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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Sylphhead,
OH. FOR. THE. LOVE. OF. PETE.
If you polled the “Dixiecrats” who invaded the GOP, and their children, and their nextdoor neighbors, all of whom fled the DNC because the DNC was starting to give rights to The Negro, and asked them what they are, the clear and vast majority would say “Conservative.” If you then described to them what a “Conservative” is (because most of them haven’t the slightest idea what traditional Conservativism even is), they’d completely disagree with it, and they definitely would not agree with “Former Dixiecrat”.
It’s the fact that the Conservativism of the past century (and the one before it) matches Not At All with the present “Conservativism” which says that whatever name they want to use, they just simply are not Conservatives. Period.
But also, and here is where you are just absolutely and miserably wrong about Johnson, if you look at his writings, private conversations AND comments on the floor of the Senate, you’d see that Johnson didn’t give a FLIP about African Americans, and that contrary to the fake history you want to keep on pushing, neither did Truman. There is a difference between talking and doing, and on the “Git ‘Er Done” scale from “Gum Flappin'” to “Got ‘Er Done!”, neither Truman nor Johnson got past the gum flapping stage.
Talk is incredibly cheap and had Truman, as you insist, actually supported voting rights for African Americans, by 1953 when he left office, something would have been done and it wouldn’t have fallen to Eisenhower’s administration, or for fuck’s sake, Johnson’s almost 20 year later, to DO something.
Truman was a racist, and he wasn’t even timid about it —
Yeah, Truman loves Japs so much he nuked them. Twice. His predecessor, who may or may not have loved Japs, put my Uncle and his family in a prison camp. I guess Truman really, really loved Japs when that happened.
Yeah, police dogs and firehoses aren’t actually “brutality”, it’s just something those Negroes incorrectly think. Gaslighting much?
And as has been pointed out, the vote, twenty years later, still needed “protecting”. Not because Truman was such a friend of non-whites, because as has been pointed out, time and again, neither Truman nor Johnson DID anything other than talk.
So, before you trot out Truman or Johnson, know this — real history is against you. The character assassination of the 24th Infantry in Korea years after Truman “integrated” the military, the need for Dr. King and Malcolm X and others to “get out the black vote” in the decades after Johnson opposed Truman’s supposed-voting rights act, and so on.
What Johnson (and Truman before him) did was appeasement, and there were Black leaders who knew it —
The problem, as he pointed out so eloquently, is this —
No one ever needed to grand-stand on Civil Rights laws. We had a Constitution then, we have a Constitution now, and G-d willing, we’ll have one for ten thousand more years. And in that Constitution, Equal Protection Under The Law exists.
I have put thousands of words online, here and on other blogs and on Facebook, about Gates’s arrest. I think I will try to make these the last ones, and make these last ones a quote from the Washington Post (HT David).
Everyone who sees no racism here, just read that paragraph a few hundred times, (especially the bolded part) until it sinks in.
—Myca
Sylphhead,
When people start to question my understanding of the events, I return to contemporary sources. And by “Contemporary Sources”, I don’t mean White Liberal historical accounts, I mean the speeches and writings of prominent Black leaders.
So I went looking in my collection of Malcolm X links and whatnot for a quote I remembered from a speech in which he essentially said that White Liberal politics was not meant to help Blacks.
That’s patently false, and in his speech “Fighting on All Fronts”, given in 1965 the day after his house was fire bombed, Malcolm X describes how White Northern Democrats went all the way to the South to solve myriad and sundry problems, while the KKK was still very much active in Michigan. He also goes on to describe how Kennedy’s Civil Rights programs were a scam — how Bobby and the governor of Mississippi conspired so that both of them would look good in front of their target audience.
In his words, the White Liberal “Freedom Riders” from the North should have stayed in the north where there were more than enough problems. In other words, it was a show — forget racism in the North, let’s go down South, where there is REAL racism.
I’ve already debunked this one several times. Really — go read the history of the 24th Infantry in Korea. Just go read it, then tell me that Truman integrated the military, because he didn’t, and it’s a bald-faced lie to assert otherwise.
Truman’s term ended in 1953. Why, then, did the Voting Rights Act of 1965 need to be enacted?
