When they slapped the cuffs on Henry Louis Gates Jr., they took it all away from him. In his 58 years he'd done everything he was supposed to, played all the games, made all the moves, but now none of it mattered: when it came right down to it, he was just another uppity Negro, and he was going to jail.
"This was the supreme humiliation for Henry Louis Gates, because he has achieved a rarefied status and the considerations that are usually afforded to him went right out the window when the officer arrested him. In a minute, that cop erased all that Gates has had to work through to get where he is. That officer tripped every racial humiliation that Gates and his family have experienced since slavery."
Brought it all back home. And today Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is sitting there on the piano bench, right next to Nina Simone, and he's singing "Cambridge Goddam."
One of the first problems with the conversation about the assault on Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is that too many of the people conversing, and especially too many of the people braying, are white. Keith Boykin caught this over on Huffington Post (h/t fedupcitizen):
The most disturbing aspect of the news coverage about Henry Louis Gates' arrest has been the running commentary by white men about appropriate decorum for black men.
Of course, it was no surprise that blowhards like Rush Limbaugh would jump in to defend the white police officer and impugn Professor Gates. Nor that the conservative radio talk show host would turn his attack to President Obama after the president labeled the Cambridge Police Department behavior "stupid."
Limbaugh's an easy case. More troubling is the commentary from Sergeant James Crowley himself, an "expert" on racial profiling who still doesn't understand why a black man would be upset to be accused of breaking into his own house.
The New York Times on Wednesday convened seven "experts" for a Gates "blog debate": but for this, a case involving a flinty white agent of state power arresting a black man in his own home, simply because he could, the Times managed to round up only two black men. Something tells me that there are more than two black men in the United States who can speak with some experience on the subject of racial profiling. I'm pretty sure that the Times could have gone down on the street, and there found enough black men, and women, to provide enough "expert" opinion to consume a week's worth of Times' pixels.
On this blog too, much of the conversation has been driven by white people. Nothing unusual in that: this blog, like this nation, is predominately white. But it seems to me that an event like this one, one that forces this nation to confront the reality that it is still riven with relicts of white privilege and black disenfranchisement, should begin with the voices of the disenfranchised, not the privileged. And since, unless we're going to revive the old "one drop" standard, I'm as white as those chunky stone-faced Cambridge PD asshats who are demanding that Gates be prosecuted and President Obama "apologize," I'd like to start this (pretty lengthy) conversation about Gates with some words from some black Kossacks.
All of America must understand
How being Black in this country contorts your soul. My Son, myself & two small children under the age of 4 yrs. were hit by an 18 wheeler truck going 50 MPH in Evergreen, Alabama 10 yrs. ago. We were lucky we weren't all killed that day, the car was completely totalled. When the troopers arrived on the scene they refused to address either my son or myself at all. We were completely ignored there in the median of the road. The trooper would only speak with the whites in other cars that were hit. I will be scarred with that experience forever. Being helpless, needing help & being ignored because we were Black.
No one wants to relive the moments of the great humiliations in their lives. But believe me, when this Skip Gates story broke, every minority in this country that has been humiliated in the same fashion relived it once again. It is a burden that haunts us all.
I do not know of one black person who has not been on the rough end of some kind of racial profiling. When we walk into stores, we are followed. We are stopped by policemen for no reason. One of my sons who married a white woman was stopped and she was asked if she was okay as if she were being kidnapped. I was stopped by a officer who informed me that a friend’s mother had the same kind of car I was driving. When I asked him if her car had been reported stolen, the situation was in escalation mode until my passenger, a white male, got out of the car and idenitfied himself as my lawyer and asked the policeman for the exact reason he had stopped me. The officer made nice really fast, though not to me.
Your recounting of son's story reminded me of my cousin, who was married to a woman who "looked white" (his wife was not but unless you were one of us, most folks wouldn't know the diff)
They were dragged out of their car in LA, at gunpoint, his wife was thrown to the ground (pregnant).
His crime - driving while black (with a big fro), her's being a "white woman" with said black man with fro.
I had a cop pull me over for crossing the freeway divider to go the opposite direction. Car after car was doing it because of a major traffic accident -- but dumb me, why did I try it? So, I wasn't awake yet so the Miss Ann crown wasn't up in force, like Gates-- and instead of the 'what's wrong officer' tone, I said, hey, everyone else is doing it --WHY are you just pulling me over???' And on cue -- someone else did the same thing in front of me. To this guy's credit, he apologised and let me go. And he said that he would do better next time.
