Thursday, July 23, 2009

"Skip" Gates, Please. Read Neely Tucker on Race, Cops and Common Sense.


Danny Davis pretends that he is driving in Britain, last year, for driving on the wrong side of Kedzie on the West Side (hugely Black Demographic area), gets a ticket, and screams 'Racial Profiling!' Intolerable. Justice.

The Tamil Tigers' and Rev Sun Myung Moon's Congressman Danny K.Davis gets a walk while he pontificates in slow basso profundo tones. Yes, Yes!

The race card is tossed. Years ago Eric Michael Dyson, the academic who equates Tupac to Homer, got a ticket over near Washington Park and devoted a series of his Sun Times columns to the horrors of driving while black.

Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, a Black Ivory Tower Academic and pal of the President was arrested at his home when he busted into the house that he had locked himself out of and white woman neighbor thought that Skip's house was being burglarized while he was in China. She called the cops. The cops came and the rest is being played out in Presidential Racial History. Chris Matthews is concerned, 'Hmmyeah." Here is a quote from Skip Gates about the incident.

Gates said he does not think that anything he did justified the officer's actions. He walks with a cane and said he did not pose a threat.
"I weigh 150 pounds and I'm 5-7. I'm going to give flak to a big white guy with a gun. I might wolf later, but I won't wolf then."


John Houseman could not have said it in a more academically rigorous manner. Gown and town, matters, Old Cock! Gaudeamus Igitur! Iuvenentum Summus!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/21/AR2009072101771_2.html?sid=ST2009072103463
Washington Post writer Neely Tucker knows racial hostility from both sides as his marriage happens to be one of true minds and two different races.

He writes this:

Like Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., I am interracially married, currently live in a predominantly white neighborhood, have a healthy respect for armed men wearing uniforms, and have had the police come to my house in a confrontational manner, doing the job they're paid to do.

It happened when our house alarm went off at 2 a.m. a few months ago, on a night the electricity was off and the neighborhood was dark as pitch. WANH!! WANH!! WANH!! It sent my wife and me leaping out of bed. I sprinted downstairs with a baseball bat, our Rottweiler and a flashlight to confront any possible intruder. I checked all the windows and doors, the dog yawned, and it quickly became apparent that there was a short circuit from a rear door.

My wife called the alarm company and gave them the code for a false alert.

Then two cops showed up.

The first thing they did was ask me to step outside. The second thing they did was to ask me for my identification, to prove that I lived there. They were demanding and they were not friendly. They kept their flashlights in my face. They did not take my word for it that it was my house, though I was as white as they were.

Once I showed them my driver's license with the address, they asked if anyone else was inside, and then they asked if they could look around the place.

I was irritable in that middle-of-the-night kind of way, but it did not occur to me that they might be picking on us, the salt-and-pepper couple on the block. What occurred to me was that they got a call about a home alarm going off and they had to secure the premises before they could leave. And I was thrilled to have them search the entire house, because my wife's 9-year-old daughter was murdered in a home invasion in Silver Spring six years ago. The police came running then, too, but it was too late.


Read more of this fine essay. Click my post title.

2 comments:

Jim Bowman said...

Woo, excellent find. Mary Wash at S-T has the same reaction:

Oh, Henry! You're sending the wrong message

As a homeowner who has had a break-in, I can't get too worked up over what happened to Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. . . . etc.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/mitchell/index.html

Jim Bowman said...

Make that Mary Mitchell. Sorry.