From a speech titled “The Democrats Are Dixiecrats”, Malcolm X explains the complicity of supposedly non-racist Liberal Democrats with Dixiecrats —
He’s referring to Section 2 of the XIVth Amendment —
(He’s actually incorrect about what the Constitution says, but close enough for my purposes.)
So, when the Democratic Party Senators who failed to support the removal of those “Dixiecrat Senators” from the Southern states where the rights of Blacks to vote were “abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime”, did those Civil Rights supporting, swearing to uphold the Constitution, Democratic Senators evict the representatives from those states? We already know that a “Voting Rights Act” was required in 1965. Did the President of the Senate, Hubert Humphrey, say “Hey, you Dixiecrat Senators from the states which are the reason we’re passing this legislation, you can’t filibuster because Section 2 of the 14th Amendment says you lose your seat”? No.
And I’m sure he’s really glad he did that and prevented all the lynchings, bombings, voter suppression, and everything else in the South that ended immediately.
Not.
Contemporary Black civil rights leaders disagree with that. From his speech in 1964 —
My opinion is that Blacks of the time suffered from Stockholm Syndrome. Now that it’s been 45 years since the passage of the CRA ’64 and the problems that were discussed at the time still exist, I suspect the leaders of that era would be saying “I told you so.” See also, my quote from him in my previous post about calling pulling a knife out part of the way “Progress”.
Finally, the Conservative approach is NOT more legislation. It’s enforcing existing laws. The Constitution had a solution to disenfranchised voters. As you know from history, the President of the Senate, one Hubert Humphrey, didn’t bother enforcing it.
I can’t find my earlier post about how the Police Union, or whatever, in Massachusetts was up in arms over comments both by Obama and the governor of the state (fuzzy memory), but this tasty item just showed up on CNN —
Which, in y’alls mind, is more racist —
1). Arresting a black man in his own home for … being in his own home.
2). A police office saying that the people who are pointing out that the cop in 1) is a racist are acting like “banana-eating jungle monkey(s)”.
A Boston police officer who sent a mass e-mail referring to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. as a “banana-eating jungle monkey” has apologized, saying he’s not a racist.
Well, buddy, you sure said something racist. Think about where that came from, and why.
In a related note: on the radio this morning they said that at the White House Anti-Racism Beer Bash President Obama is having a Bud Light, Sgt. Crowley is having a Blue Moon and Prof. Gates is having a Red Stripe. Never thought I’d see the day when a Harvard professor had better taste in beer than a Cambridge cop, so a good word for Prof. Gates. There’s hope for him yet.
But why deal in hypothetical questions here?
FCH,
First things first. I came into this thread for the main purpose of clarifying the real definition of the term “neo-conservative”. Are we in agreement now here? Because while I can see you’ve offered no rebuttal here, you’ve gone and used it incorrectly again in the health care thread. I’ve posted the response here to prevent the topic from spilling over into two threads.
The idea that the current, minority party GOP is run by neocons is dubious enough, but why exactly would Congressional Neocons, such as it were, want to block health care reform so much? Because firstly, “Congressional Neocon” is nearly a contradiction in terms. Neoconservatives hate the very idea of a legislature, just as much as they hate the judiciary and checks and balances in general, because it threatens the interests of the Unitary Executive (i.e., “presidential war powers” extended to perpetuity, or something). They focused all their power in seizing control of the Presidency, the only branch of federal government they see as legitimate. (I’m exaggerating a little here, but not by much.) Secondly, Neocons may be generally conservative on most issues, but they are rather moderate on everything apart from making war and hating communism/Islam. They have no more reason to obstruct health care than the average Republican.
The real GOP obstacle are the Club For Growth-type nutjobs, who object to any government action to help regular people.
Good on you for acknowledging that the Democratic Party started giving rights to The Negro. The rest of your post(s) then go on and mostly seem to want to deny this.
Also,again, the Dixiecrats didn’t “invade” the GOP, which implies non-complicity, even non-willingness, on part of the Republicans. The GOP were willing recipients. GOP supporters voted for these people, gave money to them, built their careers. Don’t blindly repeat the same flawed logic when it’s been refuted already.
