Hello Rune,
It is both. Certainly any defendant is going to do better with a higher priced lawyer than the public defender, but even before that happens, just driving while black is cause for greater police scrutiny and policing action.
Class and wealth have no exemption for black families having to have 'the talk' with their children who are learning to drive:
"It’s known as "The Talk" — a discussion left almost exclusively to black parents and family members about police.
"It’s maddening," one black mother said. "I get so frustrated and angry about having to prepare my kids for something that they’re not responsible for."
"The Talk" was the topic of a New York Times video from 2015, explaining how black parents have to prepare their sons for police encounters — out of fear, mainly, that such interactions can go horribly wrong, ending with their son dead.
These are the types of fears that have existed in black communities for generations, but they’ve recently received far more mainstream attention in the aftermath of high-profile police killings since the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014.
"These are conversations that people of other races do not have to have with their children," one black woman said.
"It doesn’t mean that every police officer is inherently a bad person," one black man said, "but what it does mean is that the police force — that institution — does not look out for your best interest."
As one mother put it, [speaking of her male son] "He is going to turn into a large, scary black man. And that’s not who he is, but that’s how he will be perceived."
Unfortunately, she’s right: Study after study show black men are frequently perceived as larger, scarier, and more prone to criminality than people of other races. For black parents, that means a typical police stop turning into a violent encounter is a very real, terrifying possibility."
Black parents describe “The Talk” they give to their children about police