I don’t have much time to analyze this, but I don’t really need to, because WHAT THE FUCKING FUCKITTY FUCK pretty much suffices:
Harvard Professor Gates Arrested at Cambridge Home
Friends of Gates said he was already in his home when police arrived. He showed his driver’s license and Harvard identification card, but was handcuffed and taken into police custody for several hours last Thursday, they said.
Oh, and don’t read the comments. Seriously. No, I mean it.
Brother Ta-Nehisi’s on it already, if you want something more coherent than FUNKY FUCKING JEFUCKIFUCK IN A FUCKBUCKET and so on. Also, here’s who Gates is, if you don’t already know.
And now a word from our sponsor…
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should have taken your warning seriously. those comments are…horrific…it’s my own fault though–i never listen…
i don’t have words right now. well, i do, but i should calm down first.
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So… the police officer is an EVIL RACIST for… following procedure? I read the police report, and it sounds like Gates was being a belligerent pain in the butt from the millisecond the cop arrived. I’ve had cops ask for my lily white ID when I was called in for loitering outside my own apartment after I lost my key. Thank god I’m not black, because then it would be RACIST!
Technically, he was arrested not for breaking-and-entering, but for “disorderly conduct.” Basically, the Cambridge cops think that someone who is standing in his own house, exercising his right of free speech by yelling at the cops who just accused him of trying to break into his own home (which, incidentally, he was having trouble opening the door to because of a prior break-in attempt that had messed up the entrance), poses enough of a threat that he should be arrested.
Fate’s Lady,
You’ve had one of your colleagues from work call the cops on you when you showed up in a cab to your own front door? (The caller was a woman named Lucia Whalen who is a fundraiser for Havard.) You’ve had the cops then arrest you when you got upset with them, while you were standing in your own home?
Well, then, you’re right, there’s no possible racism in this situation at all.
Fates Lady? Since when is yelling at a cop an arrestable offense?
it sounds like Gates was being a belligerent pain in the butt from the millisecond the cop arrived.
Point one, the police report is the police’s side of the story. What do you expect them to say, “Suspect was polite and cooperative. Showed ID and proved that he was in his own home but we arrested him anyway.”?
Point 2, even if Gates was being the biggest pain in the butt in the known universe, that’s not a crime. Contrary to popular belief, being rude to the police is not illegal. Not, perhaps, always the wisest move, but not illegal. Which brings me to…
Point 3, the police are supposed to be acting like professionals or at least adults. So what if Gates was rude? They’re supposed to be trained to deal with upset, rude, angry people. It is their responsibility to maintain control of their emotions and not act in retribution just because they got mad. And, with the best “racism no longer exists now that Obama is president” blinders in the world I don’t see any way this could be anything less than a case of the police getting angry and abusing their power.
I read a little about this at HuffPo yesterday and knew it was going to be a fiasco. (And was prepared to be outraged, though on the minimal facts reported at HuffPo it was hard to tell what happened).
On a similar note, I have a story about disorderly conduct from an excellent AA criminal defense attorney here in VA. He defended a guy who was charged with disorderly conduct for calling a police officer a motherfucker. He won the case (it’s a misdemeanor, so the trial was in front of a large room full of people waiting for their own misdemeanors to be dealt with) precisely because there was no public “disorder.” He walks out of the courtroom and the police officer stops him and says, “Mr. X, you just taught everyone in that room that they can say “motherfucker” to a police officer.” The lawyer replied, “You stupid motherfucker, this is America, they CAN.”
Point one, the police report is the police’s side of the story. What do you expect them to say, “Suspect was polite and cooperative. Showed ID and proved that he was in his own home but we arrested him anyway.”?
It’s been disturbing to me how many people at supposedly liberal forums seem to take the police report at face value, as if it magically appeared from the ether as a piece of completely objective evidence, rather than being the version of events reported by the officer to retrospectively justify his actions.
I was particularly struck by how the officer described the situation right before he arrested Gates.
At this point, the officer pulls out his hand cuffs while telling Gates to calm down. To me, it came off like Gates’ “crime” was embarrassing the officer in front of the neighbors.
It seems like he was arrested because the police officer was embarrassed.
In my humble opinion, the police report could have been improved by adding a few more sensational details. For example, when Gates is found in his own home, packing away the luggage from his scholarly jaunt to China, he could be wearing a ninja outfit. Furthermore, when the police officer innocent requests identification, Gates could adopt a DeNiro pose a la Taxi Driver and inquire, “Are you talking to me? Are YOU talking to ME?” Then, when the officer politely asks Gates to step outside, Gates could spin-kick the officer in the face, sending him crashing through the window onto the porch in a cascade of glass. When Gates leaps through the shattered frame to pounce on the cop, the cop could try to draw his service revolver, but find it batted away by Gates’ furious fist. They could grapple, grabbing at each others’ throats, rolling around on the glass shard strewn porch. The other assembled cops could haul Gates off their buddy, whereupon Gates could backflip out of their grasp and draw his katana. In a few quick slashing movements, Gates could slice down the whole lot of them. Only at that point would he scream: “THIS…IS WHAT HAPPENS TO A BLACK MAN IN AMERICA!!!!”
He kicks mondo ass.
Mandolin pointed this out to me… listen to it at about 1:05.
I accidentally read the first three comments. W.T.F.??????
I guess if I’m honest I’m not really surprised. but I still find it shocking.
He wasn’t arrested in his home, he was arrested outside his home when he FOLLOWED the police officer out JUST to continue yelling at him. Yelling at a cop may not be a crime, but disorderly conduct is, and if you are attracting a crowd of onlookers on the sidewalk… well, you do the math if you can.
The call from his co-worker (is it confirmed that that had ever even met before? College campuses are BIG places…) may have been inappropriate, but the cops HAVE to check it out. It is their JOB. And when they see him inside, they HAVE to ask him to step out. If there is a hostage situation, or a hidden attacker, this is a way to either warn the cops or get dude out of danger, not to mention it’s safer for the poor cops. TOTALLY in compliance with procedure.
And when he tried to leave, after taking all of the correct steps, the dude FOLLOWS him out to the street? Ignores a warning that he is going to be arrested if he doesn’t shut the hell up?
No, I’ve never been arrested… because I know when to thank the police for their concern and keep my damn mouth shut.
Wow.
Boston?
Harvard?
Henry Louis Gates?
Must be a mistake–everyone knows the south is the only place that stuff ever happens.
Fate’s Lady,
THANK you for your HELPFUL capital LETTERS which have ASSISTED ME in my understanding OF this CAsE.
I hope Gates brings a bunch of those citizens with him to the arraignment, to point out that what was so scary was the police harassing their neighbor.
Fate’s Lady … If you read the police report, he didn’t attract the crowd. The crowd was already there when they both left because it’s a nice neighborhood with a bunch of cop cars around a house. It was the cops who attracted the crowd. And the officer asked him to come outside.
Fate’s Lady,
1) “The call from his co-worker (is it confirmed that that had ever even met before? College campuses are BIG places…)”
Henry Louis Gates is one of the most famous faces at Harvard. In fact, the incident occurred when he was returning from a trip to China where he had been filming yet another documentary. The person who called about him works as a fundraiser for Harvard. If you’re fundraising for Harvard and you don’t recognize Gates when he is trying to enter Harvard-owned property, either you’re very bad at your job or you have trouble telling black men apart.
2) “And when he tried to leave, after taking all of the correct steps, the dude FOLLOWS him out to the street? Ignores a warning that he is going to be arrested if he doesn’t shut the hell up?”
Is it seriously your understanding of the First Amendment that a cop can arrest you because you are complaining that he has been racist in his actions? If so, I refer you to Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949), in which the Supreme Court stated that speech is protected unless the expression is “likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious intolerable evil that rises above mere inconvenience or annoyance.” See also Lewis v. City of New Orleans, 408 U.S. 913 (1972), in which the Court overturned a conviction for breach of the peace arising from an argument between a cop and a civilian, finding overbroad a Louisiana statute making it unlawful and a breach of the peace “for any person wantonly to curse or revile or to use obscene or opprobrious language toward or with reference to” any city police officer serving in the line of duty.
Oh, and here’s at least an indication of whether this arrest was solid: reportedly police are recommending that no charges be filed against Gates. Not the prosecutors, not the mayor’s office — the police themselves don’t want to follow up on this arrest.
I hope Gates sues the shit out of the cops, the police department, Harvard, Cambridge, and anyone else he can sue the shit out of.
Someone needs to lose their job over this.
Henry Louis Gates is one of the most famous faces at Harvard.
So famous that I would recognize him walking down the street even though I have never been within 100 miles of Harvard or Henry Louis Gates.
Sure, not everyone watches as much PBS as I do (it was the only channel that came in at the old house), but if you are charged with promoting Harvard to the public and with donors, yes, you ought to know who he is. Even on a BIG campus.
damn, i see a serious civil lawsuit coming.
I’m really troubled by the suggestions I’ve seen here and elsewhere that it’s appropriate for the cops to arrest you because you are complaining about them. It is core political speech to protest the actions of the government, which includes police officers. If I am angry about how I have been treated by the police — even if my anger is unjustified — I have a fundamental right to go to Harvard Square, stand on a soapbox (so long as the soapbox does not obstruct pedestrian or street traffic) and bitch all day long. Indeed, if you go to Harvard Square, you’ll see people doing just that, often with far less relationship to reality than Gates’s complaints.
I don’t usually jump on the OMG LOOMING TYRANNY bandwagon, because I don’t think our government is really inclined in that direction. On the other hand, given how quick some people are to say that it’s acceptable for police to arrest civilians for their speech if the cops don’t like what’s being said, I begin to wonder who’s going to be left to speak against government overreach when it does occur.
PG,
It’s not WHAT he said, but supposedly HOW he said it.
If you think black people are behaving unreasonably when they express fear of the police … you might just be a racist.
If you think black people are uppity when they complain about the police … you might just be a racist.
If you think it’s okay for the police to arrest a black person when they yell about being mistreated … you might just be a racist.
If you’re only outraged when it’s rich or famous black people who are mistreated by the police … you might just be a racist.
(Apologies to Jeff Foxworthy)
While this is certainly an outrageous case, I’m kind of troubled by the fact that the volume of the outrage seems to be due to the fact that it’s HENRY LOUIS FREAKIN’ GATES who was wrongly arrested. Gates is a great scholar, but it’s no less unjust when stuff like that happens to Joe Randomblackguy–and Joe Randomblackguy doesn’t have the resources that Gates does to ensure that the wrongful arrest won’t be followed with charges or a trial.
Kathleen F.,
I think the particular highlighting of this case is due in part to pushing back against those who want to attribute everything to class rather than race. When Joe Randomblackguy is arrested, people who are skeptical about the prevalence and depth of racism insist that Joe must have looked suspicious in some totally non-racial way, e.g. by dressing poorly or being in a neighborhood where he was unknown. The fact that a Harvard professor of Gates’s distinction could get arrested outside his own home serves as a counter-example: No, really, it’s about race.
If you have trouble telling black men apart then you aren’t qualified for a job in fundraising at Harvard. You have to know your donors and famous staff and some of both are black. Therefore, the person in question is bad at his/her job.
Boston?
Harvard?
Ah, no. That would be Cambridge, not Boston.
