Let me first say, that no one knows for sure if race was a factor in the arrest of Henry “Skip” Gates Jr. Personally, I think it was a small part, but not all. What I do know though, is that this whole discussion and the ensuing “media fire-storm” that’s been happening, is just making me angry.
Warning, this is just a serious rant, it’s probably pretty inchohernt, so read it at your own peril.
As an African American, you just write off many of these occurences and just being apart of the African American experience in America. You know that no matter what you do, or what activity you are involved in, the phrase “while black” can be added to all of them, and somehow makes otherwise completely normal things for white people seems somehow “foreign” for black people (i.e. “driving while black”, “shopping while black”, etc).
You talk and joke about it with your family and your friends, but inside you know it’s pisses you off. It may not have personally happened to you, but you know at least 1 personal acquaintance or relative who has had the “…while black” experience. You don’t expect anyone white to discuss it, and if they do, you expect that they will probably just try to give you a “there, there” pat on the back, while secretly thinking WTF is she talking about.
If it does happen that it somehow makes the local news. It’s usually does so because something more fatal has occurred or someone has decided to speak up, and 9 times outa 10, the news will just report it from the PD side anyway, usually with the usual buzz words: belligerent, disorderdly, disruptive, suspect seemed to threaten PD…etc.
So we finally get someone in the WH who speaks honestly about the feelings of a whole group of Americans (black males) who have these shared life experiences simply by virtue of their skin tone, and damn it we are happy that finally someone knows our experiences, and what happens, the national media just follows the same pattern as the local media. Instead of some real reporting about racial profiling or at the very least some real reporting about the increasing trend of the use excessive force, or abuse of power by some (not all) policeman, instead it’s “Obama calls policeman stupid”, or “Heroic policemen smeared as racist by President Obama” (never mind that Obama never said the policeman was stupid or racist).
I’m finding a lot of comments on some of “liberal” blogosphere that sayt that Dr Gates “over-reacted”. That’s one reason why I wrote this diary.
The problem I have with this whole thing is because of some of the blatantly biased stories and comments on what I used to consider “friendly” & reputable news programs and news site. Maybe it’s my naivete, but I expect such completely biased coverage on FOX news, and the RW radio bigots.
But I was watching CNN, and had to hear that prick Rick Sanchez, quoting verbatim from the report the police officer did as “the definitive record” on what happened even though Gates had given an interview to Soledad O’Brien telling his side. Didn’t matter to Rick, because what the police officer wrote was “on the record” therefore it just HAD to be the TRUE story, thank goodness that Roland Martin was on the show and called Rick on his b.s.
Between this bullcrap, the birther nonsense, the Malia Obama peace shirt brouhaha, the racist emails, the racist twitters, and whatever else…IT’S PATHETIC, and it’s not even 1 year into the Obama Presidency. I don’t know how I’m gonna get through the whole 4 years without wanting to pull my hair out (or somebody else’s)
Indeed. Yet the misbehavior of the cops in this case shines through.
The media’s spin and baiting tactics are willful. I am not sure what their agenda is here, but I do not like what I suspect.
As you say, it is not just Fox: It is the whole lot of them.
We all have our own personal prejudices. I know mine tend to surface in such emotional circumstances. Usually I respond to what I perceive as sexism or elitism.
The officer’s behavior in that situation would depend on his intelligence, and so would the professor’s. The life experiences of these two gentlemen must have prepared them for this situation, but they chose the emtional response. My personal opinion – (men!)
Us ordinary people have equally emotional encounters, and there is nothing that makes them newsworthy, unless we have a claim to fame or a desire to be on TV.
For now only stories that will make you hate the Obama administration will dominate the airwaves. So be like Barack – save your sanity and don’t let the bastards get you down.
Or, as AG would say: NEWSTRIKE!
Check out Reuters today.
You thought they hated Clinton? Barack Obama has gone from President to illegitimate Kenyan racist cop-hating usurper in about 48 hours.
How long is it going to take before somebody decides to “take the law into their own hands?”
I guess a lot of white people either don’t pay attention or don’t want to. I’ve spent most of my life in racially mixed areas, and it’s plain as day to me. I’ve taken to looking every time I see the cops with someone pulled over just to see if maybe this time they’ve pulled over a white guy. Seldom ever happens except in all-white areas.
Frankly, what’s baffling to me is the dishonesty. Believe in the superiority of whites? Then just fucking say so. Don’t feed me a line of shit that begins with, “I’m not racist, but…” because any sentence that begins with that phrase automatically disproves its own premise. I heard that one three times in the last week, along with at least one, “I have lots of black friends” from a neighbor whose numerous house guests have never, so far as I can tell, included any non-whites.
I forget who said it — this was in the aftermath of some unpleasant racial incident many years ago — that white people often think black people are obsessed with race because they seem — to white people — to talk and think about it an awful lot, but that this is because white people have the luxury of not having to think about race and black people do not. I didn’t really know what to make of that at the time, but since Obama’s election, I finally get it. I thought white racists were a tiny, insignificant minority, but a great many people I previously thought were sane, decent individuals have shown some very ugly aspects of themselves to me lately, plainly expecting that I would just wink and nod as if we’d both been humoring black people all along with our talk of racial equality.
I have a feeling I’m going to lose more friendships during the Obama administration than I did during the Bush administration. See, I was serious about all that equality talk. Over the past ten years, I’ve ended up with more and more black friends, some of them quite close, and racism isn’t some abstraction to me anymore. First of all, I’ve had my eyes opened to my own unconscious prejudices — which is never a comfortable experience — and had to overcome them. But more importantly, I can see how the injustices in our society affect people I care deeply about, and it’s really pissing me off.
And sometimes, in the quiet hours of the morning, I wonder how many good people I missed out on knowing earlier in my life because I had unconsciously absorbed the racist poison that has dogged our country from its founding.
I know it probably doesn’t count for much, but this white guy knows […] while black is a real phenomenon, and I think its a fucking disgrace. But let all the racist shitheads come out of the woodwork where we can see them clearly. It’ll just make the work of forging a united human race all that much easier for the rest of us.