I'm sure there are at least as many opinions on this as their are people, but I thought I'd share my two cents...
After following this for a while, it really doesn't seem like a clear, racial confrontation to me. To me it speaks more to police's demand that you show the man some respect. I understand why they want and need respect. The police's weapon of first choice to maintain peace and order is to display authority, which is much more preferable all around than resorting to tazers, guns, arrests and billy clubs. Interestingly enough, there was another recent and related event that occurred in my hometown just a couple of days ago.
It seems to me that both parties over-reacted a little and escalated what should have been a fairly benign event.
- The 911 caller didn't even report Gates ethnicity at first and even when asked, was unsure.
- Gates was probably a little indignant since he was in his own home. That said, it's actually a good thing to know that if someone is breaking down your door that the police are going to come and ask a few questions.
- Once the Gates did identify himself, the police shouldn't have lured him outside with the intent of "teaching him a lesson".
I'll take Obama one step further, there was stupidly all around on this one.
That said, I thought this video from David Chappelle was funny. But beyond that, it speaks to a real truth... Whether or not this was a racial incident or not, it was exacerbated by the racial non-equality that persists until this day.
The issue is real. Switching to politics for a moment... when the Republicans demonize Obama as racist or characterize him using racial overtones, I don't think they have no idea how they are alienating blacks and probably other ethnic groups from their party. Instead of building bridges they're blowing them up. They're also doing the same thing with Sotomayor and the Latinos. To listen to them you would think that almost all minorities are inherently non-American and have alternative agendas. That they all put race above justice and what is right. And yet they can find no cases of prejudice exhibited by the hundreds and thousands of white politicians.
2 comments:
I share many of your comments, threats against the president is up almost 400%. Many White Americans are not yet ready to embrace a black president. They (the Republicans) are designing clever political arguments that conceal their racism. Very good article and thanks for sharing your thought with us. In closing I would just like to quote from W.D. Dubois: Many White Americans can’t decide where they want to draw the color line. In other words, they want to see racial progress, but only in areas where they feel it does not conflict with white skin privileges. I am not saying all white people feel this way, but a great majority still does.
Thanks for the comment and you have to be the first to ever quote Dubois here. The truth is that we (humans) almost can't help classifying each other into "us" and "them" and race tends to be one of the first things we notice about each other. So most of us have racist tendencies whether we admit or not. The only real question is whether we realize it or not and to what degree.
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