That is how simple this issue could have been resolved with Gates--'Just checking out a report of burglary at your house. Sorry for the interuption -- here is my name and badge number if you find out things were disturbed inside while you were gone. Have a good day!'
And we all know why professionalism did not win out. This cop wanted to make an example of Skip Gates. This is the consequence of being an uppity Negro. Who among us does not know this drill. But I am the same age as Skip Gates & I know I am tired of the BS as well.
What people don't realise is it's not just cops, it's the clerk at the store, it's your boss -- or your bosses' boss. You constantly have to get though that bs everyday. We were taught to do this - how to observe the WM/WG so you don't get in trouble -- as it is handed down generation by generation. That's why we know the drill, the speech, the body language that the WM is comfortable with so we can get on with our day.
But like Gates, sometimes I'm just tried of my Miss Ann crown and have to jump black for a moment. yes, I'm supposed to be here, this is my house. Yes, I own this car because I'm driving it. Yes, this is my AMEX card because I have perfect credit. Yes, I can afford this because I make six figures.
You just get weary. And in 2009 nothing has improved in regards to racial profiling. We are always suspected of committing a crime or being in a space we have no right to be in. As sad as it is, this incident opens the dialog to better understand what we go through on a daily basis. How we have to teach our young men how to live through an encounter with the police & how as a 58 yr. old Black Women still cringes when she sees a police car in her rear view.
I've been stewing on using this incident as a "racial profiling" case and I think we may need to get like the Innuit people and invent another term for snow. People think traffic stop and the police tactic of stopping people for being black on a sunny day and then riffling through their stuff looking for drugs, or like that Texas town that stopped every black person with out of state rental tags and shook them down for money. This one was different. It was I'm the man I don't have to respect a single thing about you even in your own home. I am the man and you will answer my questions and I don't have to answer to you.
To me it seemed like Gates' Rosa Parks moment where he was just tired of being tired. He got home from an international trip, and had an infection and had to deal with a jammed door on a hot, muggy day. And then Officer Crowley shows up.
The overwhelming criticism of Gates by the media, and others who want to find fault with him, is all about his attitude. Because there is no doubt that he provided an ID while he was still in the house.
So, he was arrested for not being deferential enough to authority. That is stupid- like Obama said.
And without missing a beat our POTUS spoke as a Black Man & of the experience of each & every one of us in the Black community.The media now has it's "Being Black While President" moment.
I actually thank God the question was asked.
I held my breath while Obama answered it though. I thought is he gonna sell us out, and deny what is obvious to everyone with a non white skin tone? He didn't he called the incident what it was STUPID and thus became truly the first President i've really ever had. If a portion of white America should become upset at this more than fine. We can talk about it. I'm not MLK like so if they want we can fight about it. However, for the first time in American history the story of the Black person was believed by the President. Take a look at how much of the media and even here on kos reads the police report as gospel, and not the testilying of an officer.
Thank God maybe now police will respect the fact that we are citizens of this country, and are free people with the absolute right to be secure in our homes and persons from police attacks.
I have to admit am not a Skip Gates fan, for a host of reasons that have nothing to do with this incident.
I think this was actually a wake-up call for those who think that illustrious titles, and academic ivory towers are no protection when you "be black" in America.
Barack Obama sans entourage and secret service, playin a game of pick-up ball in a park, would be a likely candidate for police harassment.
David Dinkins, when Mayor of New York couldn't hail a cab.
This is what Michelle was speaking about when she talked about her husband being a black man...and they tried to blow it all out of proportion during the primaries...but every minority who lives with it...we knew what she was talking about...the rest of them...blind, clueless and tried to paint my FLOTUS as an angry black woman.
Yeah well, because there are people out there who react first and think later...and hell yeah I'm angry!
We are all angry. But we have learned to live beyond the anger & pain.
Time to bring the ol' "I'm tired... I've been Black all day" t-shirt back outta storage.
I don't know why I wasn't more ready for this I predicted from the moment Barack won. We were going to catch it from the reactionaries big time with both barrels. I had the same thought as your T-shirt, but then I thought of Moms. 5 foot tall (4 foot 11 Moms) 93 pounds being dragged out of soda fountains, and standing in front of real police officers, and I think: I'm not so tired.
