[gist]

It's really not an artifact of being a minority it's an artifact of being poor and/or living in a poor neighborhood. The same thing could happen in better neighborhoods but as wealth increases so does access to better resources to combat this type of behavior by the police or by government. In that sense it's (just) no surprise another advantage of having money. What you gain is the ability to buy better "advice" (legal or otherwise) and hence get a fairer shake out of the world. In many cases (I won't comment on this one) it's perhaps not that the law is being used unfairly but rather that poor people don't have the resources to question and fight what is going on and perhaps raise the right issues with those that try to take advantage of them. Or simply to communicate and be taken seriously.

[pstuart]

It's an artifact of The War on Drugs.

[kaonashi]

Which was instituted to criminalize minorities.