What IS a conservative, exactly? I’d like to hear this. Is it the dictionary definition? If it isn’t, why not? What is your definition, exactly, and can you cite me a non-partisan site – the “Conservative Clearing House” that determines who is, or who isn’t, a conservative, one coudl say – that supports it?
And what’s Traditional Conservatism? Is it just Burkean Conservatism? That’s a definition that would at least make some sense, though it should be pointed out that libertarianism would also not count as real conservatism, then.
——————
As long as we’re quoting Malcolm X, here’s the full context of what he was saying:
Emphasis mine.
I doubt anyone here would side against Malcolm X here and on the side of the white liberals he’s talking about. But your position is that conservatives were actually better on Civil Rights, is it not? The very words of the Civil Rights figures you selectively quote contradict that obvious falsehood to all hell.
The mainline liberal position is that as bad as the white liberals were themselves, they were at least better than the white conservatives, and that this difference did in fact end up mattering. (I mostly lean to this position, though I do sympathize with the following.) The position of radical anti-racist groups, modern day liberal cynics, etc. is that all white people were essentially indistinguishable on Civil Rights. Your position is that white conservatives were actually better, no? And as evidence you quote someone who observed that conservatives were hostile to Civil Rights to the point of – how did he put it? – show[ing] their teeth in a snarl.
More from Mr. X:
All emphases mine. That’s a lot criticism of White liberals, but contrast it to what is being said about the conservatives. Malcolm X is criticizing the alliance between white liberals and black citizens and leaders, because he doesn’t trust the white liberals and knows they won’t do enough. But you want to deny the fact that this alliance existed in the first place. That the liberals were the one pushing the piecemeal reforms and fighting for token Black rights – whereas the conservatives were opposing even those – is a fact that is apparently not being disputed by the X-man. Perhaps because he was a Black man who actually lived through that era, rather than a modern day conservative writer or pundit?
The Civil Rights leaders themselves were far Left. King was a democratic socialist who wanted to “restructure the whole of American society” to help the poor. Malcolm X famously said that “you can’t have capitalism without racism”*. Some of the more radical figures, like Angela Davis, were members of the Communist Party – indeed, for all their folly, the Communist Party was one of the first major political institutions to fight for Civil Rights – though she identifies as a democratic socialist these days. I point this out only because, while your criticisms are directed at the Democratic Party of that era – which is fine, dandy, yea – your entire thrust in this thread seems more oriented toward trying to claim that the Left as a whole was against Civil Rights. Which is a load of buffalo shit, because the movement originated from the Left.
*This particular statement by Malcolm X isn’t true, as modern day North America is quite anti-racist by recent historical and international standards, and yet is capitalist, albeit social democratic to varying degrees. Nevertheless, I agree with a kernel of what Malcolm X is saying. You can’t create or sustain large disparities of wealth, power, or property – which isn’t inevitable under capitalism, and most non-capitalist countries have steeper disparities – without the help of ideologies that class some people as intrinsically superior or inferior to others.
For nearly half a century? Wow.
Anyways, what I know about Stockholm Syndrome is that it’s a little understood phenomenon, considered by some psychologists to be largely media hype, and impossible to predict.
Meet Kevin Phillips. He’s a Republican, former advisor of the Nixon campaign, architect of the Southern Strategy, and contemporary critic of the GOP’s theocratic leanings. And what he said when putting forth his now infamous strategy:
– doesn’t seem to jive with the idea that Black folks’ long term love with the Democrats to be some wacky, inexplicable psychological aberration. Rather, it sounds like what happened was a perfectly predictable consequence of things that happened in the 60’s.
There’s a part III coming up – maybe – as I don’t feel particularly compelled to defend the men you’re attacking. But a lot of your criticisms are illogical, and I’ll write something out in full when I find the time.
Sylphhead,
No, we’re never going to agree that Neo-Cons in the GOP are some tiny little minority. I had rock-solid GOP credentials from 1980 until 1994. I campaigned for GOP candidates, ran as a party (Party-party, not “affiliated with” or “identified as”) candidate, got all the right briefings, went to all the right meetings, conventions, etc.