I know that these words are true, because my life has progressed in such a way that I have seen and experienced them to be true. For more than 30 years, I have worked as a journalist, a private investigator, and in criminal law. I have learned much about many different sorts of people, and almost daily I have encountered agents of state power. And long ago I understood that it is simply a fact that law enforcement in this country suffers from systemic arrogance, lawlessness, and racism, the three factors that combined to effect the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
I have worked personally on stories and cases that many people would dismiss as old history, fables, or anomalies. But they are none of these things.
A trio of intoxicated white people, driving around one winter's night "looking for a deer or a cow to shoot," found neither, and so embarked on "a nigger hunt." They drove into our town and when from their car they saw a young black man walking along the railroad tracks, heading home from a skating rink, they shot him and killed him. The investigating officers botched the case so badly that the shooter probably would have gone free, once the case had climbed a bit into the appellate courts. Instead, in one of those instances that nobody ever talks about, but that nonetheless happen, the shooter's attorney showed just enough leg so that the DA dropped the death penalty charges, and the attorney then pled his client to a very lengthy term in prison.
In this century, in a county up north, I worked on a To Kill a Mockingbird case, where a young white woman accused a black man of rape. He would today be in prison but for a fortuitous chain of circumstances. First, he had worked for the only prosperous black businessman in his small town, a man who believed in him, and so put up $5000 to hire a private attorney. Second, that attorney was not only competent, but committed to cases like these, and so after quickly burning through that retainer he just kept right on going, working without a fee. Third, once presented with evidence gathered by that attorney and his investigators, the assistant district-attorney assigned to the case began to have doubts about the victim's story. Fourth, because that DA did not trust the magistrate to do the right thing, and dismiss the charges at a preliminary hearing, she convened an extraordinary private session attended by herself, her investigator, the victim, the defendant's attorney, and myself. In the event, the attorney and I never needed to speak. The DA and her investigator themselves, eventually, drew from the young woman the truth: she and her sisters had been sadistically sexually and physically abused by their father for years, and when that man learned that she had been consensually engaging in sexual relations with a black man, he tore her apart, and then demanded that she go to the authorities and accuse her lover of raping and beating her. Our client was freed. The father was never charged. Instead, in one of those other instances that nobody ever talks about, but that nonetheless happen, the DA investigator drove out to his remote rural farmstead, and there "talked" to him.
In a county to the west, the first and most crucial item of information we need to know about any case that comes into our office is whether the client is white or Mexican. Regardless of the nature of the case, the eventual disposition will turn on that fact more than on any other. Until he recently retired, the number-two man in that county's DA's office sported German and Confederate flags in his office, and spoke openly in the halls about Holocaust denial. The DA himself once harangued me for half an hour on his theory of "bad genes" as the motive force in Mexican "criminality." The county is very poor, and depends on funds from the federal government for housing in its jail immigration prisoners. If you are a legal resident, but not a citizen, and in that county you are arrested and convicted of an offense that under the draconian Clinton-era immigration statutes renders deportation "mandatory," you will be deported. If you are arrested and convicted of the same offense, but just over the line into this county, where the DA loathes all "feds," you will not be. Unless you are perceived as "uppity." Then you will be.
In a county to the east, "justice" depends upon whether you are white or Indian. A year ago a young Indian woman had her face smashed in with a flashlight by a young white man with two juvenile convictions for acts of violence. He received a grant of probation. A couple months ago that Indian woman's cousin, a Maidu man, with no convictions for acts of violence, was sentenced to state prison for with his fist cracking a bone around a white man's eye.
Several years ago I worked on a "Henry Gates case" that took place right up the street here. A black man that a trio of white officers had decided was "lippy" was lured out of his house and onto his porch and there arrested for "disorderly conduct." He was not of the stature of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and so the charges were not dropped. Instead, as almost always occurs, the DA, though he knew the arrest was horseshit, felt he had to "back up" his officers. And so his office and our office wasted months of time and forests of trees on dueling briefs combing through variations in the case law dependent upon what minute area of space the client was occupying at the moment of his arrest. As a result, I never want to hear the word "threshold" again. Though it was the ultimate determination of the judge that it was indeed upon "the threshold" where our client stood at the moment of arrest that resulted in him tossing the chickenshit charges into the dumper.
