So I got the name of the town wrong, and looked up the wrong town. Due to my error, I thought the National Review had made a huge error. But it turns out I’m the fool today.
The original post is recorded below the fold for posterity.
According to the National Review, 99% White is “Mostly Minority”
I thought the AP story about Bob Dylan getting checked by cops in Long Beach, New Jersey, was pretty funny. Mainly because of the two young cops having no idea who “Bob Dylan” is.
But I was surprised to read this take on it, from a reader’s email in the National Review:
I just read an AP article this morning about an older white man who was walking around a mostly minority, lower income NJ town. This made him suspicious enough for one resident to call the police. When the 24 year old officer arrived she asked the man’s name. “Bob Dylan,” he said. She didn’t know who he was. She asked what he was doing there. “I’m on tour,” he said. She asked if he had ID. He didn’t. Another officer arrived, this one 20 years old. He didn’t know who Bob Dylan was either. They took him in a squad car to the hotel where he “claimed” he was staying, at which point his people vouched for him. He reportedly “Couldn’t have been any nicer to them.”
Now compare this to to the professor Gates incident: A white man is reported to the police—because of the color of his skin.
There are a ton of problems with this, not least of which is: Long Beach, New Jersey is 98.5% white.
(Also, the median income in Long Beach is $60,000 a year, and 95% of Long Beach’s population is above the poverty line. Someone should let NR know that there’s this neat new invention called “the internet,” which makes fact-checking so easy even Jonah Goldberg could do it.)
To be fair, another NR reader pointed out a difference that wasn’t fictional, although the reader dismissed this comparison as “race mongering”:
- Black professional with ID, in his own house, is arrested.
- Disheveled looking white man with no ID snoops around someone else’s house (Dylan got curious at a ‘for sale sign” and looked through the window, prompting the call to the police) gets a ride to his hotel.
In short: A comparison that can be falsified with 10 seconds of googling is fair commentary, and is the sort of thing the NR highlights. But a truthful comparison is something only a “race monger” would do. Got it.
Hat tip: Kevin’s twitter.
Amp,
Long BRANCH, not Long BEACH. The former is still majority white for the overall town, but I suppose it’s possible that the particular neighborhood in which Dylan was walking was majority non-white, and there’s no reason the AP would say, “The incident began at 5 p.m. when a resident said a man was wandering around a low-income, predominantly minority neighborhood several blocks from the oceanfront looking at houses,” if it weren’t within the realm of possibility. Long Branch is also a lot poorer than Long Beach, as well as poorer than NJ as a whole.
That was a great story. Poor Dylan. I wonder how he felt?
Guilty of Not Being Bob Dylan
Raggedy Man wanders where the rich folk thrive,
Arrested for dressing down too far from slums and dives
Cop says “you don’t look like no celebrity to me”
“It ain’t legal being poor in the land of the free.”
Stopped on the street for breathing while black.
Charge: resisting arrest cause he talked back.
Judge says: “No cop would ever say a thing he did not see”.
“This a good clean bust here in the land of the free.”
White thug goes bashing Indians on the Rez.
Jurisdictional tangles keep him free and fresh.
And cops say “the vics don’t look like celebrities to me”.
“Got more important crimes to solve in the land of the free”.
Cart by her side, she sleeps in the street.
All her stuff gets trashed by the cop on the beat.
Cop says “you don’t look like no celebrity to me”.
“It ain’t legal being poor in the land of the free.”
Another big difference is that Dylan had reason to be amused that kids these days don’t know his shit, whereas Gates had reason to be pissed that showing his ID wasn’t enough to make the cops leave him alone. Dylan probably realized that claiming to be a world famous rock star while ambling around all grizzled and lacking ID probably sounded a wee loopy, even if they did know who he was. (Also, as my friend Matt pointed out, wouldn’t his ID have read “Robert Zimmerman”?) But the matter got cleared up, the cops let it drop, and la-de-dah, end scene. Gates says, “WTF?” and cop gets his dick up: “No uppity perfesser can talk to me like that! Haul him in for lippy!”
IOW, the Cambridge Police acted stupidly. And no, I won’t be inviting them for beer at my house.
I believe Bob Dylan officially changed his name from Zimmerman some time in the 60s.
Also, I’m not entirely sure that the fact that somebody looks dishevelled is a good reason to arrest them.
You’re right, Hugh. He was walking while disheveled.
I think this story proves the opposite of what the national review is trying to say. (No matter what town it took place in.) Suspicion arose from (I imagine) neighbors when a person who may not have had authorization to do so were poking in and around a private residence and the police were called.
In Gates situation, he showed ID, was still challenged and got into a brewhaha and was arrested.
In Dylan’s situation (despite the gen gap lol of the cops not knowing who he was) he had no ID and told a questionable story (to the young officers) and they escorted him back to his hotel where his identity was vouched for. No arrest was made.
I think this is what the conflict is all about. An escalation and arrest is more likely to occur when police stop a black man. A “giving the benefit of the doubt and double checking facts” is more likely to occur when dealing with a white man.
I just don’t get what the NR thinks it is trying to prove.
Lexie,
To the NR folks, the big point of the Dylan story is that Dylan reportedly “Couldn’t have been any nicer to them” (the cops who were questioning what he was doing), whereas Gates committed the crime of pissing off a cop and was justifiably arrested for it. How dare this black man believe that he should be able to get a police officer, a representative of the state, to show ID so that the black man unhappy with how he has been treated can report him? Uppity negro. Ha ha, he sure got his when the cop got him to walk over his threshold so he could be arrested on his porch for “disorderly conduct.”
Moreover, for Jonah Goldberg, it’s inconceivable that perhaps a black man, whose presence in certain places has been challenged many times in his life, will have reason to be a bit testier about having it challenged in his own damn house, than a white man who hasn’t had those experiences and who would have to accede that wandering around looking in people’s windows does seem a bit odd.
All people are blank slates who should act the same way — specifically, the way the white man acts — when confronted by police officers. This, you see, is “color blindness.” Grasping why the black man might bring a different perspective is itself Racism, because you see his race and think it might have affected his life in some way. Remember, he who smelt it (he who perceives race’s possible influence on a situation) dealt it (must be the Real Racist).