There’s been an endless cycle of commentary on the Henry Louis Gates affair since the Harvard Professor was arrested in his home and President Obama made the off script remark that the Cambridge police had “acted stupidly.” Both men are now saying it is time to move on and that what happened was a teachable moment. But what, if anything, have we learned?
Bill Fletcher, Jr., Executive Editor of Black Commentator, Ron Kuby a Civil Rights Attorney and the host of Doing Time with Ron Kuby on Air America, Dennis Parker, Director of the Racial Justice Program at the American Civil Liberties Union, and Rev. Irene Monroe, a Ford Fellow and Doctoral Candidate at Harvard Divinity School on race, class, and law enforcement in America. The ACLU has recently published a report on racial profiling that you can find here.
Bill Fletcher’s remarks that white parents don’t have to tell their children how to deal with cops just shows that he has been indoctrinated by our government and the media to believe that white and black people have different lives. I am a white woman who was in college in Chicago in 1969, and before I told my children about sex and the dangers of drugs, I told them to say Yes, Sir and be quiet if they were stopped by the police unless they wanted to be hurt or arrested. By the way, I live in Cambridge, MA.
By madaboutu on July 29th, 2009 at 1:41 am
Isn’t it kind of stupid to teach kids that they must bow to authority and fear cops?
Is that consistent with a free society?
I submit that this is one of the fundamental causes of the impotence and slavishness of the modern ‘American’.
Gates was right. He is an unpleasant perhaps, but once the cops knew he was the property owner, it was their constitutional duty to get the hell out of there and not to induce him into a scenario wherein they had a specious cause for arrest.
This is abuse of power and is unlawful (title 18). They know it and that is why cops learn to construct these phoney premises and repeat their rote testimony in court.
If they were capable of doing what they are constantly being praised for – capturing real criminals – they would not have the psychological need to puff themselves up with such ‘arrests’.
Keep on kissing their butts and see what it gets you.
By richyankee on July 29th, 2009 at 7:04 am
I agree with madaboutu’s comment. White working class kids often get the same type of advice that Bill Fletcher (and Juan Williams, whom he cites) portray as a solely black phenomenon. My father gave me very similar instructions about dealing with police, as did my millworker grandmother. My cousins received the same instructions from their shipyard worker father. My father made special point to tell me not to mention my rights or the constitution–something I was prone to do being a child of the 60s–my grandmother nodded, saying “they’ll beat hell out of you” if you talk about rights and the constitution; while my father said that, at very least, police would target my vehicle for harassment stops.
Believe it or not, there is a larger issue than race at play here: it is the growth of a police state mentalisty in this country! Stop playing the MSMs game of dividing us by race. Not to say that there is no racial component involved, but whenever race and class intersect, it is the progressive media’s job to emphasize the common interests and problems. When white workers hear these discussions, they feel as if they are targeted as an enemy. Corporate media reinforces divisions among white and black poor and working people, you should always strive to counterbalance that by pointing to similar oppressions whenever they exist. I am not minimizing racist sentiment among white working class people. Still living amongst them I am constantly surrounded by evidence of it. But when media personalities make ridiculous racial generalizations about white working people, it only reinforces the appeal of the FOX news type racist demogogues.
By wileyb56 on July 29th, 2009 at 2:34 pm