I've seen similar happen in London - black people stopped and seeming to be harassed by police for no obvious reason.
But the main anecdote for me is when I was crossing the Swiss-French border near Geneva in a car with my girlfriend.
She is black; I am white.
She was told to get out of the car and required to present various paperwork, then they checked up on the paperwork, holding her for maybe 10-20 minutes, making phone calls.
A man with an impressively large gun stood nearby.
She had a decent job at the UN in Geneva nearby, a perfectly good identity card, and it's not at all unusual for black people to cross that border in a car.
I thought they might check my paperwork too, but they were not interested and didn't ask me for anything, not even to get out of the car. It seems I was free to pass, except of course I waited for my temporarily detained girlfriend.
I've also heard a similar style of tale from Switzerland, from a friend who has lived there for 30 years.
She went to report her son's bicycle being stolen. She is white, but when the police heard her name (it is an Eastern European name), they instantly became less polite, making remarks such as "it's probably one of your country mates that did this, you know?". She got a little bit of comeuppance when she handed them her ID - her Canadian passport - and they suddenly became very polite again.
While the color of your skin makes you a much bigger target for harassment, xenophobia even for people who's skin is white is a pretty similar thought process for those who perpetrate it, and extremely widespread.
This. 99% of policing is just fishing with a pretext. Even when they're out to run a speed trap and collect revenue they still err toward stopping the outlier cars.
If you don't blend in you get a ton more attention. That can mean an out of state plate, a skin tone that doesn't match the area, a vehicle that doesn't match the area or you're checking stereotype boxes for criminal activity.
But the main anecdote for me is when I was crossing the Swiss-French border near Geneva in a car with my girlfriend.
She is black; I am white.
She was told to get out of the car and required to present various paperwork, then they checked up on the paperwork, holding her for maybe 10-20 minutes, making phone calls.
A man with an impressively large gun stood nearby.
She had a decent job at the UN in Geneva nearby, a perfectly good identity card, and it's not at all unusual for black people to cross that border in a car.
I thought they might check my paperwork too, but they were not interested and didn't ask me for anything, not even to get out of the car. It seems I was free to pass, except of course I waited for my temporarily detained girlfriend.