To my mother, I am a son. To my wife, I am a husband. To my daughter and son, I am a father. But on the streets of the city or in the suburbs, in police terms, I'm a "Number 1 Male" -- a black man, considered by a significant segment of the white community as a faceless threat to life, limb and property.

If you are a black man in this country, you are never allowed to forget it. Never.

It makes no difference what level of education you have attained, what your profession is, how much money you earn each week, where you live or how much money you have in the bank. A generation removed from the Civil Rights era, in the eyes of far too many whites, I, as a black man, might as well be Willie Horton.

Every so often, as a black man, a "Number 1 Male," you get a reality check. Last Wednesday, I received my latest.

It happened at the Ponderosa restaurant in downtown Bel Air, across the street from the office where I had reported on county government for 3 1/2 years.

I had taken my wife, Zeinab, my six-year-old daughter, Samsam and my 16-month-old son, Hassan, to lunch about noon. I was dressed casually in slacks, shirt and a jacket. There was nothing remarkable about the meal, until I went to the salad bar to fill my plate.

As I was walking back to my booth, I noticed a young white man with thick red hair and glasses, dressed in a blazer, tie and slacks looking at me suspiciously. I later discovered that he was a county detective. When I passed near him, he said, "Hi." I greeted him in kind.

Almost immediately after we exchanged greetings, he asked me: "Are you Dennis?"

I replied, "No," then walked back to my table. I simply thought that it was a case of mistaken identity. It wouldn't be the first time I had been taken for someone else.

In fact, many black people have grown accustomed to being mistaken for someone else by white people, especially in areas, like Harford County, where few black people live. I have been mistaken for Evening Sun columnist Wiley Hall III, a good friend of mine, on at least a dozen occasions. My grandfather and father had to endure these kinds of indignities from some ignorant white people.

When I got back to our booth, I was joking with my wife about this case of mistaken identity. I asked her if I looked like a "Dennis" or a "Steve." My wife, who has never liked the surname I took legally when I became a Muslim in 1978, said that I looked more like a "Joe."

Before we continued, three large, uniformed white sheriff's deputies, who had also been eating at the restaurant, walked over to our booth and stopped directly in front of us. Although I had covered the sheriff's department for more than three years, and knew many of the deputies personally, I did not recognize any of them. They had effectively blocked us in.

One of the deputies turned to me and asked me: "Are you Dennis?" A little bemused, I replied that I was not. Then he asked me again: "Are you Dennis Moore?" Again, I replied that I was not. Then, I became concerned.

The deputy then requested that I show him my identification. I started to explain that I thought I had left my wallet in the car. The deputy told me they had an outstanding arrest warrant for one Dennis Moore and that if I could not produce an identification that I might have to accompany them back to the Sheriff's Department headquarters on Main Street.

I forcefully told the deputies my name and explained that I was a reporter for The Baltimore Sun and had, until recently, been covering the county as the paper's bureau chief. I told them that I knew Sheriff Robert Comes and his predecessor, Dominic Mele, and had covered their campaigns. I also told them that if they needed an identification that they could ask Dr. Carl Klockars, a University of Delaware consultant working with the police research project with the county government, who was eating at the rear of the restaurant.

That was enough to convince them. We all ended up joking about the whole incident. One of them told me that I did, in fact, look like the man they had been looking for. Their tone was never threatening to me. It was, in fact, polite and business-like. During my tenure in Harford County, I have grown to respect the professionalism of the deputies and have come to know and like many of them personally.

Those feelings aside, I just couldn't get this incident out of my mind. After we finished eating, I drove my family a few blocks up Main Street to the Sheriff's Department headquarters and went into the public information office and requested a photo and description of my supposed doppelganger, Dennis Moore.

When I saw the picture of Mr. Moore, an escapee from the Harford County Detention Center, I had to laugh about our

so-called resemblance. We had different eyes, different features, different shaped heads and he was much darker than I am. The only thing we had in common is that we are black. No more, no less.

In fact, at the time of the incident, I was the only black man, "Number 1 Male" in the restaurant, which is frequented by county deputies. There were no other blacks in the restaurant. What other compelling reason could there have been to question me?

The deputies had obviously made an honest mistake. I don't think they were racist. I do, however, think their actions showed a lack of perception. It is a lack of perception, the ability to differentiate non-white people, that helps maintain the racial chasm between blacks and whites that has yawned since the days of slavery.

Most blacks have to interact with whites daily. We have evolved a different behavior and speech in dealing with them. But too many whites remain segregated from blacks physically, socially, culturally and emotionally.

An older gentleman, whom I respect greatly, who happens to be white, told me that to most whites, all "Number 1 Males," such as myself, do indeed look alike. He said the deputies would not have made the same mistake with a white man or black deputies with a black or white suspect.

It is this inability to differentiate, even at such a small level, that has helped doom relationships between the races. Many whites I talked to about this incident were genuinely surprised, but when I talked with fellow "Number 1 Male" reporters, none of them were surprised.

In fact, they told me their own stories. The most frequent ones were being stopped and hassled by white police officers for driving expensive cars, that I suppose they had no right to drive unless they were drug dealers. We've also had some white women clutch their purses closer or walk across the street to avoid us, while others of us had to endure arrests and harassment with police in incidents solely stemming from the color of their skin.

That's why few of us regard what recently happened to Rodney King in Los Angeles or actors Blair Underwood and Wesley Snipes -- all "Number 1 Males" who were hassled by police -- as shocking. Being television and movie stars had not caused the police to differentiate between any of them.

A good friend of mine, a Baltimore attorney with a top local law firm, told me that after his own incident with a racist cop last year in Ohio that the experience let him know what a lot of younger "Number 1 Males" have to face around the country every day, every week and every month of their lives.

The unfortunate part is that we've all gotten used to it. We regard confrontation with white authority figures as an often dangerous, but necessary, rite of passage into manhood in what many of us regard as a still largely segregated and racist society.

I suppose that I and other "Number 1 Males" share an uncanny racial resemblance to the stars of the evening television broadcasts, who are taken away in handcuffs for the benefit of the cameras. Even though whites commit far more crimes, use and deal far more drugs each year than blacks, most of them are dealt with as individuals, not a faceless menace that many "No.1 Males" are.

As startling as this may sound, the great majority of black people are not murderers, drug dealers, drug pushers, prostitutes, rapists, robbers or thieves.

What is needed here is letting go of racial stereotyping and a little more honest face-to-face contact among blacks and whites. I don't see any reluctance from my people, because blacks have long since mastered the survival of racial duality in this country.

As the majority population, most whites have neither had the need or desire to reach out to black folks. I see far too few of them, at any level, caring enough to find out what black people think or feel or even feeling it important to do so.

Until whites start seeing black people as individuals, as human beings in this country, the future of race relations will indeed be as bleak as our past and present.

It is little wonder that among the earliest memories was accompanying my well-dressed father as a 10-year-old to a Sears in suburban Washington, D.C. and having an elderly white woman came up to us and imperiously ask my father to load some potted plants for her.

Incredibly, she mistook him, dressed in a suit holding my hand, as a store clerk. As far as she was concerned, my father was just another faceless black man or servant. My father, who earned a doctorate in microbiology from the University of Michigan, politely told her that just because he was black didn't mean that he worked at the store.

I only pray that my own son will not have to endure a similar rite of passage.