I guess I should mention that I live not in some stereotypically knuckledragging area of the South, but in California, in that great redstate swath that runs up the Central Valley from Bakersfield to Redding. Because our Southern brethren keep sending unreconstructed Foghorn Leghorns like the Right Retrograde Jeff Sessions to Congress, it is easy for many people to believe that the bulk of the racial problems in this country are cabined to the South. Bollocks. Look at the three recent racial flash-points to illumine the news. All originated in blue cities, in blue states: Philadelphia, New Haven, and Boston.
First we had the black children ordered out of the white swimming pool. Even though we've already been through this: it was the 1950 injunction by United States District Court Judge Rubey M. Hulen of the Eastern District of Missouri requiring the city of St Louis to open its Fairground Park swimming pool to people of color that sparked the United States Supreme Court’s decision four years later, in Brown v. Board of Education, that mandated racial integration and supposedly wrote the notion of “separate but equal” out of this nation’s laws. Judge Hulen died in July 1956, a month before I was born. As I followed the news out of Philadelphia, it was like all those years never passed. We were still back in Judge Hulen's time: "All the years combine; they melt into a dream."
Then we had those riled-up roosters scratching up dirt at "Maria" Sotomayor, for her vote in a New Haven, Connecticut affirmative action case. Not wanting to turn up the nasty worm that the only reason why affirmative-action was even an issue in that case is because northern big-city fire departments have a long, malodorous history as white ethnic enclaves stubbornly resistant to bunking down with people of color and/or women.
Now Boston. Impressed into the great (white) public mind as quintessentially liberal, home to Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Barney Frank. Black people see a different Boston. They see, as was recently expressed on this site, "racist-ass Boston." Very last city to grudgingly integrate its professional baseball team. Where the great wave of school desegregation broke and receded, with violent white resistance to "busing," a remedy itself necessitated by the refusal of old white men on the United States Supreme Court to bring the Constitution to bear on residential segregation, much less wealth and poverty.
Most of the white people who live around me don't see any racial problems. This isn't the South; everything here is fine. They don't see the cases that I do, and the kind of stories I used to write are no longer printed up here. So they live in a bubble of racial harmony. True, they don't really see people of color much, unless they go to "that neighborhood" or "those stores," or maybe when they drive by the college. They know they're around though, because they see them on the TV news: when they commit crimes, or when, as Aaron McGruder once put it, "they do things with balls." Now it's true that since the town made the mistake of hiring a 25-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department as police chief, that outfit's practice of white police officers shooting and killing unarmed black and brown people seems to have migrated north as well. Five, in two years, at last count. But the (white) district attorney is always there on the TV, after an "investigation" lasting less than a week, confidently pronouncing the shooting "justified."
Where I live the food is grown that feeds the world. The labor all comes from brown people. Brown people of varying status--"citizen," "resident," "illegal"--who are routed in and out of the state at the whim and desire of capital and its armed guardians of law enforcement. Recently the local--these days very genteel--"alternative" newspaper trumpeted from its cover a story involving a deportation outrage. Intrigued--this, I estimated, would be the first such story from that paper this millennium--I opened the thing and read the tale of a young man who'd come to this country with his parents when he was three, who'd never got around to applying for and receiving US citizenship, and who now, in his twenties, faced deportation after conviction of one of the many minor offenses that the Clinton immigration laws decree "require" deportation. The tale was long, and involved, and touching, the writer suitably indignant, and there were many heart-tugging photographs of the young man--including baby and childhood photos--and of his distraught family.
The young man was white. He was being deported to England.
Earlier that week I'd had to tell a 29-year-old woman, mother of two young children (American citizens, like their father), who'd come to this country from Mexico when she was two months old, that there was nothing more we could do for her: she was going back over the border, deported, permanently excluded from the United States.
We lose people like that all the time. Nobody knows about it. Nobody wants to know about it.
The first thing you need to know about police officers is that they do not respect the Constitution. They regard it is an irritant, a nuisance, an impediment to what they've decided they're all about: catching criminals.
This is not just some Commie criminal-defense type talking. What I say is pure fact. Go read the recent United States Supreme Court cases relating to Miranda. They lay it all out. There are courses and classes and brochures and pamphlets and books and roving instructors that teach police officers how best to circumvent constitutional provisions protecting citizens.
