Press Clips: The Professor, the Policeman, the President and the Press
Posted July 30, 2009 on 3:42 pm | In the category Press | by JeffIn case anyone was on Mars and missed it, the big story the past week was the arrest of African-American Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. for “Disorderly Conduct” (that is defined as “whatever the police think it is”) when caught living in his own home. But that story only became the REALLY BIG one when President Obama opined in response to a press questioner that it appeared to him that the “police acted stupidly”. This has led to the press bombarding us with critiques of the president’s choice of words and lengthy displays of support for the country’s brave policemen. Only later did some of the press consider the realities of black men’s history with the police in this country and the press largely missed the point by focusing initially on the “acted stupidly” comment and then on the race issue – but with no real depth of understanding. Perhaps the most sensible comments were from Christopher Hitchens in the online journal, Slate, in which he reminded readers of the constitutional guarantee of a “man’s home as his castle”, that there is “no legal requirement to be polite in the defense of this right”, that police are not always drawn from the best and brightest (my paraphrase of his comments), and that “Gates should have taken his stand on the Bill of Rights and not on his epidermis or that of the arresting officer”
Read Hitchens’ full piece at this link.
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Yes, we are protected. However, Being disrespectful to a officer of the law is… well stupid. I hate to do this but race is really an issue here. It has been proven time and again that As long as a black man, or white man for that matter, degrades themselves, These men will fall back into their “trained” or learned responses. I see it in politics all the time. Let’s start with the white man. If the “white man” has stepped in a quagmire of bullshit of his own making, he’ll trivialize the questioner then, in a act of arrogance, change the subject to a safer topic. Now the “black man” has an edge so his personal debasement is deeper. The “black man” will listen for certain “key words” and change the subject so he can be “outraged” at being subjugated as a “black man”, or will be offended by a simple turn of a phrase, preventing the true subject from being as important as his “feelings”. Anyone who would bring up ones own color as a reason to ignore a subject, came to the table without any cards. These men may be powerful. These men maybe well educated. BUT ignorance is a color blind poison that sickens all of us. The Teacher thought he was a better man than the officer and fell back into a “racist gutter snipe” mentality in order to make himself feel superior to this white man and his badge. We are all equal, we all do a job. These men have made a fool of themselves on national T.V. Forgive them, but don’t forget. OH, let’s just say, “Do on to others as you would have done on to you.” As I see it. If you want to be labeled as a racist, bring race up in a normal conversation, period.
Comment by American dupe — August 14, 2009 #