What I can tell you is that from 1980 until 1994 I watched an incredible change in the core Conservative value structure of the GOP. And when I say “Conservative”, I don’t mean “I hate Blacks / Queers / The Poor, that makes me Conservative”, I mean the Classical Liberalism of Locke — social liberalism, political conservativism.
Nor, contrary to your beliefs, is Democratic Socialism incompatible with a Conservative value structure — provided it fits within the mold of “socially liberal, politically conservative”. The difference between the Federal free lunch programs we have today, and what a Conservative would do is say “The states have the best understanding of where the problems are. This is something the states should implement. It’s not in the Constitution that the Federal government provides the free lunches.” That’s it. That’s the entire difference.
Likewise, the difference between a Conservative “Voting Rights Act” and the Liberal “Voting Rights (sic) Act” is the difference between Truman and Eisenhower. Truman had a “platform”, Eisenhower had the US Military. The courts had ruled that Black voter suppression was illegal, we had a Constitution which said the Representatives from those states must be reduced in proportion to the voter suppression, we didn’t need a new law.
The difference is that when people are given Free Stuff, dependency and enslavement occur. When the government sends in the US Army to enforce the Law, no dependency.
Since you’ve dissed the Stockholm Syndrome, despite the fact that it has predictive value (despite being ill-understood), I’ll explain it more simply.
Liberal tokenism created dependency. Malcolm X described this in terms of the “House Negro” and the “Field Negro”, as well as in his speech “Stop Begging the White Man”. As a result of the soul-destroying Liberal welfare policies of the past 45 years, there is still precious little of a Black Upperclass, Black unemployment is still significantly higher than White unemployment. Black poverty rate — higher. Equal Justice for Blacks — lower.
LBJ’s course of action worked — Blacks WILL vote for Liberals for the next 200 years, and Blacks will remain subjugated to White Liberal racists for that entire 200 year period. The most tragic thing of all is that with precious little real progress over the past 45 years (witness Prof. Gates being arrested in his own house, and some racist cop from Boston thinking it was okay to refer to him as a “banana eating jungle monkey”).
And that’s all that Liberals have given to Blacks — tokenism. And just as the House Negro isn’t going to go against his master, the Black voters who keep hoping the Liberals will throw them another bone, aren’t going to vote against the party that has kept them enslaved for the past 45 years. It’s the Field Negros, the ones who go against their master, the White Liberal Establishment, who see that entitlement programs are the new slavery. And if you want to deny that Black voters are enslaved to the DNC, you need only look at what RESULTS voting for Democrats has accomplished. The Black unemployment rate was almost DOUBLE the White unemployment rate back in April. Black incarceration — much higher. Black wages — still lower. On which planet does a lack of results indicate that ones supposed benefactors are actually benefactors?
Unfortunately, Malcolm X is now very much dead and cannot say “I told you so” with what has happened these past 45 years. But what he did say that you used to rebut me, very much has been the case —
Which is more destructive — claiming to be “For” a group, and never giving the group their promised equality, or being accused of being “Against” a group because one refuses to engage in “tokenism”, just for the sake of looking good?
Sylphhead,
I, for one, am looking forward to a part III.
Very sorry, then, Jake Squid, because in the interim I’ve decided to call (most of) this thread off. This has degenerated, as I’ve just read PG diagnose much earlier, into an exercise in “bobbing and weaving”. In fact, as I am wont to do, I didn’t read the entirety of the thread prior to becoming one of its main participants. If I had, I’d have seen that several of points I made had already made earlier by PG. And if they were just going to go ignored then, there was no reason to expect differently now. I think I’ve done the administrator here, and the Internet Gods in general, a disservice by being an accomplice to, and thereby encouraging, an atmosphere of bobbing and weaving, “whoever gets in the last word wins” type tit-for-tats that clogs up bandwidth and silences others who might have something to say. (Because who wants to join in a discussion where two people exclusively have gone back and forth for the past 20 posts? I know I wouldn’t.)