Anybody who knows anything about criminal law knows exactly what happened at the Gates house. And that includes President Obama, who's a freaking Constitutional law professor, for chrissake. And who therefore had every right and all the authority he needed to speak as he did--not only as a black man, but also as a person conversant with the relevant law.
Officer Crowley entered Gates' house in response to a possible breaking-and-entering call. There he encountered Gates, who presented valid identification supporting his assertion that he was the lawful resident and occupant of that home, offered a reasonable explanation for the "suspicious" events related by the reporting party, and stated that there were no intruders in his home. He also gave Officer Crowley some sass. Because Officer Crowley did not like that sass, he decided to arrest Gates. But to get even within the ballpark of a lawful arrest, Crowley had to lure Gates out of his house. So that's what he did.
I am not familiar with the details of Massachusetts' chickenshit "disorderly conduct" statute, but I assume it tracks all the other chickenshit "disorderly conduct" statutes in all the other states in the nation. Because officers like Crowley are periodically beaten like gongs by the federal appellate courts for attempting to stretch "disorderly conduct" statutes into regions where the Constitution will not permit them to go, the case law has been clear for decades that you cannot lawfully arrest a man under a "disorderly conduct" statute when he's standing in his own home. Crowley knew this, and that's why Crowley had to get Gates out.
As for what Gates said--it doesn't matter. It's not even worth discussing. Frankly I've been appalled at the amount of useless verbiage generated on this site as to what Gates said, whether he had a "right" to say it, whether he "contributed" to his arrest--all of which, to me, are alternately sad and infuriating variations on "lippy," "sassy," and "uppity." Fact is, the Constitution gives all of us the right to call any police officer whatever we want, so long as we don't threaten his or her life or lay hands on them. And if a police officer can't take it, and goes outside the law to arrest us, the fault lies solely with the officer, not with us. The officer is the one with the badge, the gun, the power of arrest. Not us.
I stood on the front porch of this law office in the wee hours one morning and called a police officer a "stupid fucking asshole," because that's what he was being. It was about 2:00 a.m. Monday morning and I was working on a brief that had to be filed later that day. I stepped outside for a cigarette. Three patrol cars come roaring up to the curb, disgorging five police officers. They come running up to the foot of the porch, demanding to know who I was and what I was doing there. I asked why. They said an alarm had gone off at a business about ten blocks away. This was the Sunday-night shift, in a small town, the town bulging like a tick with too many cops, nobody else around. They were bored, and I was the only potential fun around. But I didn't feel like having fun. I was tired and I was cranky and I was pissed off from working on this brief, involving some of their fellow officers, who had pulled a bogus stop and a bogus seizure and then breezily lied about it in the police reports. So I verbally identified myself, told them I was drafting a brief, took my keys out, inserted them in the lock, proved I had access to the office, and asked them to leave. They demanded paper identification. At that time, in this state, I did not have to show them such identification in such a circumstance. So I told them I would not be doing that. And then I cited the relevant cases.
That did it. Police officers never like to hear the law recited to them. As far as they are concerned, they are the law. And one of the great tragedies of this country is, as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. discovered, we allow that to be true.
Anyway, that commenced the name-calling, which proceeded to fly back and forth. After about five minutes of this, a fourth patrol car pulled up. Out stepped Officer P. A veteran, worked downtown, knew everybody there, not any kind of a hard-ass, didn't believe in it. He walked up, assessed the situation, then said: "That's J---. He works here. Sometimes he works late. He's okay. Let's go." The original five officers gave me looks like dogs called off a cornered chicken, got in their cars, and drove away. I stayed hunkered down in the office until after 7:00 a.m., when their shift changed. Because I knew there was no way I could get from the office to the city limits, on my way home to the mountains, without getting pulled over by one of those five, for something. Because that's the way they are.
I'm nobody. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is somebody. If some cop could step up and vouch for me, why couldn't one have done the same for him?
They say that if you have a roof over your head, clothes on your back, food on the shelf, money in your pocket, and some more in the bank, you're better off than 90% of the world's population. So, in the great scheme of things, I'm on easy street. Add to that that I'm white, and that I'm American, and I'm on top of the world.