As far as the recognizability of this professor; everyone here seems to know who this guy is, recognize his face, etc., etc. I personally vaguely recall that he’s involved in African-American studies or something such.
But: I spent 4 years on the MIT campus. Lots of damn famous people walking around there. Some I knew on sight. Some I didn’t have a clue. Just because someone’s famous doesn’t mean someone working in the fundraising office is going to know their face. Or, for that matter, even saw it in the first place. She may well have seen someone fumbling at the front door and never saw his face before she made the call.
Finally, the matter of how he got arrested. First, it sounds a lot to me like he got belligerent as soon as the cops – doing their job – asked for ID, and started accusing them of racism. So then after that matter was settled he followed them outside and kept yelling at them? If you think that’s racism I think you’re wrong. If I walked out my front door and out to the street yelling at a couple of cops and didn’t get out of their faces I bet my white ass would be in cuffs too.
Now, tell me that that shouldn’t happen because of First Amendment rights and all and I’ll agree with you. You’re right. And the cops involved should be reprimanded. Job loss is way too much of a penalty, though, regardless of whether it’s some famous professor or me. Or you. But don’t tell me that the cops did this because he’s black. My guess is that they did it because they thought he was an asshole. News flash, folks; people get cuffed for being assholes towards cops a lot, and plenty of them are white.
IF the police report is to be believed (which is a BIG if, and, in my opinion, not a justified assumption) then yes, lots of people who behaved in that way would get arrested. However, it is a clear violation of the First Amendment and our core political rights, and ABSOLUTELY worthy of firing. Those who wield power must do so responsibly, or they absolutely do not deserve to have that power. Officers who arrest people because they are annoying or loud or criticize the police should be fired.
Second, I think the most plausible racist aspect of this whole incident is the fact that the police officers could write in their report that this Harvard professor was yelling and screaming and carrying on right from the beginning, when they were just doing their job, and have it be believed without a second’s thought by the vast majority of white people out there. I mean, “your mama”? Henry Louis Gates said “your mama” to a cop? I’m sorry, I will not believe that unless one of the non-police witnesses confirmed it BEFORE all the news media published the police reports. There are parts of the officer’s report that are laughable (such as the fact that, although convinced that Gates was lawfully in the home, the officer arrested him because he was “confused” at why he was acting so “turbulent.”). That’s just ridiculous.
I think this is one of those unusual cases where a civil suit might prevail. Even on the face of the police report (i.e. – you take the officer’s BEST facts) there does not appear to be PC to arrest. AND Gates might actually have some real (as opposed to just nominal) damages (reputation, etc.) and be willing to pursue a lawsuit on priniciple even if the expected recovery is not actually enough to make it worth litigating (to most people).
PG, yeah, that’s an important thing to point out (biggest jawdrop ever: being repeatedly told that the Hurricane Katrina tragedy was “really more about class than race” as if they have nothing to do with each other), and as such I think it’s a good thing that the story’s getting media attention. What bugs me is more the response to the story, the “holy shit, this is the worst thing EVER!” vibe in a lot of the reactions that I’m guessing wouldn’t be there if the victim hadn’t been a respected Harvard professor.
RonF, ohhh, thanks, I had no idea where Cambridge was. Particularly after reading this whole thread! (PS: I said “Boston” as in “Boston Metro Area”–the link provided was to Boston.com) My experience at Alas wouldn’t be complete without you to smack me down! (one of the reasons I post so rarely here these days)
Now, how did I know you would say that, even before reading your post? (Aren’t you embarrassed to be so predictable?)
The cops did this because he’s black.
And, what Emily said.
It doesn’t have to all be racism. In fact, I don’t think it’s all racism. Some of it is abuse of power. Both are bad.
What Chingona said.
Racism is bad.
Abuse of power is bad.
Abuse of power through racism is bad^2.
Also: yeah, I can really see Gates–Mr. Pinstriped Suit–saying “yo mama” to a cop. Not.
Chingona,
Yeah, there’s this weird idea a lot of people have that if you can find any aspect of an event that wasn’t racially motivated, that means race must not have been a factor at all. In fact, racism (and other forms of oppression) are so insidious precisely because they mesh so well with other problematic practices. The harder they are to tease apart, the more cover people have to claim that the racism doesn’t actually exist.
Also: yeah, I can really see Gates–Mr. Pinstriped Suit–saying “yo mama” to a cop. Not.
I think of him more as Mr. Cardigan. Going to steal a tweet here from Ding, one of the bloggers at Bitch PhD.
Look, I can accept that Gates’ may not have been at his best. Getting accused of breaking into your own damn home, when you just had to break into your own damn home, after coming home from a long, tiring trip is not a recipe for being at your best. And sure, given the choice between yelling at the police and not yelling at the police, not yelling is the more prudent course of action, for anyone, of any race.
But it’s not like there is some law that they had to arrest him because he reacting badly to being accused of breaking into his own home. The cop could have … could have … thought “Geez, this guy is calling me a racist when I’m just trying to do my job. What an asshole. But he is the legal resident here. I’m going to apologize and leave because that’s the action that will de-escalate the situation. It’s good to have neighbors who keep an eye on things, but there’s clearly no crime here.” End of story. Absolutely nothing prevented the officer from going that route, except his own desire to not be made to look bad in public.
I’ve been verbally abused in my job. I bet most people have. But we don’t have a badge and a gun and handcuffs to enforce our righteous indignation.
First of all, just found out that the charges have been dropped: read about that here.
Secondly, it’s absurd to assume that the police report is completely factual. And so we automatically assume that Gates is lying about his version of the events? Oh yeah, because the police are always honest and fair and righteous…what am I thinking? (I’m sure the truth is somewhere in between the two reports.)
Thirdly, I’m fairly certain it’s an enormous abuse of power to arrest someone for being angry with you for falsely accusing them of something–as long as they don’t actually hit you or threaten violence. And, fact is, if Gates had been white, the police officers would have immediately apologized and went on their way as soon as they verified that it was his residence.
Fourthly, a very similar thing happened to a black reporter in NYC last year; he was arrested for allegedly trying to break into his own car: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106844198. This isn’t just because Gates was “belligerent;” it’s racial profiling, folks.
Fifthly, Oliver Hungleberth, your comment is awesome.
I saw the story on NBC Nightly News tonight. There was a still picture of Prof. Gates in cuffs and 3 cops with him. Do you think all 3 cops were being racists, or only the two white ones and the black cop gets a pass?
It occurs to me that at no point did the boston.com story cite the race of the cops. Kind of important when you’re talking about accusations of racism, isn’t it?
I’m only going by the police report because that’s all the info we have. The report cited at boston.com says that they requested Gates’ side of the story from him but he declined. Sure, the cops could be lying – God knows we see plenty of that in Chicago. God knows there are racist cops, too. If Gates comes out and says “The cops are lying, I was polite and cooperative, I never left my house or yelled at them and they busted me inside” then fine – let’s have the truth come out, and if they’re bad cops then deal with them appropriately.
But so far the only statements on record do not lead to a conclusion of racism. If I did what was claimed in the police report I’d probably end up in cuffs too. My experience leads me to say that what Aviva claims as fact is not fact at all, and that Prof. Counter is incredibly naive. The rush to judgement is quite premature based on what’s known.
RonF,
At 9pm last night, Gates’ statement (released through his attorney) was available all over the web and absolutely did assert that the cops were lying, that he was polite and cooperative, though it admitted that he did step out onto his porch at the end of the encounter when he saw a whole group of cops amassed outside his house.
There’s no reason to make assumptions based only on the “facts available” when you KNOW that the facts you have are only one side of the story. I can understand a “lets wait and see what he has to say without putting words in his mouth” comment, but not a blind acceptance of the facts of the police report.
ETA: oh, I see this site runs on pacific time. But anyway, at 9pm pacific time the statement was available because I read it before I left work at 5:30 eastern.
There’s no reason to make assumptions based only on the “facts available” when you KNOW that the facts you have are only one side of the story.
True. And yet when the boston.com story came out there was a widespread assumption that this was an issue of racist cops rather than cops overreacting to an asshole.
I can understand a “lets wait and see what he has to say without putting words in his mouth” comment, but not a blind acceptance of the facts of the police report.
Also true. Why is why I said “my guess is” and not along the lines of “this definitely is”. If I’m shown to be wrong then I’m fine with that.
The cop could have … could have … thought “Geez, this guy is calling me a racist when I’m just trying to do my job. What an asshole. But he is the legal resident here. I’m going to apologize and leave because that’s the action that will de-escalate the situation. It’s good to have neighbors who keep an eye on things, but there’s clearly no crime here.” End of story. Absolutely nothing prevented the officer from going that route, except his own desire to not be made to look bad in public.
Yup. Even if the police report is 100% accurate, the cops should have just walked away.
(Aren’t you embarrassed to be so predictable?)
Gee, Daisy, and people here are all presuming that this was due to racism just because at least some of the cops involved are white and the guy in cuffs was black. Aren’t you embarassed to be so predictable?
What is of interest to me is how reliably the commenters who most worry about governmental abuse of power (i.e. conservative anti-government/small government/government is the problem types) are also nearly 100% of the time, the commenters most likely to justify and excuse issues of police brutality, government abuse and scapegoating of all sorts of minorities, military misconduct, and the like.
Why, it’s as if ‘small government’ isn’t an actual principle at all, and is just a beard for their prejudice and hypocrisy.
Shocking, I know.
—Myca
Myca,
I can’t help but believe that’s because “small government” wouldn’t interfere with their ability to discriminate at will. Since they see discrimination as a good thing and authority as sacred, they’re not about to complain when sacred authority discriminates.
In re “Small Government” people being predictable …
Excuse me? You might want to pick a much smaller brush when painting things.
How about “Many small-government posters seem to ignore the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution with its guarantees of Equal Protection under The Law.”
Or for a history lesson “The modern ‘Small Government’ movement evolved from 1960’s era Southern Liberal Democrats who advocate for ‘smaller government’ as a way to preserve white racial dominance by refusing to enact government protections for protecting racial minorities, as required under the 14th Amendment.”
“are also nearly 100% of the time”
He didn’t say 100% of the time.
Ah, if you find the brush stroke too broad, FCH, you might want to go back and view some of the past threads on police brutality and abuse of authority, military torture, and school abuse of authority.
Nearly 100% of the time the primary defender of these things is a self-identified conservative or Republican. My view is that this simply does not make sense with the principle that government abuse of power is a danger.
It’s not just blog commenters, either. When the last administration started a massive warrantless wiretapping program, their primary defenders were conservatives. When they instituted a policy of torture and detention of prisoners without warrants, their primary defenders were conservatives. Hell, we can even talk about how conservatives don’t object to the government singling out Gay and Lesbian citizens for prejudicial treatment … and in fact advocate such treatment.
One cannot oppose governmental abuse of power in the abstract but consistently defend it in the concrete. Or, I guess, one can, but then it’s not unreasonable to doubt that there is actual commitment to the principle.