In retreospect, what I should have done was just stick to the topic I came in to discuss – the definition of “neo-conservative” vs. “conservative” – and that’s I’ll do now. I will field further discussion on this topic, here, but on nothing else. FCH, your latest post #110 was a welcome break, and didn’t bear the usual markings of a typical tit-for-tat post – but it’s still probably only a momentary blip, and I won’t put up a full response here. That will have to wait for an open thread or a fortuitously similarly themed article, wherein the deck will be re-shuffled and it will no longer be an endurance exercise between two people at the tail end of a thread. Here’s a one-sentence preview: Black people were drifting to the Democrats before the Great Society, casting doubt on your thesis.
——
Anyways, back to the main topic.
Do you still believe that “neo-conservative” includes “Dixiecrat”? Or “member of the Religious Right”? Do you understand that this statement you made, earlier –
– was just plain wrong? You’re far from the only one to misunderstand the term “neocon”, but I care because some choose to misunderstand it for ideological reasons. It’d be nice if you could just admit you were misinformed on this, rather than erect a spiteful last minute wall. In both of your last two posts, you posted a single petulant, recalcitrant sentence about it and then quickly changed the topic. You’re not confident you’re right, but damned if you’d sully your name by anything like a concession.
Here’s a very good list of prominent neoconservatives.
* Elliott Abrams (PNAC)
* Ken Adelman
* Richard Armitage (PNAC)
* John David Ashcroft
* Fred Barnes
* Gary Bauer
* William J. Bennett (PNAC)
* Jeffrey Bergner (PNAC)
* John Bolton (PNAC)
* Max Boot
* Ellen Bork
* Paul Bremer Lewis Paul “Jerry” Bremer III
* David Brooks
* Shoshana Bryen
* Stephen D. Bryen
* Zbigniew Brzezinski
* Stephen A. Cambone
* Eliot A. Cohen
* Midge Decter
* Paula J. Dobriansky (PNAC)
* Thomas Donnelly
* John Doolittle
* Douglas Jay Feith
* David Frum
* Francis Fukuyama (PNAC)
* Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. (PNAC)
* Reuel Marc Gerecht (PNAC)
* Newt Gingrich
* Joshua Goldberg
* Owen Harries
* Bruce P. Jackson
* Michael Johns
* Robert Kagan (PNAC)
* Zalmay Khalilzad (PNAC)
* Jeane Kirkpatrick
* Henry Kissinger
* Neal Kozodoy
* Charles Krauthammer
* Irving Kristol
* William Kristol (PNAC)
* Michael Arthur Ledeen
* Jay Lefkowitz
* I. Lewis Libby a.k.a. “Scooter”
* Michael H. Mobbs
* Joshua Muravchik
* Rupert Murdoch
* Richard J. Neuhaus
* Michael Novak
* Martin Peretz
* Richard N. Perle (PNAC)
* Daniel Pipes
* Norman Podhoretz
* Howard Raines
* Peter W. Rodman (PNAC)
* Karl Rove
* Donald H. Rumsfeld (PNAC)
* Richard Mellon Scaife
* Gary J. Schmitt
* William Schneider, Jr. (PNAC)
* Abram N. Shulsky
* Robert W. Tucker
* Harlan Ullman
* Vin Weber (PNAC)
* Paul Dundes Wolfowitz (PNAC)
* R. James Woolsey, Jr. (PNAC)
* David Wurmser
* Meyrav Wurmser
* Dov Zakheim
* Karl Zinsmeister
* Robert B. Zoellick
(Names I mentioned earlier in bold.)
Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms are not on that list. Bill Frist and Rick Santorum are not on that list. Do you see why now?
Hmm. Where’s the non-partisan link I kindly asked for, that could back this up?
Also, history doesn’t back up the notion that prior to 1980, conservatism was socially liberal. The two Red Scares of McCarthyism and the post-WWI Palmer Raids, the Ludlow Massacre and the state war on union organizing, the Kent State shooting… I’ve already copied and pasted one long list on this post, no need for two.
Of course, you could say the men who committed these acts, almost certainly self-identifying conservatives for the sake of mainstream conservative positions, weren’t True Conservatives either. But you’ve clearly stated before that you considered this True/unTrue distinction to be an artifact of the present times only:
– emphases mine – so if you say it again here, it’d represent a hasty backpedaling on what you said earlier.