The world is a mass of suffering, and because of an accident of birth I've been able to avoid so much of it. I was a young white sprout, growing up in a working-class California home, during "Mississippi Goddam"; it inflicted no personal suffering on me. Now I am an aging white man, and I know that, because of that accident of birth, whatever else may happen in my life, I will never suffer through any "Cambridge Goddam." I am not a Harvard professor, I am not a world-renowned scholar, I do not know the president, but no one is ever going to tear my life apart, make me feel stupid and powerless and small, subject me to public scrutiny, gossip, and ridicule, simply because of the color of my skin, and because he can. That's a form of suffering I will never have to endure. What I do have to endure is the knowledge that this sort of suffering still persists, in my country, during the time that I am alive, and therefore under my watch. What I do have to endure is the truth in this:
Evidently Obama, Crowley and Gates are talking about getting a beer together. I hope they have a grand old time.
The rest of us are left with a country where, by all appearances, officers are well within their rights to arrest you for sassing them. Which is where we started. I can't explain why, but this is the sort of thing that makes you reflect on your own precarious citizenship. I mean, the end of all of this scares the hell out of me . . . .
In his book Crabgrass Frontier, Kenneth Jackson talks about citizens accepting the responsibility for democracy. He's discussing red-lining, as I recall, and notes that it would be wrong to see government policy toward black neighborhoods as a shadowy conspiracy to destroy black communities. It's much darker than that. The government represents the people, and thus one must see red-lining, housing segregation, and housing covenants not as the machinations of bureaucrats, but as a manifestation of popular will. My reading on Reconstruction has led me the same way. Rutherford B. Hayes did not so much fail, as the country made a choice--we'd rather kill Indians and expand, then protect citizens from terrorism.
When we think about the cops, it's scary, on one level, to conclude that a cop can basically arrest you on a whim. It's scarier still to think that this is what Americans want, that this country is as we've made it. And then finally it's even scarier to understand that no president can change that. It's not why he's there. He is there to pass health-reform--not make us post-racist, or post-police power, or post-whatever. Only the people can do that. And they don't seem particularly inclined. Here is what the election of Barack Obama says about race--white people, in general, are willing to hire a black guy for the ultimate job. That's a big step. But it isn't any more than what it says.
So long as he is president, Barack Obama, especially in racial matters, will always be Jackie Robinson. The Robinson signed and sent out onto the field by Branch Rickey, instructed that, for the first few years anyway, he must behave as the perfect black man. No sassing, no scrapping, no going in spikes held high.
Robinson couldn't do those things--but his white teammates could. And so, if an opposing pitcher knocked Robinson down, Robinson's pitcher knocked down two opposing batters. If a player pushed Robinson, two of his teammates gave that man a shove. If a man came in on Robinson with spikes, that man himself, at the next opportunity, ate spikes.
We are Barack Obama's teammates. Obama may have to praise Officer Crowley as "an outstanding police officer and a good man," a man with "a fine track record on racial sensitivity," but we don't have to. We can go in spikes high. We can speak the truth.
"We had a report of a break in we are just making sure every one is OK."
that is exactly what they would have said to a white man in the same situation.
they would not have gone in with their suspicious glasses on.
Skip Gates is not very tall, has more than a few grey hairs, and has trouble walking. Anyone with the sense that God gave geese would never imagine him to be a burglar.
This cop does not realize that his assumption that Gates was a threat was the racial moment that escalated the entire situation. And he will never realize it, because he feels justified in assuming the worst about black men and will never concede they have a right to object to it.
Well he teaches profiling don't cha know?
So in his knowledge he must be right because he the white man teaches profiling so there could not have been any power tripping on this part...while the learned professor was being "uppity" and sometimes minority with people with degrees need to be taken down a peg or two...just as the Senators who questioned Sotomayor...who had all that experience in law.
Once he knew that Gates lived there and it was his house the officer was trespassing. And if he had any brains he might have understood that Gates did not have to like him being there.
I don't care about the rest of the care & concern the officer had...his concern was apparent when he threw the handcuffs on Gate by getting him to come out on the porch.
If that's the best they have to offer in profiling they might want to rethink that course.
