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NAM Round Table
The NAM Round Table consists of news, insights, visions, ramblings and rants from the writers at New America Media.
[ filed under: conflict race-relations ] Today the President invited Dr. Henry Louis Gates and Officer Crowley to the White House in an attempt to play peacemaker after the controversial arrest of the black Harvard professor by the white officer and Obama’s subsequent ”...acted stupidly” comment during a press conference on pending health care legislation. If you watch the whole clip of Obama’s remarks he was trying to add levity to the situation while speaking his peoples truth. The press corp was in stitches, encouraging Barry O to take it to the next level. He should have left the jokes to professionals. This incident is a gnat on the ass of the elephant sized issue of profiling, police and African American relations and police misconduct/brutality. But because Obama spoke it about it, now Gates is the poster boy for police misconduct or uppiddy negro behavior, depending on your politics. Crowley is either a good cop or a pig, also depending on your perspective and experience with police. I think what Skip Gates, Obama and Crowley—and now the whole media world forgot is that these real life situations between police and Black men can be laughed at and are usually laughed off. We have to laugh about it to keep from crying or committing suicide-by-cop or pulling a Lovell Mixon. Thankfully black comedians have been taking on this subject for years and they provide some helpful hints for all involved. Obama slipped. He so deftly avoided race for most of the campaign, but when he answered that question he answered as a black man and that is a no-no for a President, even if he is black. Usually a city would have to burn before anyone in the White House would talk about police brutality. Obama should have just showed this routine from Dave Chappell on why he doesn’t call the police. It is eerily close to what happened to Gates and hysterically funny. Mike Epps, one of my favorite young comics/actors, takes the NWA approach when riffing on cops. He also provides a plausible explaination of how/why white folks can get away with talking s—t to the police. Gates conjured up his inner white man, arguing with police, while he still had Black skin—he could have been shot, tasered or worse. Richard Pryor—in his classic stand up about an officer involved incident, explains why he never wanted it to happen again. Finally Chris Rock gives us a working plan for avoiding confrontation with armed white men with badges.
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The fact that the Gates case was thrown out as soon as it got to the police station is a clear indication that everyone concerned realized that it was a charge with no real merit. The officer’s pride was hurt and he wanted to exert his authority and show Gates that he had the power to ‘put him in his place’ so he arrested him. Had he been an officer who was more interested in serving the community than exerting his ego, he would have quickly been able to calm down the occupant of the home, (even if the person didn’t belong there) so that he could walk through the home and get his job done, and he would have walked out of the professor’s home once he had verified that it was the man belonged there. But it is clear to me that this was an arrogant officer, who felt he was above making a mistake and said he would never apologize.
By Jmmlke · Posted on Jul 27, 10:58 AMI have had the police show up at my door and say they received a 911 call to my home when I knew that I hadn’t called them. But by the time they had explained themselves, they were so effective at making me believe that they cared about my well being and didn’t consider me the threat, that I was begging them to come in and search my home to ensure that no one was there. Those were effective cops. I think Gates overreacted in calling the cop a racist and threatening to follow up on the case. Everyone who has ever dealt with cops knows you have to humble yourself when standing before the ones with the guns. He was also stupid to believe that being a famous professor would earn him better treatment. I hope he uses this experience to teach people to never threaten cops when you are alone with them. He is lucky he didn’t end up dead.
However, I doubt that if a black cop had treated a white professor in this way that he would be getting the kind of widespread love and public support that Crowley is getting. People would have been much more willing to acknowledge the truth; that this cop acted stupidly. And that is the real test. So yes, I believe there is lots of the usual prejudice involved here. It comes out especially in the nation’s reaction to Obama’s comments. I was surprised at President Obama’s comments because he is usually very careful about his choice of words and ‘Stupid’ is one of those words that carries negative connotations. I wouldn’t have expected him to use a word like that, because he knows how every word he says is parsed and dissected, but his comment was unscreened, a genuine reaction. Even before he commented the President said that Gates was his friend and he would probably be biased in favor of his friend, the one whose character he knew. I would have backed my friend too. But as a black president he is not allowed to defend his friend if that friend is black. Would the nation’s response have been the same if the cop was black and the professor white? I think not! The cop was stupid but so was his friend Gates, and the President’s comments have given every one who ever wanted to find fault with Obama the perfect excuse to do so.