Date: Wed, 3 Jun 1998 12:54:55 -0400
From: Jesse T Sheidlower
Subject: Re: "Driving While Black"

>
> DRIVING WHILE BLACK (DWB)
>
> The feature story in the Village Voice, 9 June 1998, is "Driving While
> Black: Fear & Loathing on the Jersey Turnpike" by Peter Noel. DWB is
> obviously a play on DWI (driving while intoxicated). On page 39, Noel
writes:

> Deja News shows over 700 hits for "driving while black." One of them is
> New Jersey Cop Watch #8 in misc.activism.progressive. It quotes lawyer
> Johnnie L. Cochran with "These men were guilty of DWB. Driving While Black."
> I don't know if Johnnie Cochran coined the phrase, but it wouldn't be
> surprising if he did.

Haven't checked Nexis on this, but we have a few citations for "DWB" going
back to 1994; none of them mention Cochran.

> After writing about "stooge" and "pansy" yesterday, I picked up New York
> Press, June 3-9, and found the headers "Iggy's a Stooge" on page 6 and "Pansy
> Division" on page 16. They still won't give me a column, though.

Haven't seen this issue of the Press, but "Pansy Division" is the name
of a San-Francisco-based "queercore" band (hardcore punk with
homosexual themes). They've been around since the early 1990s; we got
a few cites from them for HDAS. They also played in Cleveland during
the 1995 DSNA convention; some of us (hi Erin!) went to see the show,
which was pretty good.

Jesse Sheidlower