Some of My Best Friends: A White Woman’s Journey into Racial Profiling

I became aware that I was negatively profiling young African American men, even though I was quick to denounce this practice by others. To confront my hypocrisy, I drove around and stopped young black men—effectively profiling them. I would offer to take their portraits, then asked for a "selfie," a format which dictates closeness and a smile. The title of the work comes from the expression, “Some of my best friends are black,” which tends to be as much of a fiction as these photographs. In the end, my experience left me standing in a truer place. I'd come to the realization that an insiduous and fictional narrative had been created about young African American men.