In a related note: on the radio this morning they said that at the White House Anti-Racism Beer Bash President Obama is having a Bud Light, Sgt. Crowley is having a Blue Moon and Prof. Gates is having a Red Stripe.
Probably just as well that none of them are really having tequilla.
Sylphhead @ whatever:
I’ve explained myself before and I will explain myself again. Briefly.
When you read the genuine history — the real historical facts — about what produced the (Neo-)Conservative Revolution that led to the GOP winning the White House in 1980, and control of Congress shortly thereafter, the PEOPLE who changed the balance of power WERE, beyond any shadow of a doubt, primarily of the “Dixiecrat” bent.
You can try to avoid this inescapable conclusion, but the “Redding” of the Democratic “Solid South” is just an historical fact.
Likewise, when you read the genuine history — and I included supporting statements from Malcolm X, a political contemporary of the actual, historical events, it is manifestly clear that the “Solid South” had the full backing of the entire Democratic machine, including the “Liberals” you want to credit for the Civil Rights movement. Actually living ones convictions is far more important than just talking about them, and the period from the 1940’s to the present make it very clear that Liberals do not live their convictions. And here’s a quick timeline —
1948 — Truman “Integrates” the military. This is the same Truman who is on the record as hating non-Whites. He advocates for Blacks to go back to Africa as well.
1948 — Then Representative Johnson votes against a repeal of the Poll Tax and against an Anti-Lynching bill (quote @56)
1950 — Korean War starts, 24th Infantry joins the conflict, commanded top-down by whites over blacks. ALL commanders of any white person were white.
1951 — 24th Infantry is disbanded after racially motivated smear campaign by the top-down, white-over-black leadership (which includes Truman’s Commander-In-Chief, Lily-White, N*gg*r, Jap, Chinaman, Jew hating ass. Quote @ 101).
1953 — Eisenhower takes office.
1954 — Brown v Board of Education. Democrats oppose integration with threats of violence.
1954 — Integration of the Military completed.
1957 — Eisenhower sends the troops to enforce school integration.
1957 — Then US Senator Lyndon Johnson talks about “Uppity Negros” and how they have to be appeased before they gain political power (quote @56).
1957 — Eisenhower signs Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law. He originated the bill.
1960 — Eisenhower signs Civil Rights Act of 1960 into law. He originated the bill.
1961 — Kennedy invades Cuba to re-establish White American domination of Cuba. Kennedy’s invasion fails and Cuba retains its independence.
1964 — Johnson signs Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. The bill passes with overwhelming Republican Party support (4-to-1) and lackluster Democratic Party support (2-to-1).
1964 — Johnson invents (yeh, they declassified the report in 2005 which shows there was no such thing — Johnson’s administration made it up so he could send the military to kill yellow skinned revolutionaries trying to get rid of white skinned colonialists) the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
1965 — Democratic Senators filibuster Voting Rights Act of 1965. Hubert Humphrey, the President of the Senate, does not unseat Senators from states that have suppressed the Black Vote. See Amendment XIV, Section 2. Humphrey swore to uphold the Constitution as part of his Oath of Office.
1965 — Johnson sends combat troops to Vietnam. Middle and Upper class Whites are given preferential deferments, Blacks and working class Whites are sent into combat. Johnson’s interventionist, military expansionist, racist behavior foreshadows Bush Jr and Iraq II.
1968 — Nixon elected in part on basis of promise to get American forces out of the war.
1969 — Nixon begins to “Vietnamize” the war, starting to remove American forces.
1973 — Nixon ends hostilities against the Vietnamese.
1975 — The war Kennedy and Johnson started to prop up European Colonialism in Vietnam finally ends and the country is liberated and Vietnam becomes independent.
2003 — Bush Jr, mirroring the behavior of Kennedy and Johnson, invade Iraq. Like Kennedy and Johnson, the war props up the Military Industrial Complex Eisenhower warned against.
2009 — 45 Years after Johnson’s appeasement of African American voters with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the first African American President takes office.
2009 — Mirroring Nixon 36 years earlier, Obama “Iraqizes” the war, beginning the liberation of Iraq from American imperialism.