And up in there in the stands, we've got a passel of loud, angry, lard-ass Congressmembers, cops, and TV/radio bloviators, demanding that Barack Obama "apologize." Fuck 'em. We know what they really want. What they really want from Barack Obama is something like this (h/t fedupcitizen):
Well, they're not going to get it. Obama has done all the "walking back" he's going to do. In a democratic republic, no president can apologize to a police force. And particularly not a black president, to a white police force. It's time for the people who are actually in the wrong here to do some backpedaling. And if they won't do it on their own, we, like good teammates, may need to give them a shove.
Rush Limbaugh, fired from his dream job on Monday Night Football for his racist dribble, wants to befoul the airwaves gassing on about "Duke all over again" and branding Obama "Barack Nifong"? Bone-ignorant bone-racist Sean Hannity, leaving off his birther midwiving to ululate that Obama has "slurred all police officers" and demand "an immediate apology"? Banned-in-Britain Michael Savage on an unhinged tear about how the "Marxist" Obama is "protecting" his "red friend"?
Fine. How about Officer Crowley loses his badge? Somebody who feels it necessary to arrest an old, tired, crippled back man in his own home, for the "crime" of sass, has no business wearing a badge. It's time for Officer Crowley to retire to the private sector. He'll hardly lack for work. What with his "I didn't vote for him" smirking, he no doubt has a great future, out there with Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber, on the GOoPer goofball circuit.
The Kossack Robinswing, here on this site, says this:
Our president called this a teachable moment. It would be if folks were ready to learn what it's like to be black and brown in America. Methinks that the reason might be the knowledge might require some action to change business as usual.
And she's right.
This morning I listened to comedian and talk-show host Brian Copeland, hardly your "angry black man." In introducing this subject he went out of his way to lavish praise on law enforcement and aver that he could "see both sides." Yet, like the president, he considered this a "teachable moment," and asked his listeners what they thought it should teach.
And then came the emails. From Novato. A notorious white enclave; even more notorious as a bedroom community for SF Bay Area white police officers working in minority cities. What the emailers thought the moment should teach, was that "Barack Obama should keep his mouth shut." That people like Obama and Gates and Copeland were "playing the race card," and needed to "get over it."
And then it all come out. All of what had happened to Copeland, from the time he was eight years old and was taken to jail for the "crime" of carrying a baseball bat and balls down the street, to the moment when, just like Henry Louis Gates Jr., after a lifetime of "humiliation after humiliation after humiliation," he was accosted by one white police officer too many: "it wasn't that big a deal, but I was just tired of it, and I said 'enough'!" Got right up into the officer's face, and would not back down.
Copeland's next caller was an older black man, older than Copeland, older than Gates, who said black people talk about these events among themselves, all the time. And that what he hoped the president meant about a "teachable moment" was that it was time for the black community to talk about it with white people, too. To make them see it, make them feel it.
I think he's right. The conversation starts with members of the black and other minority communities: it is these people who can teach. Teach that these stories--like the stories from our fellow Kossacks that I excerpted above--are true. All of them. Teach that such things happen to all black people. All of them. And that just as we on this site did not accept that the abuses inflicted on foreign black and brown people in the War on Terra were the work of "a few bad apples," neither can we dismiss the abuse inflicted on domestic black and brown people by armed agents of state power as "bad apple" aberrations. The problems in the War on Terra were systemic; the problems here at home are systemic. Problems that have to be seen, believed, confronted, and stopped. For, after you learn, it is well that you act.
But what, as Lenin famously asked, is to be done?
Every community, no matter how large, no matter how small, has a police force. And every one of those police forces should be overseen by a citizen review board. It is always said of law-enforcement officers that "they work for us": it is long past time that this truly be so. Every agency in this country--federal, state, local--that authorizes armed individuals with the power of arrest to intrude in the domestic lives of American citizens, should answer, directly, to American citizens. Citizens on review boards sitting as the final authority on the behavior of agents who work for them. Heavily weighted towards membership from minority communities and other communities traditionally disenfranchised. With access to all information: nothing "confidential," nothing "secret." With the power to censure, suspend, and terminate. With no right of officer recourse to any police or other executive agent or agency--their only remedy, as has long been the case for we the people, too often their victims, in the courts.
That's something everybody can work on, everywhere, wherever they live. Barack Obama has gently announced that the age of "American exceptionalism" is over. It's long past time to also end the age of "police exceptionalism." Police behaving as servants rather than masters won't come close to ending all our problems. But it should prevent any more "Cambridge Goddams." And that's a start.