—Myca
Who considered Strom Thurmond and the other states-rights Dixicrats to be “Liberal Democrat[s]”? Humphrey’s speech at the 1948 Democratic convention, urging the Democratic Party to “get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights,” prompted a walkout by Southern delegates who later nominated Thurmond, then SC governor, as the presidential nominee of the States’ Rights Party (Dixiecrats). In 1952, Thurmond endorsed Ike rather than the Democratic presidential nominee, and by 1964 he switched his affiliation to Republican, as most of the Dixiecrats eventually did. Conservative — not liberal — southern politicians have been moving from the Dems to the GOP ever since (e.g. Phil Gramm, Richard Shelby, Ralph Hall, Virgil Goode, Nathan Deal, Greg Laughlin, Billy Tauzin).
Which part of the 14th Amendment requires state governments or the federal government to enact government protections for racial minorities? The federal government’s laws have been passed pursuant to their powers under the interstate commerce clause, not Sec. 5 (“The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”). And of course, the 14th Amendment doesn’t mention race at all. The Equal Protection clause states “nor shall any State … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This is not a command to enact new laws.
PG,
The 14th Amendment DOESN’T require any additional laws, but the courts clearly have determined that protection of racial minorities is an objective —
And thanks for verifying to our fine readers that the origins of the present blight on the GOP has its origins in racist white Democrats.
What about those of us who run the other way? I worry about governmental abuse of power, and i run into trouble with a lot of liberals: not because I support torture or police brutality, but because I don’t support some expansions of power which equate to a putatively liberal agenda.
As a moderate liberal, it’s my experience that both sides do a fairly good job of playing the “it’s a good rule when it supports my preferred end result” game.
Myca,
Yes, People Claiming To Be Conservatives will do such things. This doesn’t make them Conservatives, it makes them something entirely different. It makes them what they say they are — Neo-Conservatives. It’s like when a product is advertised as “New and Improved”, when it’s really the same old product, but with a new label. In the case of Neo-Conservatives, the “same old product” is racist segregationists, bigots, and a slew of other descriptors.
As PG was kind enough to explain through her history lesson, the Neo-Conservative movement has its origins in racist white Southern Democrats. The predominant party of the South was the DNC, the primary goal (racially speaking) was racial segregation and the primary tool was abuse of power. There’s your “original product description”.
The tool for combating Neo-Conservatives isn’t Liberal ideology, since they reject that concept out of hand (I reject it as well — not a Liberal, you know …). It’s Conservative ideology — limited Central Government, respect for the Rule of Law (that’s the Constitution), and so on.
Warrantless Wiretaps — Violates Due Process, which has its roots all the way back in the Magna Carta, and is reiterated in the 5th and 14th Amendments.
Torture and Unlawful Detention — Violates Unreasonable Punishment and Due Process. Restrictions against excessive punishment date back to 1689 and the English Bill of Rights.
Discrimination — Violates the 14th Amendent Equal Protection Clause, as well as the Declaration of Independence’s assertion, based on John Locke’s (1632-1704) writings, that all persons are created equal and have a Natural Law right to Liberty.
If “Conservativism” is supposed to be based on historical precedents — documents like the Magna Carta, which formed a basis for English Common Law, which in turn heavily influenced American Law, the writings of John Locke and their influence on Jefferson and other Framers, the Federalist Papers, which argue for limited central government and the rights of Individuals — I think the Neo-Conservative movement deserves an “F” in being Conservative.
True Conservativism is the kryptonite of the Neo-Conservative movement. You should be nicer to Conservatives.
FCH,
You’re citing an 1880 case about grand jury composition — one that refers to whites as “the superior race” — to make a point about what conservative Southern Democrats were doing in the 1960s? The big issue of the 1960s was the extension of government power into private decisions. Brown v. Board in 1954 already had overturned Plessy and stated that the state governments could not discriminate on the basis of race. The most controversial aspect of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was that it went beyond government action into private action by forcing private-sector employers and businesses not to discriminate on the basis of race either. This is what conservatives ranging from Barry Goldwater to Strom Thurmond were fighting.
The racist Democrats went to the GOP because it was becoming their natural home, thanks to folks like the aforementioned Goldwater. Ronald Reagan, who opposed both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, switched to the Republican Party in 1962 saying, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party. The party left me.” In other words, the Democratic Party beginning in 1948 with Truman’s desegregation of the military, and continuing today, has been “leaving” those who oppose the use of federal government power for racial equality, while the Republican Party apparently has been welcoming them in.
ETA: If you believe in originalism, then you can’t roll with Brown v. Board, because the Congress that passed the 14th Amendment shortly thereafter OKed segregation in D.C. public schools. Evidently, Congress thought the 14th Amendment entirely compatible with segregated schools.
If you believe in limited central government and individual rights, then you have to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, just as Reagan did (do you consider him the True Scotsman or the Neo-con version?) , because they are intrusions of the federal government into private individuals’ decisions about who to hire or admit into their businesses, and into the states’ decisions about how to run elections.
SM, I’m sure you could find genuine examples of liberal hypocrisy to talk about. But the “limited government” isn’t one of them, because liberals (by and large) don’t claim that limiting government as a primary goal or virtue of their movement. Nor do liberals claim that growing government is, in all circumstances, a goal to work for. So liberals can be suspicious of the government in some cases (such as the way that the justice system is racist), but simultaneously favor more government action in other cases (such as health care), and that does not make them hypocrites.
Bingo, Amp.
I’d also add that Democrats haven’t made ‘big government’ a good-in-itself the same way that Republicans have made ‘small government’ a good-in-itself. Generally, if the left attacks an idea for being free-market based, it’s because of the belief that the idea will not be effective, where on the right, that’s not really a necessary component … it’s perfectly acceptable to attack an idea for expanding government based on nothing but that it expands government.
In other words, I think that the dominant ideology on the left is that there are some things that the market is good for and some things that government is good for, and it’s best to have both do what they’re good at. I think that the dominant ideology on the right is that expansion of government is almost universally bad.
I think that these differing ideological approaches has left the right unfortunately unable to devise solutions to many problems (market failures, global warming, growing inequality, affordable healthcare) that don’t really have a reasonable free market solution.
The other side affect is that when liberals complain about police brutality, it’s not a coherent response to say, “but I thought you were in favor of big government!” Because no … there’s a well established history on the left of opposing police and military excesses, and of opposing government overreach in general.
There is no similar history on the right. Except for taxes of course.
—Myca
Or, to put it another way, ‘small government’ is used as an argument for and by the right.
‘Big Government’ does not count as an argument for or by the left.
—Myca
PG,
Truman “desegregated” the military. He didn’t desegregate the military. There’s a difference between “desegregation” and desegregation, much like between “New and Improved” and same old shit.
Have more history —
More history —
President in 1954? No, it was not Harry Truman. Nice try, though.
For parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, yes, I believe that for non-interstate-related commerce (read: Almost Nothing), businesses have the right to choose who to serve, even if it makes some people uncomfortable. Other businesses have the right to decide to point out the the former businesses are racist asshats and compete against them in the open market.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 shouldn’t have ever been needed since most of what it protects against is already covered by the 14th and 15th Amendments. Sadly, it was in the Southern Democrat strongholds where the act was needed from the end of Reconstruction. As Neo-Conservatives fled the DNC and gained power, it’s again these same former bastions of DNC control where it’s still needed.
While attacking Barry Goldwater is always loads of fun, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was actually passed by the Non-CSA states (states which were not part of the CSA, where the DNC was still the dominant party in 1964). But again, nice try trying to credit the DNC for something that they didn’t do, especially when the CSA-states were not only massively controlled by the DNC, but also soundly voted against the Act. Democrats? No, people who didn’t think the South Was Going to Rise Again.
As for Goldwater?
Yeah, nothing like Liberals for taking a crowbar to the truth, just like Johnson did against him —
So, the guy you think is so great — Johnson — uses Goldwater’s record of supporting Civil Rights to appeal to Southern Voters — the same ones who kept racist Democrats in power, so much so that the states which had formerly been the Confederate States of America (slave states, for anyone outside the USA) voted FOR Johnson because the opponent (Goldwater) was FOR Civil Rights. Which means the perception of Johnson in the South, where he lived, was … that Johnson was OPPOSED to Civil Rights.
Nice try — been down this road before with Liberals.
Robert Samuelson (an economist and conservative columnist whose work I admire) recently wrote, “The question that President Obama ought to be asking — that we all should be asking — is this: How big a government do we want?”
But Obama has already rejected that, saying (I can’t find the exact quote right now) that the question to ask is not whether government is too big or too small, bur rather, does government work?
I can identify government programs that I don’t think work. For example, I think rent control and housing projects are a bad idea; if some people need assistance in order to afford housing, the government should give them vouchers rather than distort housing prices, create areas that are prone to crime and incentivize landlords to find trumped-up reasons to get rid of low-income tenants in order to raise rents or convert the building to condos. (I have seen all of this in NYC.) But I don’t think it’s inherently bad to have government involved in making housing affordable; I just want to find the best way to do it, and in this case, the best way IMO has the government subsidizing the cost of housing instead of trying to control it. (The same way government gives food stamps instead of trying to run supermarkets or cost-control food.)
With regard to the military and intelligence, I think decreasing “government” has been a disaster, leading to an influx of private contractors like Blackwater that are disproportionately abusive of their power. The guys who seem to have pushed hardest for torturing detainees were CIA contractors, whereas FBI career civil servants fought to use humane tactics that they knew from experience worked on people who initially don’t want to talk. In this area, keep private-sector folks the f*ck out. They do not belong here.
Shockingly, it takes time to de-segregate. See also Brown v. Board’s call for schools to be desegregated “with all deliberate speed.” When Truman signed the Executive Order, we were still occupying Japan and Germany, and were about to go into Korea. It’s not a brilliant idea to try to reassign soldiers’ units in the middle of active duty. It’s a lot easier to do once they’re back home. Can you provide any evidence that there was NO move toward de-segregation until Ike entered office in 1953?
Again, that’s not an originalist reading of the Constitution. At the time that clause was written into the Constitution, “To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states” was understood very literally to refer to Congress having the power to determine how goods and services would be bought and sold between the U.S. and foreign countries, and among the states. The idea of telling a man who ran a diner in the backwoods of Alabama how to run his business — what the minimum wage would be, on what grounds he could refuse to hire people — would have been foreign to the Founders.
So if you want to read the Constitution that way, you have to reject the conservative reading, which is to go back to the Federalist Papers and other documents contemporaneous with the Constitution’s writing and passage.
Funny how you attack LBJ while failing to note that he is universally acknowledged as the main force behind the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and did this knowing that it would destroy his ability to win votes in much of the South, which had been a prior base of support.
You claim, “Which means the perception of Johnson in the South, where he lived, was … that Johnson was OPPOSED to Civil Rights.”
I think you’ve mentioned that you live in Texas, which means that you know the South does get newspapers and hear about laws being passed. So how was it that the South could think in November 1964 that LBJ opposed civil rights, when LBJ had signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in July of 1964? Are you under the impression that Southerners were so stupid they couldn’t retain the memory of something that had happened a few months earlier?
Try looking at the actual electoral map of the 1964 election, which will reveal that the only states Goldwater won besides his home state of Arizona (and that barely, by a single percentage point) were the Deep South states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. I guess they CAN read a newspaper!
Most of the other big movers of the legislation were also Dems, simply due to the Democratic control of Congress: Emmanuel Celler (chair of the House Judic Comm, which added the provisions to ban racial discrimination in employment, eliminate segregation in all publicly owned facilities, strengthen the anti-segregation clauses regarding public accommodations, and authorize the Attorney General to file lawsuits to protect individuals against the deprivation of any rights secured by the Constitution or U.S. law); and Mike Mansfield (Senate Majority Leader).