Not so much on loving the Black, Brown or Yellow skinned people were those rascally Democrats back when they were supposed to be for Civil Rights.
(Amp — Do my comments about Cuban and Vietnamese Independence sound like Right-Wing boilerplate rantings to you? Are you starting to see where I actually come from yet? Are you seeing the “Results Not Platitudes” bent?)
I based my statement on the withholding of race based I believe on Cowley’s police report written about 30 or so after the incident. By then, he had contact with the reporting witness and as stated, IDed her race in the report on the same page. I found it interesting that in the report submitted of the incident, that Gates race was included and her race was not. So that made me wonder.
In my state, police reports are public records though my department refuses without pressure to release anything but the first page (and thus regularly fails the CPRA compliance audit given by a sunshine law advocacy organization) but still, everyone, whether suspect, witness or victim has race, gender included. The addresses and phone # are often blacked out but the race and gender are not.
Citations are also public information and include race and gender of motorists cited or stopped (and pedestrians in some cases) though state IDs and driver’s licenses I believe stopped carrying racial and gender data. So the racial ID and gender is based on the officer’s assessment. During my city’s department’s five-year state-issued consent decree, officers had to enter racial and gender codes on their mobile data terminals for every traffic stop. I think that period of forced transparency on my city’s department kind of shaped me to expect that the data would just routinely appear on at least most police reports.
I realize state laws can differ but her race wasn’t excluded from Cowley’s report, just when he listed the parties involved. But maybe there’s an assumption within his agency and its records department that not listing the race of the person means they’re White.
I’m saying that based on what the information was that was received by the officer. But the only answer to that is the 911 tape of the call to dispatch by the reporting witness. It’s helpful to know what’s on it in part b/c the information on whether or not the RP mentioned the race of the men she saw was an issue of conflict between her statements to the media and Cowley’s report. And also because that’s the information that the officer’s got to start with even if it’s wrong.
As for racial profiling, there’s this assumption that it begins and ends with the initial contact between an officer and a subject (and my city’s police commission makes this mistake all the time by saying, “it was dark, how could the officer see the race? which could be legitimate but you still have to look at how the entire stop was conducted). I think the officer made an assumption based partly on his information of it being a possible burglary and when Gages IDed himself as a professor of Harvard (which was probably done since he was actually on Harvard property)could have handled it better especially considering his background (which was used by the department to mitigate his actions).
His backup officer (Figueroa who arrived in the middle of it) didn’t really engage with Gates at any time, according to his supplemental report. Force was minimal so the officers didn’t appear to see Gates as a threat either true or falsely. I think that some officers do act in ways like Cowley when their authority is challenged or they’re called racist if that’s what even happened. I’m amazed that someone who came from a racial profiling expertise background like Crowley couldn’t deal with that.
I’ve audited a class on tactical communication in my city’s police department and there’s a lot of good skill training in that class, but even so it has to be accepted and internalized by the officers. It seemed to have received a positive response in the class I sat in and it was a pretty good cross section of the department’s sworn division.
We’ve had a couple cases here which bore some similar elements. Black men, on or near their properties in more affluent neighborhoods where they might constitute a racial minority. I have worked with or known many people who have lived in neighborhoods and have had police stop them, follow them or come up and accuse them of trespassing in their own driveway. Some talk back because after all, they usually have to defend their presence in their own neighborhood in ways Whites usually don’t (as if a White motorist is racially profiled, it’s most likely to be in a poorer neighborhood where there are few Whites as my mother discovered when she tutored young women.).
That’s what makes me a bit jaded in this situation. There’s not much dialogue on this issue at all unless it’s a man or woman of color who enjoys class privilege (which includes the knowledge that some things don’t change)
Gates was actually pretty lucky. Out here, we had a Black LAPD sergeant who was forced on the hot ground at gunpoint by officers for “trespassing” on his own property. He said the only thing that saved him was his badge.
As for backup, I was puzzled by that in part because in my city’s agency and others around here, officers don’t handle felony calls by themselves (and a possible burglary in progress report would definitely qualify as one also in part because it’s an officer safety issue).
They always dispatch at least two and that would apply to a sergeant as well though sergeants are rarely dispatched in my city as primary responders.