team, but still the stereotype doesn't apply for the same reasons. This DA is supposed to know better. And this is more than a traffic stop. There's no fine to be paid into the county's coffers.

And just so you know, southerners have the same stereotype about Yankee traffic cops shaking down out of staters. I can't count how many people I know who have been nailed on the Jersey and PA Turnpikes while the locals go whizzing by at a higher speed. In fact the local cops picking on out-of-staters is a pretty universal practice regardless of where you are.

And if those damn Yankess transiting the south on the way to Florida would realize that they're no longer in New York and stop driving like it they won't have a problem. :) [jumps in foxhole.]

Nobody says the stereotype is accurate. There's no question, the Yankees were probably speeding down I-95, weaving in and out like they were on the Long Island Expressway or the Jersey Turnpike.

The fact remains, North Carolina spends millions of dollars to paint a nice picture of the state as a tourist destination and a great place for business to move. Similarly Duke spends millions on its recruiting.

What the DA is doing is undercutting those efforts.

It may not be fair but it's happening.