Moreover, ALL 11 Southern (using your CSA definition) Republicans voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, while 8 Southern Democrats voted FOR it. But yeah, I’m sure opposition to the Civil Rights Act was all a Southern Democrat thing, what with the statistics backing that up.
PG,
Right, and the Southern DEMOCRATS who, no doubt, all can get newspapers, voted overwhelmingly AGAINST the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Here’s the vote tally —
Oh, what’s that? Republicans supported 80-to-20, and Democrats supported 65-35? So, that would mean which party supported it more? Could you “the Republicans” a little louder — I can barely hear you.
I think you also underestimate the Military. Any organization that can go from being based in the United States to invading a foreign country in days to weeks can surely figure out how to desegregate. That Eisenhower deserves the credit is obvious from the time table. But also, Eisenhower was career military (again, in all those newspapers), where as Truman wasn’t. More of the George-Bush-Reservist type. Even Truman’s experience in WWI was more of the Walter Middy “Let’s shoot up them Germans some more when the war just has a few more hours to go!” type. Made it all the way to Captain during WWI (That’s two ranks above “not an officer”). What a hero. Bet you liked his handling of Korea when those blacks were still in all-black units? Oh, what was that you said? Didn’t get us out of Korea?
Yeah, Eisenhower did that as well.
Some Truman history —
Guess he didn’t hear about the abuse of blacks during WWII, while he was Roosevelt’s Vice President. Or during WWI when he was shelling Germans on the last day of the war, after the Armistice had already been announced. He mustn’t have read those papers. Or perhaps it was Roosevelt’s fault — even though Roosevelt is another Liberal darling.
Given Truman’s love of blacks (NOT!), you’re not alarmed that he didn’t leave office with no all-black units in place? Hated Jews, hated blacks, dropped two atomic bombs on the Japs. What a guy. Gotta love him. I know I don’t.
Yes, as Liberals love to point out, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 stomps all over Federalism and the Constitution. The South had very persistently held onto overt racism (the North was more about the covert kind). Short of sending the Army of the Potomac back (I’m a Yankee by birth, BTW — ancestor fought in a Pennsylvania unit), I don’t see any other way.
But where Liberals, who apparently only read PART of the Constitution, go awry is that the Constitution requires state officials (governors, legislators, judges — those people) to swear to uphold the Constitution, which inconveniently includes the 14th Amendment. How a governor, or state legislator can vote for legislation that contradicts the 14th Amendment is a mystery. Again, Army of the Potomac or Civil Rights Act of 1964? I’m a Hawk, but not THAT Hawkish.
A nice LBJ quote —
and finally —
Hey, FCH, this is a tone warning.
I have no problem with the things you say (though I disagree with many of them), but I do have an issue with your consistently snide tone.
You have been asked before about this, both by myself and by Amp, and I’m asking you to tone it down now.
—Myca
It occurs to me that at no point did the boston.com story cite the race of the cops. Kind of important when you’re talking about accusations of racism, isn’t it?
Not completely irrelevant, maybe, but pretty irrelevant.
Myca,
Could you kindly make the same “tone warning” to PG?
FCH,
I am just not going to bother discussing things with you beyond the point that I believe I have corrected any false impressions you may have left on others
(e.g., in this thread, that only Southern Democrats, rather than Southern Congressmen generally, opposed the Civil Rights Act — despite the fact that Southern Republicans ALL voted against the CRA while some Southern Dems voted for it);
or that LBJ convinced Southern voters that Goldwater supported civil rights more than LBJ did — despite the fact that LBJ lost the Deep South in 1964 after signing the CRA, while Goldwater won what had formerly been a Democratic stronghold).
In fact, I think it’s best if I don’t even pretend to be addressing you when I make these factual corrections, because that would imply that you’re having a good faith conversation instead of, as Amp has noted, “dodging and weaving.”
You want to believe that Republicans, even Southern Republicans, were the good guys on race until the influx of Dixiecrats destroyed the GOP. You want to believe it’s possible to have an originalist construction of the Constitution that allows for Brown v. Board, the CRA of 1964 and other anti-discrimination legislation. You want to believe that while the federal government could not enforce what you consider the plain meaning of the 14th Amendment and its command on Southern states to enact their own version of the CRA (despite the 14th Amendment having absolutely nothing to do with actions by the private sector), the federal government’s enacting a statute pursuant to the interstate commerce clause suddenly does allow the government to enforce what you believe already was the clear, originalist mandate of the Constitution.
I am not interested in stopping you from believing all this; I just want to make sure that others are not misled. Just ignore my posts, and assume my information is solely for those who are interested in hearing it.
PG,
It’s not just a “belief” on my part, it’s historically borne out by all of the contemporary accounts of race-relations and attitudes towards minorities.
It’s absolutely essential to the modern Liberal movement to erase the past abuses of the DNC against minorites, as well as to erase the motivations for the Civil Rights Act. Yes, noble piece of legislation — overwhelmingly supported by Republicans (80-20), marginally supported by Democrats (65-35).
But as Johnson stated, it was a “bone” meant to shut up the “uppity” Negroes (see LBJ quote — he really said all that).
Does this mean I want anyone to vote for a Neo-Conservative candidate? Oh, for fuck’s sake no. I’m glad George Bush is out of office, and I can barely contain my glee that McCain didn’t get elected. If the current Republican Party dries up and blows away, it would be just fine with me. If Rush Limbaugh left the air and went broke tomorrow, I’d probably spend an entire week drunk, celebrating.
Neo-Conservatives are the absolute WORST the DNC’s racist past ever had to offer, combined with the worst of the GOP’s merchantilist classist tendencies.
Good riddance, I say.
FCH, moderation here does not run by request. Period. If you have a specific complaint about PG, however, feel free to use the “report this comment” form to let us know that way.
You’ve been mod-warned several times this week, and you’ve shown no sign of giving a shit about what me or the other moderators say. We’ve been very patient with you, but our patience will have a limit.
* * *
Regarding the issue that’s sort of under discussion here, is there even ONE person here who would deny that the Democrats were historically the party that was strongly and (relatively) overtly in favor of racism?
If someone were to argue that this is currently the case, then I think there’s substantial disagreement there. But, nit-picking over particulars and examples aside, the general case you’re making — that the Democrats were at one time the more racist party, and that at one time larger numbers of Democrats than Republicans opposed progress on racial equality — is one that I suspect everyone here agrees with. Which makes how heated this argument has become a little puzzling.
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Amp,
Duly noted on clicking the “Report” button. I’ve just spent more time that I’d have preferred trying to figure out how to get the information needed to fill out the form. I’ll be sure to use it next time I’m told about newspapers.
In all sincerity, I’ve not seen any indication that PG would agree with what you wrote. Johnson’s history as an overt racist is very well known amongst Conservatives (of the non Neo-Conservative variety), and probably even better understood by Texans. They play clips from some of his speaches and private conversions here (Austin) every now and again on his family’s (former) radio station — KLBJ. Johnson’s racism, even post 1964, was one of the central campaigning points in late 70’s, early 80’s, politics when Liberals pointed to Johnson as some savior. He wasn’t, he didn’t, and many of his policies were decried by leaders in the Civil Rights Movement as enslaving Black voters, and many of those criticisms continue until today.
It’s fixing to rain here (B”H / Insha’Allah / G-d Willing), so I can’t dig up all the quotes I keep handy for this debate, but perhaps I’ll post them onto the blog I started.
Amp,
I agree that if you divorce the question from region and look solely at party ID, then the Democrats until about 1968 were the party that was more overtly in favor of racism.
However, I don’t think it makes much sense to divorce the question from region, because then it leaves the false impression (which is what I was trying to counter) that there is something inherent to what FCH labels “Liberal” ideology that promotes racism, which I do not think is accurate.
That’s why I’ve repeatedly noted that the Southern Republican Congressmen were even more opposed to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than the Southern Democrats, and non-Southern Republicans more likely to oppose than were non-Southern Democrats.
Goldwater is an illustrative example: he came from AZ and nearly lost his own state in 1964 over his opposition to the Civil Rights Act. He did not have the “protecting MY state from these intrusions” reasoning that the Southern Congressmen did. The CRA was simply incompatible with his Republican ideology.
That’s why 100% of Southern Republicans opposed the CRA: it was anathema both to their regional interest and to their Republican ideology. That’s why some Southern Democrats broke away and supported the CRA: it was in the interests of their regionalism, but not of their partisan ideology. And that’s why non-Southern Democrats were more favoring than non-Southern Republicans: it posed no conflict between regionalism and ideology (except for Byrd of WV, a special case because while WV was not part of the Confederacy due to breaking away from Virginia in order to avoid that, WV is otherwise a very Southern state in its culture; West Virginians did not have big plantations and saw the Civil War as a rich man’s fight, but they had slavery and were not fighting much for the Union either).
To provide the rest of the stats from the Wikipedia entry that FCH quoted only with regard to the party breakdown:
So I think you misunderstand the point FCH has been trying to make here since her comment @42. There she said,
If that were really the sole origin of the modern “Small Government” movement that is so popular among current Republicans, but not much so among current Democrats, why would Goldwater and other non-Southern Republicans have opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Why would 100% of Southern Republicans, but not 100% of Southern Democrats, have opposed the CRA?
I consider that a false claim about history, and that’s why I have been retreading a lot of information about the Democratic Party’s rejection over the course of the 1960s of the anti-civil rights branch. Reagan’s words are instructive: the Democratic Party left his anti-Civil Rights Act, anti-Voting Rights Act ass behind as it moved toward being the party it is today.
PG,
Here’s the stat —
There were 10 whole Southern Republicans. Of the 94 Southern Democrats who voted on the legislation, 7% voted for it. For 7% of the Southern Republicans to have voted “for” the legislation, 7/10ths of a Southern Republican would have needed to vote “Yea”. Since there’s no such thing as a fractional vote, I haven’t a clue what the outcome would have been had their been 94 southern Republicans.
But the facts really are — and this is strongly borne out by the statistics — support for the CRA was greater in the GOP than the DNC. Additionally, given the Johnson quotes I provided up-thread, his motivation for the legislation, as well as the motivation of the rest of the Democratic Party is seriously in question.
That’s all. No great crime.
The bigots left the DNC, the DNC went through some growing pains as people such as myself slowly left the GOP (I worked a GOP campaign in 1980 against a Democratic Party candidate who STILL had KKK backing — that’s 1980 and the Democratic Party. Not a typo), and the Progressive Movement was born about circa 1990, leading to the election of Bill Clinton.
I’m not a Neo-Conservative. I’m not the enemy.
Why do you keep referring to the Democratic Party as “the DNC?” I’ve always thought that the DNC (Democratic National Committee) was a part of the Democratic Party, not that the DNC is the Democratic Party? I’ve certainly never heard the DNC used in the same matter as “GOP”. If you call one party the DNC, shouldn’t the other be called the RNC?
Alternatively, I imagine that you could be referring to the Democratic National Convention, but that doesn’t make much sense to me. Why would you be referring to a major political party by the abbreviation for its Presidential Nominating Convention.
Am I missing something here?
