Henry Louis Gates and Contempt of Cop

[lisasmall]

Without taking anything away from the reality that black citizens still face a great deal more police harassment than white citizens, I feel that the confrontation in the kitchen and on the porch of the Gates home July 17 was not so much about white v. black as it was Blue v. Everybody Else. He was dragged off in handcuffs to an afternoon in

Comments

[mckennl]

I agree wholeheartedly with this post.

Regarding Justin Barrett -- is it possible to imagine anyone in 2009 -- outside of a group of white supremacists -- who would say, "Sure, I'm a racist," in public? It is shocking to keep reading about the racist jokes and emails, etc. which we are privy to nowadays thanks to the Internet (you and I probably remember back in the day when one would encounter such things in the workplace, usually xeroxed and distributed semi-anonymously) and then the inevitable "I'm not a racist!" proclamations from the authors. Of course someone is going to deny being a racist, always, always, given current mores. It would be like saying one were a child molester. But it's so corrosive and makes every white person suspect when the public bar is so low.

Bah. You're Right. Of Course.

[lisasmall]

You're right, you're right, you're perfectly right.

I'm still struggling against a rising gorge every time I see Pat Buchanan anywhere on MSNBC after his racist meltdown on Maddow's show two weeks ago.

I hope she, at least, never has the man she used to call "Uncle Pat" on the air again.

Black, White, Blue & Crimson

[friend_x]

Do cops abuse their authority to arrest white people who dare to question their infallibility and ask for a badge number, etc? I'm sure it happens very frequently, and you are correct to identify this as a problem with the way police officers are trained and acculturated. Heck, it's an issue with Black police officers too

Re: Black, White, Blue & Crimson

[ext_201022]

Very well said, all around. I think it's a lot less likely that a white professor would have the same experience as Prof. Gates. Possible, but less likely.

Perhaps more importantly, I think it's immensely less likely that (all other things being equal) a white man in Prof. Gates' exact position would have been widely pilloried by varyingly respectable public voices for standing up for his own rights in his own home. Had Prof. Gates been white, we'd have seen a significant show of support for his rights of home and property.

I agree with the original post very strongly, in that I believe the issue of 'contempt of cop' trumps race... but I believe the particulars of this circumstance are deeply grounded in race as well as proper deference. Minorities are 'supposed' to be more obsequious to the police than anyone else, after all.