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Kiese Laymon, associate professor of English at Vassar College, recently wrote 

 about the power behind his university faculty ID.

"I don't drink; I don't smoke," Laymon said on The Daily Circuit. "I had cops accuse me of throwing crack out the window, pull guns on me. With this Vassar College ID, shamefully I think you can use it as a kind of shield."

Laymon said he's conflicted about the use of his ID because "police officers see the ID and they think, 'This guy's different. He's different than his kind.'

"We pull out our ID because we know the cops can kill us with impunity," he said. "That's not hyperbole. We know that the cops, if they want to say they saw us reach for something, have every right in the world to hurt us even though most of us know we're not going to be reaching for anything."

Ultimately, he said the ID is his way of keeping himself safe in a prickly balance for black men near college campuses. As a child, his mother would often give him her college faculty ID to show police if they ever stopped him.

"The police, in an attempt to protect the property and rights of often the elite, treat people a particular way until they find out that person's relationship to the elite," he said. "When that relationship to the elite is troubled by race, we get the messed up mix we have in this country."

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The Vassar College professor wrote a piece about the power behind his faculty ID. "We pull out our ID because we know the cops can kill us with impunity," he said.

Kiese Laymon, associate professor of English at Vassar College, recently wrote a piece for Gawker about the power behind his university faculty ID.

Kiese Laymon: Blackness and the power of a college faculty ID

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