Jake,
Technically, the DNC is the national governing organization for the Democratic Party. It is kind of peculiar to refer to the DNC in relation to state-legislature-level elections because it generally doesn’t get involved in those; they’ll be run at the state level.
O.K. I said I’d read Professor Gates’ account of his story and I have. The quotes are from The Root. Apparently Gates is the Editor-In-Chief of this publication. So you would have to figure that it would paint him in the most favorable light possible and not misquote him.
Hm. His driver is a big black man. He himself is a black man. The caller to 911 described the people breaking in as two big big black men. This is racial profiling? O.K., he says that he’s not big. Eyewitness accounts are notoriously inaccurate on details of that nature. But I’m trying to figure out why he says that “from afar you and I would not see that he was black.” Apparently the caller did, and they got it right.
How? The caller got it right that they were both black – the only thing they got wrong is his size (and note that he does not in fact give his height and weight).
The caller got it right that they broke in, as well. Sure, he had every reason to do so, but the caller doesn’t know that.
“I realized I was in danger.” WTF? He realized he was in danger? What danger? What is he talking about?
Thus directly contradicting the reports that he had been cooperative. The cops ask you to do something. You say “No”. That’s pretty much the definition of “non-cooperative.”
The man walks up to the front door of a house, fumbles around with the front door and fails to get in. Then someone else with him puts his shoulder to the door and forces his way in. And he thinks its ridiculous that someone called 911 and reported a B&E? He’s being ridiculous.
Who gives a shit? Pomposity rarely impresses cops.
Again; WTF? Nothing of the sort is clear. What’s clear is that 1) the cop got assigned a 911 call of a B&E to respond to, 2) the person the cop finds in the house claims that he in fact is the lawful resident there, 3) the cop asks him to step outside, 4) he refuses to cooperate, 5) the cop explains why he is there, 6) the non-cooperative guy in the house that a B&E was reported for claims that he is the lawful resident, and 7) the cop asks him to prove it. Given that Gates was initially non-cooperative, it’s hardly unreasonable for the cop to take a good look at the ID. There is absolutely nothing to indicate so far that Gates’ narrative is even on the cop’s radar screen, nevermind clear.
Still want to assert that Prof. Gates was cooperative? These are his own words published in a publication he edits, remember. If I’m the cop I’m thinking this guy is trying to game me with a fake ID.
Now, at no point has Gates alleged that the cop was rude or hostile or abusive or anything else. He apparently hasn’t touched him. What’s his problem?
Cops should be polite and professional. However, they are not required to kiss your ass. They also don’t feed you your story when they are investigating whether ro not you have committed a crime – they ask neutral questions and see what story you come up with, whether you come up with it immediately or have to think about it, etc. Also note that it was asserted above that asking you to step out on the porch is standard police procedure, and no one has contradicted that.
Based on what? His preconceived notions of Cambridge cops’ racism? Has he actually asked around to see what police procedure is? I bet not. He’s tried and convicted this cop based on the color of his skin. There’s a word for that; racism.
Which still makes no sense to me at all. The cop has not acted in a hostile fashion, he has not taken out a weapon, he has not made a threat, he has not touched him, and he has given him an excellent reason for his presence.
Which, of course, the cop is required to give him. The cop’s refusal to do so was wrong. The fact that Prof. Gates was non-cooperative does not justify the cop’s non-cooperation.
The cop was probably trying to control himself from telling Prof. Gates what he could do with his attitude and his accusation of racism.
Which, again, the cop should have given him.
No, the mistakes you made were a) assuming from the outset that the cop was racist, b) not thinking that two guys busting down a door justifies a call to the cops, and c) not cooperating with the cop’s entirely reasonable requests.
I actually agree with that statement. Acting like an asshole isn’t a criminal offense. Good thing, too, or I’d have a police record myself.
Yeah, because that’s so damn unusual they had to huddle about it. Actually, there was more than one black man among them; as I noted above I saw a still photograph of Prof. Gates being hauled off in cuffs and of the 3 cops shown one is black. There was “a” black man among them? Perhaps Prof. Gates doesn’t think that a black male cop is really a man.
Showing concern for his physical well-being.
That question will go unanswered from this incident. But it’s apparently how they treat jerks in Cambridge. Now, it seems that Prof. Gates was jet-lagged and ill. But all the cops know is that they’re responding to a 911 call and the guy who’s in the house won’t fully cooperate. In any case, Prof. Gates appears to think that all his actions and reactions were justified by assumptions of racism.
Now, you folks told me that the police report that Prof. Gates was uncooperative was contradicted by a statement by Prof. Gates that he was cooperative. I haven’t read that report, but his own words makes it quite clear that he WAS uncooperative.
So – from this report the arrest was unjustified. Professor Gates has every right to act like this without getting arrested. But I don’t see anything here that justifies an assumption that this whole thing was based on racism. Cops aren’t supposed to bust you for being uncooperative and acting like a jerk, but it happens every day. There’s nothing here that positively eliminates racism. But there’s nothing here to make me particularly suspect it and certainly nothing to prove it.
RonF,
Just deconstructing the small amount of your comment I’ve had time to read:
The caller got it right that they broke in, as well. Sure, he had every reason to do so, but the caller doesn’t know that.
Except according to the police report, 911 told the caller to wait there until the cops arrived, and she did so. Having done that, she would have seen that the actually large black man (I’ve met Gates, most folks reading the Root regularly have some idea what he looks like; he’s not a big guy) TOOK LUGGAGE INTO THE HOUSE AND THEN LEFT. What the hell kind of burglary team has the bigger, younger, stronger guy just drop bags in the house that’s being burgled and then drive away leaving the other guy there?
Who gives a shit? Pomposity rarely impresses cops.
The house is owned by Harvard and used as a rental for faculty, graduate students and other university affiliates. Telling the cop that he’s a Harvard prof isn’t “pomposity”; it’s adding credibility to his being where he belongs.
BTW, the Cambridge cops seem to have cleaned up their act some since I lived there.
Back in 1972 or 1973 (I can’t remember if I was a sophmore or junior), a kid got drunk, went over to a house of someone he knew, and ended up pitching a brick through a window. Understandably, the cops were called. The kid, who was a teenager and no body-builder or martial-arts expert, was uncooperative. The cops threw him in the back of the paddy wagon.
Then two cops entered the wagon after him and closed the door. According to witnesses, the wagon rocked back and forth a bit for a while. Then the cops got out and drove off. The kid was put in a cell. Where, some time later, he was found dead.
The local residents were not happy that the cops beat someone to death for being an asshole. When the cops were put on leave with pay, they went ballistic. They actually organized a demonstration. I’m talking non-students, mothers and fathers. I was at the organizational meeting. There were a number of speakers. Some long-haired idiot got up and started haranguing the crowd about how this kind of thing wouldn’t happen if everyone would wake up and support the Socialist candidate – he damn near got tossed out on the street bodily. My long-haired buddies and I circulated giving out advice like “vaseline will help protect your skin from tear gas” and “folded newspapers will protect your shins and back from night sticks”. We were informed that this was not going to be a bunch of hippies and that they had nothing to worry about from the cops.
Snort.
This was one demo I wasn’t going to miss for a million dollars. Let’s just say it’s a good thing I followed my own advice, knew what a tear gas canister looks like before it’s launched and kept up my awareness of escape routes and wind direction. The moms and dads got quite an education that night.
Oh, yeah – the kid was white. So forget this shit about “this doesn’t happen to white people.” It did. And worse. In Cambridge.
RonF,
There’s a reason the phrase “Driving While Black” is part of the lexicon and “Driving While White” isn’t.
Last Christmas, if I recall correctly, a black man was stopped by police, and boxed video games in the back of his car were taken. There wasn’t even a complaint that they were stolen. The police ASSUMED they were stolen, and when he couldn’t produce a receipt, the police confiscated his property. When he later went to claim it from the police, the police found that it was removed from the evidence locker and couldn’t be found.
(If someone has a link to the story, please post it.)
Sure, let’s assume said J. Random Blackman was rude and uncooperative. And let’s assume, further, that this rudeness justifies the police confiscating his property until the serial numbers can be verified against a stolen property list. What action on the part of JRB warranted his man’s property being stolen from the evidence locker by the police department? What, exactly, do you want to claim this man did to deserve that?
And yet, when Such People Claiming To Be Conservatives appear to outnumber Real Conservatives, you have to wonder at what point conservatism simply is as conservatism does. I’ve yet to see why this all isn’t just one humongous No True Scotsman fallacy.
Are we still talking about former Southern Democrats who defected to the Republican Party? Then, no,
(1) They don’t claim to be neo-conservatives
(2) They aren’t neo-conservatives
“Neoconservative” does not mean “someone who self-identifies as and is widely recognized as a conservative, but embarrasses me now”. Neoconservative refers specifically to a breed of former Marxist intellectual who became disillusioned with Stalinism and the New Left and reacted by becoming the ultimate Cold Warriors. Through some process of osmosis, they became conservative in pretty much all other areas as well, but their true passion was in foreign policy, where they differed markedly from old school conservatives, or paleoconservatives. Some common differences: neocons favor aggressive empire-building while paleocons preach isolationism. Neocons are very gung ho towards free trade agreements, while paleocons tend to be more ambivalent. Neocons are more militaristically pro-Israel than Israel’s militaristic faction, while animus toward Israel and “zionism” is common among paleocons and old school conservatives. Finally, neocons have absolutely no relation whatsoever with former white Democrats picked off by the Southern Strategy. They are two entirely separate groups that ended up leaving the Democratic Party within about the same quarter-century. That’s all.
And finally, most importantly, neoconservatives have been, even in their prime, a minority cabal of pointy-headed intellectuals whose influence far exceeded their actual numbers. To claim that Bush rose to and was sustained in power purely by “neoconservatives” or by the “Neoconservative Movement” is a bad mangling of political history and terminology.
Neoconservatives formed a disproportionate part of Bush’s inner circle – Rumsfeld, Perle, Wolfowitz, neocons all. But 49.5% to 51% of Americans (the numbers by which Bush was elected) are not and never have been neoconservatives. So Myca’s criticism is spot on – especially considering the 2004 election. The whole wiretapping controversy happened afterwards, but Gitmo was already an issue, the PATRIOT Act was already an issue, faith-based initiatives were already an issue, and the needless, politically expedient cluster bombing/occupation of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi families was already an issue. Somewhere along the line, a whole lot of conservatives who claimed to be about “small government” voted for Bush in 2004*.
*2000 I’m more inclined to overlook, because what Bush campaigned as and how he immediately set out to govern were two entirely different beasts. Hell, I thought the Bush of 2000 could have made a decent president, all things considering. By 2004, of course, his record already spoke for itself.
Also, the phenomenon Myca is talking about – conservatives who preach freedom and small government to be rather enthusiastic about militarism and apologetic for police brutality – is much greater than the small, isolated Neoconservative movement (magnified in influence through Beltway think tanks though it may have been).
The caller got it right that they broke in, as well
Is it breaking in if you shove a door that you’ve just unlocked but is jammed open? I’d no idea that I’d broken into so many places in my lifetime…
No, the mistakes you made were a) assuming from the outset that the cop was racist, b) not thinking that two guys busting down a door justifies a call to the cops, and c) not cooperating with the cop’s entirely reasonable requests.
With refrence to point c, I’m not a lawyer, but Gates’ lawyer apparently thought that refusing to cooperate with the cop’s “request” was a good move: “My lawyers later told me that that was a good move and had I walked out onto the porch he could have arrested me for breaking and entering.” (Quote from the article Ron linked to.) The police don’t have the right to force people to do anything they want. They have to justify their requests and demanding that your rights be respected, as Gates did, is not a crime.
Which, of course, the cop is required to give him. The cop’s refusal to do so was wrong.
Not just wrong, but possibly the only actual violation of a law that occurred in this whole mess, apart from maybe false arrest. Police in Massachusetts are required to carry ID and present it upon request. So really the officer involved should be arrested for violation of Massachusetts law. Why hasn’t he been?
To claim that Bush rose to and was sustained in power purely by “neoconservatives” or by the “Neoconservative Movement” is a bad mangling of political history and terminology.
It also has some associations with anti-Semitism, although I do not think that is how anyone here would use “neo-conservative.” Nontheless, the fact that it is now a highly pro-Israel ideology and its founders and prominent exponents were mostly Jewish (Irving Kristol, Lionel Trilling, Norman Podhoretz, Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle) means that one should make an effort to be precise in using the term.
And yes, as sylphhead says, these folks had nothing to do with Dixiecrats. Wrong part of the country, wrong ethnic background, and a completely different stance on the civil rights issue. The neocons were mostly non-Southern, mostly Jewish, and mostly pro-MLK. The old conservatives like Buckley and his folks at National Review were overtly opposed to civil rights and unembarrassedly declared that blacks were too inferior to be trusted with the ballot. In contrast, Podhoretz’s Commentary magazine was calling for mixed race couples and families in 1963, when miscegenation was still a crime in several states. The Jewish neocons’ own experience of bigotry made them sympathetic to the initial civil rights legislation of the 1960s (if you can’t discriminate on the basis of race and religion, that’s good for Jews as well as blacks), but the alliance began to break down in the 1970s over issues like affirmative action.
Dianne:
With refrence to point c, I’m not a lawyer, but Gates’ lawyer apparently thought that refusing to cooperate with the cop’s “request” was a good move: “My lawyers later told me that that was a good move and had I walked out onto the porch he could have arrested me for breaking and entering.”
That’s right. He could have arrested him for breaking and entering. Or, he could have then had his partner keep an eye on him while he took a look inside to see if he could spot the second person referenced in the 911 call he’s responding to, as well as seeing if there was anyone else involved, such as a resident being held against their will. Of course Gates’ lawyer said that. He’s his lawyer. What do you expect him to say?
The police don’t have the right to force people to do anything they want.
What’s that got to do with this story? No one is alleging that the cop tried to force Gates to step outside. No one is alleging that the cop tried to force him to answer any questions.
They have to justify their requests and demanding that your rights be respected, as Gates did, is not a crime.
First, he did justify his request. He said that he was investigating a 911 call of a B&E – something that someone who just broke open a door to gain entry to a building should hardly be surprised at.
But regardless of that – whether or not what Gates did is a crime is not at issue here with me. The issue is whether his accusations of racism are sustained by what happened. So far, from what I see in Gates’ own words the answer is clearly “No.”
Is it breaking in if you shove a door that you’ve just unlocked but is jammed open?
What the caller saw was at least that there were two men she didn’t recognize standing in front of a door, one of them knocked it open with his shoulder, and then they both entered. What would you think if you were that woman? What would you do? How would you describe it to the cops?
If the answer is not “I’d call the cops and tell them that two black guys just broke into the house next door” – or two white guys or a white and a Hispanic guy or whoever it was – I’m glad you don’t live next to me.
FurryCatHerder, the issue here isn’t whether that incident was the result of racism. I’m sure that there have been – and are – incidents of such nature that are caused or excaberated by racism. I’m also sure that there are hundreds or thousands or more similar confrontations every day between white cops and black civilians that consist of a white cop acting entirely professionally (as this cop did until he blew his fuse after having to deal with a repeatedly uncooperative person who kept accusing him of racism) and the black civilian acting in a cooperative fashion (which Prof. Gates certainly did not) and end up with the cop thanking the civilian for his time and cooperation and walking away peacefully.
The issue in front of us is whether or not this incident was caused by racism.
RonF,
Or, he could have then had his partner keep an eye on him while he took a look inside to see if he could spot the second person referenced in the 911 call he’s responding to, as well as seeing if there was anyone else involved, such as a resident being held against their will.
There was no partner present when Officer Crowley first began talking to Gates, according even to the police report. So how would that have worked?
How would you describe it to the cops?
If I were told by 911 to wait at the scene until the cop arrived, and I observed that the younger, stronger, bigger black male had put luggage inside the house and then drove away, I’d certainly start re-thinking my belief that this was a break-in. Are the B&Es in your neighborhood usually involving the use of Samsonite and the disappearance of the guy who should be the getaway driver?
RonF,
I’m not sure that Gates’ saying he wouldn’t step outside is the same as being “uncooperative.” Or rather, I don’t think it’s a strict either/or. I don’t think he has to accede to every request to be deemed cooperative. By Gates’ account, he did not immediately start yelling about racism. He was irritated, but he answered the officer’s questions and provided ID upon request. By his account (and I’m willing to accept that Gates, just like the officer, may be finessing a point here or there to make himself look better), he became upset when the officer wouldn’t provide his name. There’s nothing in there that makes me think “Aha! He wasn’t initially cooperative!”
If I get pulled over for a traffic stop and the police ask to search my car, am I being “uncooperative” if I say that I won’t consent unless they get a warrant and I’m willing to wait while they do so? So uncooperative that I could be deemed to be contributing to my own arrest? So uncooperative that it would cause me to be legitimately considered disorderly?
Also, I think it’s pretty presumptuous of you to discount the fact that the police request for him to step outside would make him nervous. It would make me nervous. I’m nervous whenever I interact with police as a suspect (like at a traffic stop). You’re not nervous when police pull you over or question you? Even after that story about the brick-throwing kid?
Sylphead @ 73:
There is no official “Neo-Conservative Clearing House” to determine who is, or who isn’t a “Neo-Conservative”. I go by the historical accounts of how the present body of ‘People Who Identify As “Conservative”‘ came into being. It’s pretty indisputable that much of the modern Republican Party, the vast majority of whom are ‘People Who Identify As “Conservative”‘, has many members who originated in the Political Left by the process of flight from the Democratic Party, or were swayed by the arguments of those people. The “redding” of the Deep South wasn’t caused by population migration from the “Red” parts of the United States.
(From Wikipedia)
I don’t think “In the late 1970s neoconservative support moved to Ronald Reagan and the Republicans, who promised to confront Soviet expansionism.” is at all in question, and it would be very disingenuous to say that it is only a “handful” of Neo-Conservatives who swept Reagan into office. But also, with the average age in the United States well below 47 (2009 – 1980 = 29 years ago, 29 + 18 year old age to vote = 47), restricting “Neo-Conservatives” to those people who might, SOMEHOW, have been alive at the period is overly restrictive.
The key difference between Neo-Conservatives and classic Conservatives in the Classical Liberal tradition of Locke, et alia, is this reversed perspective on what the American voter wants.
This perspective is 180 degrees removed from the Classical Liberal roots of the Conservative movement, pre-1970. The “real majority” of Americans are social liberals (“what happens in the privacy of your bedroom is your business” / “keep the government out of my life”) and fiscal conservatives (“there’s no such thing as a free lunch”, “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps”).
That’s the American Tradition — the great Moderate Middle. It embodies the best of government distrust as repeatedly outlined by the Framers with a healthy does of the Protestant Work Ethic and Self-Sufficiency.
That there is the ability to distinguish between anti-interventionist Conservatives (remember that Nixon ended the war in Vietnam …) of that era with the pre-emptive war is okay Neo-Conservatives of the present era really does mean this isn’t just some No True Scotsman fallacy. That the traditional Conservative movement, grounded in ideals of Personal Liberty, is opposed to State enforced morality is yet another disproof of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
This abstract, from an article written in 2006, briefly explains some of the issues with both Neo-Liberals and Neo-Conservatives —
The complaint that Neo-Conservatives are the Nanny State of the bedroom police is entirely counter to the traditional position of distrust for the Federal Government found in countless writings of the Framers, and the people who influenced the Framers.
And unlike the complaints that the Democratic Party “moved away” from its supporters, the movements within the Democratic Party were caused INTERNALLY. The DNC was not invaded by GOP members and policy wonks and forced to liberalize its social policies, the decision to liberalize come from within the party as a result of its own awareness being raised. In the case of the Republican Party, however, it was the “invasion” of the party by social conservatives / bedroom police from the Democratic Party. Saying that I, someone who’s identified as a “Conservative” my entire political life, have to accept the re-definition of “Conservative” by people who haven’t, or by people who’s only objective is attacking Conservative values, is just WRONG.
You know, I thought Harold and Kumar go to White Castle was supposed to be a parody, not a documentary. :(
What the caller saw was at least that there were two men she didn’t recognize standing in front of a door, one of them knocked it open with his shoulder, and then they both entered.
It’s a little strange that she didn’t recognize someone who was 1. her neighbor and 2. a famous Harvard professor (and she worked for the fundraising department at Harvard). However, I don’t particularly have a problem with her actions as a neighbor (though honestly if I were her supervisor I’d have a long talk with her about the need to know who the VIPs were). Her description was a little sensationalistic, but not completely inaccurate.
What I objected to was your statement that she was right about it being an act of breaking and entering. I don’t think that entering your own house by shoving a stuck (but unlocked) door can be described as “breaking”. It might have been reasonable for the person who called 911 to suspect that it was B and E, but the cops should have recognized the situation for what it was as soon as Gates showed his ID, apologized, and left.
I still maintain that the only actual illegal act committed was the cop refusing to show his ID or give his name. That was clearly a violation of Massachusetts law and I do hope he is prosecuted for it.
If the answer is not “I’d call the cops and tell them that two black guys just broke into the house next door” – or two white guys or a white and a Hispanic guy or whoever it was – I’m glad you don’t live next to me.
Oddly enough, yesterday I was the suspicious person trying to get into a house…Here’s what happened: I’m starting a research visit in Europe, and am staying at a guest house. Between jet lag and general absent mindedness, I managed to grab the keys to my apartment in the US, not to the guesthouse on my way out the door. When I came back, I stood at the front door and fiddled with it for a while, not realizing that I had the wrong key altogether. (Ok, so that was flaky, but I am still a bit jet lagged and the keys do look somewhat alike…but enough self-justification.) I eventually realized that it wasn’t working and looked for an alternate way in. Not finding one, I gave up and called my partner, who eventually came and let me in.
So here’s how it probably looked from the outside: An unknown person (I doubt any of the neighbors know me…I certainly don’t know them) with a backpack (unlike Gates I really did have a backpack on) comes and attempts to enter the building. After fiddling with the lock for some time, she then cases the place looking for a way to break in. She then calls an accomplice and hangs out waiting for him…
So, why didn’t anyone call the police? Actually, this was all done in the full view of the nearest police station (which happens to be at the end of the block). Why didn’t the police investigate? Do I have the world’s worst neighbors here? Or is it because, being a “white” woman, I’m an unsuspicious character?
Regarding the actions of the neighbor next door, Dr. Gates has said he thinks she did the right thing by calling the cops.
Just to keep the facts straight, the 911 caller technically wasn’t a “neighbor,” in the sense of someone who lives in Gates’s neighborhood. She lives in Malden but works for the Fundraising Department of Harvard Magazine, which is a few doors down (7 Ware St.) from Gates’s house at 17 Ware St. Nearly all the property right around there is Harvard-owned, and the housing is rented to students and faculty.
There’s a lot about the police reports (Crowley and Figueroa’s) that is interesting and not all of it in their statements.
It’s interesting how Gates’ race was not considered privileged information but the reporting witness’ was. And also the times the reports were submitted to the same supervisor (Wilson III) versus the time of the reported incident, for example.
I wondered why there was no report of what happened to the other man after Gates went inside his own house. I’ve not read everything in this case but I didn’t see any explanation as to why that wasn’t also reported.
Crowley was the lone officer who responded. He mentioned radioing for backup which is not unusual. Responding to a call for B&E based on what was dispatched (though the dispatch record hasn’t been made public apparently) is not unusual. Some of his actions aren’t unusual. But his ability to handle a situation where someone is questioning his authority and actions is unfortunately not unusual either but from a sergeant who allegedly teaches racial profiling (though there’s many reasons why that doesn’t necessarily mitigate his actions as not being racist).
A police report is just that, a report. One account of an incident which will I saw a couple things in here that I’ve seen in problematic reports before. I’ve read a lot of them, including some really fascinating ones where officers have said they watched a drug deal with a brick building standing in their path. X-ray vision! Not really, but my point is that police reports can be embellished, they can be false and they can be true. But by themselves, I’m not really all that impressed with them. Experience reading them and seeing how the accounts change in criminal cases as they move on (prelims, trials and the like) has jaded me somewhat.
My reading of it (if it is an accurate representation) is that for a sergeant, he did some actions which were certainly questionable, considering what his experience level would have been. But it wasn’t clear what his assignment at the time was (uniformed but in an unmarked car, working out of “administration”). That’s a pretty generous interpretation that he had other issues besides racist behavior. Officers are trained to not escalate situations where people act belligerent and views are mixed here from believing that Gates’ actions were justified to people shaking their heads and wondering what his mother taught him about interacting with police in as he could have killed kind of thing).
I sat through a class taught officers on how to better communicate with people in different situations. I thought in that case, it was good training but how much of it sunk in with the officers being instructed at the time?
But I see some red flags that make me concerned it’s not an accurate representation of events.
Figueroa’s report was much briefer which isn’t uncommon in supplementary reports but he spent most of his report trying a little too hard to bolster Crowley’s account as being reasonable.
There’s a lot about the police reports (Crowley and Figueroa’s) that is interesting and not all of it in their statements.
It’s interesting how Gates’ race was not considered privileged information but the reporting witness’ was. And also the times the reports were submitted to the same supervisor (Wilson III) versus the time of the reported incident, for example.
I wondered why there was no report of what happened to the other man after Gates went inside his own house. I’ve not read everything in this case but I didn’t see any explanation as to why that wasn’t also reported.
Crowley was the lone officer who responded. He mentioned radioing for backup which is not unusual. Responding to a call for B&E based on what was dispatched (though the dispatch record hasn’t been made public apparently) is not unusual. Some of his actions aren’t unusual. But his ability to handle a situation where someone is questioning his authority and actions is unfortunately not unusual either but from a sergeant who allegedly teaches racial profiling (though there’s many reasons why that doesn’t necessarily mitigate his actions as not being racist).
A police report is just that, a report. One account of an incident which will I saw a couple things in here that I’ve seen in problematic reports before. I’ve read a lot of them, including some really fascinating ones where officers have said they watched a drug deal with a brick building standing in their path. X-ray vision! Not really, but my point is that police reports can be embellished, they can be false and they can be true. But by themselves, I’m not really all that impressed with them. Experience reading them and seeing how the accounts change in criminal cases as they move on (prelims, trials and the like) has jaded me somewhat.
My reading of it (if it is an accurate representation) is that for a sergeant, he did some actions which were certainly questionable, considering what his experience level would have been. But it wasn’t clear what his assignment at the time was (uniformed but in an unmarked car, working out of “administration”). That’s a pretty generous interpretation that he had other issues besides racist behavior. Officers are trained to not escalate situations where people act belligerent and views are mixed here from believing that Gates’ actions were justified to people shaking their heads and wondering what his mother taught him about interacting with police in as he could have killed kind of thing).
I sat through a class taught officers on how to better communicate with people in different situations. I thought in that case, it was good training but how much of it sunk in with the officers being instructed at the time?
But I see some red flags that make me concerned it’s not an accurate representation of events.
Figueroa’s report was much briefer which isn’t uncommon in supplementary reports but he spent most of his report trying a little too hard to bolster Crowley’s account as being reasonable.
As for disorderly conduct, of course they’re going to drop the charges. They’d never get a conviction on a very weak example of that type of behavior. And that’s a law I understand fairly well having actually been convicted of it.
A blog-friend at Georgetown Law researched the relevant law and found that not only are Mass. police required to provide their name and badge number upon request, they also are required to carry an identification card with their name and badge number (she thought of this possibility because it’s required for police in her own jurisdiction, Fairfax County, VA). As she put it, “So Crowley’s explanation that he COULDN’T give Gates his name and badge number because Gates was yelling so loud is also bull,” because he could have handed him the card the very first time Gates asked for the info. Or the second time. Or instead of telling Gates to come outside if he wanted Crowley’s name and number.
Chapter 41: Section 98D. Identification cards
Section 98D. Each city or town shall issue to every full time police officer employed by it an identification card bearing his photograph and the municipal seal. Such card shall be carried on the officer’s person, and shall be exhibited upon lawful request for purposes of identification.
Moreover,
Chapter 41: Section 98C. Badges; identification by name or number
Section 98C. In any city or town which accepts the provisions of this section no uniformed police officer, and no other uniformed person empowered to make arrests, employed by such city or town shall be required to wear a badge, tag or label of any kind which identifies him by name, but any such officer or other person employed by such city or town who does not wear any such badge, tag or label shall wear a badge, tag or label which identifies him by number.
That’s a bit rich, coming from someone who wants to narrow the definition of the word “Conservative” beyond that done by political science, dictionaries, common usage, and common sense, purely to exclude any erstwhile conservative groups that embarrass you. Because you know, there aren’t any Clearing Houses for the definition of any other labels, either.
But though there may be disagreement around the margins, broad labels are still valid, as are general observations when two broad groups don’t really intersect. The Neo-conservatives and Dixiecrats are two such groups.
The rest of your post contains a lot that looks like it’s supposed to a rebuttal to my earlier post, but you have absolutely nothing to offer directly against the central premise of what I wrote earlier, which was that Dixiecrats and neo-conservatives are not synonymous. In fact, they are two entirely separate groups with separate political histories, demographics, and objectives. Beginning from your third sentence on –
– you begin to sound accommodating to this notion, as there would have been no need to cast the very wide net of “People Who Identify As “Conservative”… …who originated in the Political Left by the process of flight from the Democratic Party”, instead of the catchall term “neoconservative” you were using earlier, if you weren’t preparing to batch multiple groups of people in that net. If you’re not going to continue pushing the historically false “Dixiecrats &# 949; neo-conservatives” line, I won’t push the topic further.
There’s nothing wrong with saying that the neo-conservatives (who ran Bush’s inner circle) and the Bible-thumpin’ Dixiecrat types (who re-elected him) are both groups that betrayed conservatism and that authentic conservatism is better than that. But don’t try to pin this on Liberalism and liberals by pushing a gross misreading of history that suggests one overarching group that was secretly Liberal at heart secretly took over the pure, innocent GOP, popped its cherry, and ended up being responsible for everything that went wrong with the Republican Party and the conservative movement over the last several years. Placing the blame on one big, bad, fictional boogie-man is a tired, overdone way for groups of people to try and escape responsibility. Acknowledging that it was, in fact, several small, slightly bad boogie-men exposes the whole corruption as having been a much more organic process, which of course raises uncomfortable questions about complicity.
The GOP wasn’t “forced” to do anything. The Dixiecrats and neo-conservatives didn’t “invade” anyone and hold them at gunpoint. Rather, they left the Democratic Party in a huff and found in the Republican Party a welcoming environment for their beliefs and career advancement, within which they grew and drew support. GOP or movement conservatism supporters must have, by definition, signed on to every change, real or alleged, as an acceptable sacrifice. You can’t hide historical reality behind the passive voice.
Dixiecrat types actively ran for leadership positions in the GOP and campaigned for more power. To the extent that these people displaced “true conservatives”, it was because party delegates and grassroots activists on the Right wing side of the aisle allowed it to happen. And later on, once popular primaries began outnumbering the smoky backroom variety, regular Conservative American Joe joined in the party as well. Think tanks, PACs, pundits, writers, etc. within the conservative movement that catered to the Dixiecrat, neo-conservative, or other insufficiently-true-conservative mindset eventually overtook the old ones – if, in fact, the latter ever existed. (National Review, for instance, was never exactly on the forefront of civil liberties issues, though Bible-thumpers they were not.) Why? Because regular registered Republicans sponsored those PACs, listened to those pundits, and funded those writers. Again, why did the true conservatives allow all this to happen?
My guess is that the true conservatives, as you define the term, simply were not, and never have been, all that numerous in the first place.
Sylphhead,
Limiting “Neo-Conservatives” to a small group of Leftist intelligentsia is just plain dishonest. And saying that the Dixiecrats found welcome arms because of the GOP’s fixation on tanks flies in the face of history — Eisenhower ended Korea and Nixon ended Vietnam. Even the Reagan administration handled conflicts completely differently from Bush Sr and Bush Jr. Reagan armed the Mujahideen (Arabic for “Jihadists”) so they could fight the Russians.
The success of the Left at rewriting history is fairly clear when you consider that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was preceded by the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and the Civil Rights Act of 1960. It’s as though the entire Civil Rights movement sprung out of the head of Johnson, a political Minerva as it were. Sure, Truman “integrated” the military, if you ignore the 24th Infantry’s gross mistreatment during Korea (Truman, as Commander-In-Chief of the US Military, allowed white officers to mistreat the 24th, blame the all-Black unit for their own leadership problems, and then promptly abolish the unit — not to end segregation, but because Truman’s leading officers refused to admit they were racist thugs and Truman failed to figure it out himself.)
So, take you and your fake history and place it in a warm, dark, moist location.
As for the National Review, even Buckley pointed out that the present conservatives aren’t “Conservatives”. But Buckley hasn’t run the National Review in nearly 20 years, and he’s now very much dead.
Neo-Conservative =/= Dixiecrat. Neo-Conservative =/= Dixiecrat. Repeat it several times until you get it, and tattoo it in backwards on some part of your body if you must. I see that you still haven’t directly argued against this notion to the effect of saying that “Dixiecrats are SO Neoconservatives” – perhaps because the mountain of evidence that could be leveled against that ridiculous claim from five seconds’ worth of Googling would have been too daunting. This includes, for instance, that wikipedia article you linked to yourself. Every section on neoconservative history is about “foreign policy”, “foreign interventionism”, or some permutation thereof. The Civil Rights movement is mentioned not at all. Neither are the culture wars, nor any support for the made up notion that neoconservatives were the “bedroom police” that has besotted the GOP’s fortunes. (Historically speaking, those who would go on to become neoconservatives were rather more supportive of the CRM than the average conservative. Their ire was reserved for the antiwar activists.)
Now, the names I mentioned before weren’t of any “Leftist” intelligentsia, so I agree that that’s not true. But yes, “neo-conservatism” was and is generally a movement among the Right wing intelligentsia. The “salt of the earth” family values activists are another breed entirely.
Why would Dixiecrats (Southern White Conservatives with populist leanings, particularly in culture wars issues) have a fixation on tanks? You’re thinking of neocons. While dixiecrats typically support foreign military interventions – generally more so than the average liberal, in any case – foreign policy was hardly their raison d’etre the way it was for the neocons. Since I’ve been clear about this distinction all along, I didn’t make the claim you are responding to – you are fighting a ghost of straws here, my friend.
So no, the Dixiecrats didn’t find welcome arms in the GOP because of foreign policy. They found welcome arms in the GOP because of the Southern Strategy specifically*, but also because they were a welcome fit with existing conservative ideology. Conservative ideology wasn’t necessarily racist, but it wasn’t necessarily anti-racist, either, and southern whites agreed with the conservatives on most issues of the day, such as Vietnam, strident anti-Communism, and (selective) support of states’ rights. Not to mention that race became another axis with which to justify inequities in power and wealth.
*Actually, to some extent the drift of the Dixiecrats to the GOP happened before Southern Strategy. During the 1964 Johnson landslide, for instance, the Deep South went Republican for the first time since Reconstruction.
Could you provide a cite as to who exactly believes that “the entire Civil Rights movement sprung out of the head of Johnson”? The entire Civil Rights movement sprang up out of the heads of the civil rights leaders, if anyone. (The Civil Rights leaders themselves were radical liberals or socialists, but don’t let the implications of that upset you too much.) The Civil Rights leaders and their followers – and eventually, pretty much the entire Black American electorate – embraced the Democratic Party because of the conscious efforts many northern Democrats were making to accommodate a Civil Rights platform – such as Hubert Humphrey’s speech at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, which led Strom Thurmond to storm off and form the “States’ Rights Democratic Party”. Or, as you mentioned, Truman, who, besides desegregating the army, took federal action against lynching and poll taxes, and basically adopted the first true presidential Civil Rights platform. Of course, Truman’s main opponents here were conservative Southern Democrats, but white liberals certainly played a very important role. Certainly, a larger role than white conservatives – the True sort or otherwise – did.
No, the historical revisionism here is stating the facially true fact that more Democrats than Republicans opposed the CRA, and then pretending the ideological equivalence of Dem=liberal and GOP=conservative held as strong back then as it did today, and discounting the regional basis for the split. (For instance, every single Democrat to vote against the CRA was from the South. 47 out of the 48 non-Southern Democratic Senators all voted for it, the exception being Robert Byrd of West Virginia. There was only one Southern GOP Senator back then, John Tower of Texas, who, naturally, voted against the CRA. Five other non-Southern GOP Senators opposed the CRA, a significantly higher number than the number of non-Southern Democrats who did likewise.)
PG:
If I were told by 911 to wait at the scene until the cop arrived, and I observed that the younger, stronger, bigger black male had put luggage inside the house and then drove away,
If that’s what was observed. Did the caller wait around for all that to happen, or did the witness get the call made as soon as the forcing of the front door was observed and never observed the rest of the story?
chingona:
By Gates’ account, he did not immediately start yelling about racism.
No, but by his account he pretty much started thinking it.
He was irritated, but he answered the officer’s questions and provided ID upon request.
He answered one of his questions. After handing over his ID, he refused to answer the cop’s next question.
By his account (and I’m willing to accept that Gates, just like the officer, may be finessing a point here or there to make himself look better), he became upset when the officer wouldn’t provide his name.
By his account he got nervous when the cop showed up (understandable) and became upset when the cop asked him to step outside – saying in his account that he figured that the cop wouldn’t ask a white man to do say. Then he stood there and cooked up a story thinking that the cop didn’t believe that he lived there on the sole basis that he was black. Black professors at Harvard are a minority but are by no means unheard of and Cambridge is one of the most multi-racial cities in the country.
There’s nothing in there that makes me think “Aha! He wasn’t initially cooperative!”
When he refused to step outside and when he refused to answer the cop’s question after he handed over his ID. Certainly being uncooperative is not a crime in this context, but it’s still being uncooperative.
If I get pulled over for a traffic stop and the police ask to search my car, am I being “uncooperative” if I say that I won’t consent unless they get a warrant and I’m willing to wait while they do so?
Yes, although AFAIK you are completely within your rights and I might very well do the same.
So uncooperative that I could be deemed to be contributing to my own arrest? So uncooperative that it would cause me to be legitimately considered disorderly?
Nope. It wouldn’t.
Also, I think it’s pretty presumptuous of you to discount the fact that the police request for him to step outside would make him nervous. It would make me nervous. I’m nervous whenever I interact with police as a suspect (like at a traffic stop). You’re not nervous when police pull you over or question you? Even after that story about the brick-throwing kid?
I figure that what happened to the brick-throwing kid is an anomaly and is unlikely to happen to me. I’ve had plenty of interactions with cops (I drive fast – a little too fast) and while I’m nervous I manage not to accuse black cops of racism. In fact, it’s kind of funny that I have seen a few writers in the aftermath of this say “Oh, Prof. Gates forgot the rules for black people dealing with cops.” which generally boil down to calling the cop “Sir” or “Officer”, don’t argue with the cop, and complying with the cop’s requests, etc. It’s funny because everything they say is the same damn thing my Dad told me when I got my license. But these people are saying this like it’s something special that only black people have to do. I get nervous because I’m about to get a ticket and it’ll cost money and I’m worried about insurance, etc., etc.
I’m not nervous that the cop’s going to put me in danger. In this case the cop was there to protect him, which is something that having been told that there was a 911 report of B&E Gates should have understood. Here in my area we had a spate a few years ago of teams of two people performing burglaries. Felon A and B would drive up with a pickup with asphalt in it. Felon A would engage the homeowner pitching a quickie driveway job while Felon B would sneak around to the back door, go in if it was unlocked, and do a quick pass around the house looking for things to steal. The fact that Gates himself knew he was the rightful resident doesn’t mean that complying with the cop’s request was not in his best interest once he was given the reason for the cop’s presence.
Dianne:
the cops should have recognized the situation for what it was as soon as Gates showed his ID, apologized, and left.
First, I don’t think that the cop owes Gates an apology for responding to a 911 call and doing his job. Second, Gates account says that the cop looked at his ID, asked him one question, and upon failing to get an answer turned around and left. Gates then followed him outside and acted a) within his rights and b) stupid (the two are not incompatible).
Yeah, he should have given Gates his name and badge number. Yes, in the absence of knowing the ins and outs of “disorderly conduct” I’m fine with people saying that this didn’t rise to the level of justifying an arrest. So I have not and will not defend the arrest. But I’m still not seeing anything that justifies a presumption of racism either on Professor Gates’ part at the time or on anyone else’s part in the aftermath. I’m still seeing something that could just as easily have happened to me if I’d acted like he did.
And I’m wondering just what it was that offended Prof. Gates so much that he demanded the officer’s name and badge number in the first place? Up to the point that Gates made that demand it seems to me that according to Gates’ own account the policeman acted in a highly professional manner, and then started to walk away from the situation without taking any acdtion against the professor. At that particular point Gates should have been thanking him, not demanding his name and badge number.
Tell me this. You say that the cop was wrong to make that arrest. Fine. I can go along with that. Now, what about Prof. Gates? Did he or did he not think and act like a jerk?
Here’s an idea. The officer continues to do his diversity training, and makes some modifications to reflect the experiences of this incident. Meanwhile, Prof. Gates goes to schools and churches and talks to people stressing the fact that cops have a job to do and that when they are responding to 911 calls it’s a good idea to respect them and what they’re trying to do and cooperate with them.
If a cop came to my front door and said “Mr. F, would you step outside?” I’d probably stand there and say “What’s the matter, officer?” If at that point he said “There’s been a 911 call of breaking and entering at this address” about 60 seconds after I’d had to force my front door because someone had at least tried to jimmy the lock and that I knew at that point that there’d been problems like this in the neighborhood the previous few weeks I’d skip out the front door and say “Holy $hit, go take a look!”
RonF,
The 911 caller, Lucia Whalen, has said (and the Cambridge PD’s release of the tape of her call confirms) that she never said anything about two black men with backpacks. That’s something that Officer Crowley either got from someone else or wholly manufactured. Moreover, in her call Whalen repeatedly noted that the men had suitcases and perhaps resided at the home and were just having trouble with their key. Ponder why none of this made it into the report.
“But these people are saying this like it’s something special that only black people have to do. I get nervous because I’m about to get a ticket and it’ll cost money and I’m worried about insurance, etc., etc. I’m not nervous that the cop’s going to put me in danger.”
And maybe that’s what makes your experience and perspective different from a black man’s? Chris Rock’s bit is not about “how to avoid getting a ticket and having your insurance cost increase.” It’s about “how not to get your ass beat by the police.” The entire premise of the sketch is that if you aren’t polite and accommodating, you could end up not merely ticketed, or even arrested, but beaten or killed. The fact that you don’t perceive that difference tells me a lot about why you’re so convinced there is no racial element to any of this except for what you are convinced is racism wholly on Gates’s part.
Radfem, thanks for the correction on Sgt. Crowley not having had a backup when he first arrived at the scene.
It’s interesting how Gates’ race was not considered privileged information but the reporting witness’ was.
Gates is a public figure, and his race and that of the cop was one of the main reasons this whole thing escalated to national attention. On what basis did you think that the reporting witness’ race was privileged information? I wouldn’t think that the race of someone making a 911 call would be known. At what point was the witness identified, and when did the witness come forward?
You’re conflating the advice my father gave me with my experience with cops. My experience with cops leads me to understand that I’m unlikely to have problems with the cops if I act courteous and cooperative when I’m stopped for speeding. My father’s lecture on how to deal with the Chicago cops when I was 15 most definitely included the concept that being stupid could get my ass kicked by them.
In fact, when he gave me his K-bar (his combat knife from his service in the Marines in WW II) to keep under the front seat when I drove downtown at night, my first response to him was “What do you think a cop will do to me if he finds that?”
My understanding of whether there’s proof or even likelihood that racism was involved in how the cops treated Prof. Gates is based on his and Sgt. Crowley’s actual words and actions, not on any hypotheticals.
RonF,
“On what basis did you think that the reporting witness’ race was privileged information? I wouldn’t think that the race of someone making a 911 call would be known. At what point was the witness identified, and when did the witness come forward?”
The witness was identified on the first evening that the story was breaking across the media. http://gawker.com/5318918/updated-black-professor-and-white-lady-reenact-crash-in-cambridge
According to the police report, a 911 call came in saying there was a possible B&E at about 12:44pm. Officer Crowley, being in the area, went to the scene, radioing to ECC to have the caller meet him there. He went up the steps to the door and a female voice called out to him. “I turned and looked in the direction of the voice and observed a white female, later identified as Lucia Whalen.”