#Herbert: Anger has its place
5083 Dead, 216 since 1/20/09
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/opinion/01herbert.html?_r=1
August 1, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Anger Has Its Place
By BOB HERBERT
Cambridge, Mass.
No more than five or six minutes elapsed from the time the police were
alerted to the possibility of a break-in at a home in a quiet residential
neighborhood and the awful clamping of handcuffs on the wrists of the
distinguished Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
If Professor Gates ranted and raved at the cop who entered his home
uninvited with a badge, a gun and an attitude, he didn’t rant and rave
for long. The 911 call came in at about 12:45 on the afternoon of July 16
and, as The Times has reported, Mr. Gates was arrested, cuffed and about
to be led off to jail by 12:51.
The charge: angry while black.
The president of the United States has suggested that we use this flare-
up as a “teachable moment,” but so far exactly the wrong lessons are
being drawn from it — especially for black people. The message that has
gone out to the public is that powerful African-American leaders like Mr.
Gates and President Obama will be very publicly slapped down for speaking
up and speaking out about police misbehavior, and that the proper
response if you think you are being unfairly targeted by the police
because of your race is to chill.
I have nothing but contempt for that message.
Mr. Gates is a friend, and I was selected some months ago to receive an
award from an institute that he runs at Harvard. I made no attempt to
speak to him while researching this column.
The very first lesson that should be drawn from the encounter between Mr.
Gates and the arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley, is that Professor
Gates did absolutely nothing wrong. He did not swear at the officer or
threaten him. He was never a danger to anyone. At worst, if you believe
the police report, he yelled at Sergeant Crowley. He demanded to know if
he was being treated the way he was being treated because he was black.
You can yell at a cop in America. This is not Iran. And if some people
don’t like what you’re saying, too bad. You can even be wrong in what you
are saying. There is no law against that. It is not an offense for which
you are supposed to be arrested.
That’s a lesson that should have emerged clearly from this contretemps.
It was the police officer, Sergeant Crowley, who did something wrong in
this instance. He arrested a man who had already demonstrated to the
officer’s satisfaction that he was in his own home and had been minding
his own business, bothering no one. Sergeant Crowley arrested Professor
Gates and had him paraded off to jail for no good reason, and that brings
us to the most important lesson to be drawn from this case. Black people
are constantly being stopped, searched, harassed, publicly humiliated,
assaulted, arrested and sometimes killed by police officers in this
country for no good reason.
New York City cops make upwards of a half-million stops of private
citizens each year, questioning and frequently frisking these men, women
and children. The overwhelming majority of those stopped are black or
Latino, and the overwhelming majority are innocent of any wrongdoing. A
true “teachable moment” would focus a spotlight on such outrages and the
urgent need to stop them.
But this country is not interested in that.
I wrote a number of columns about the arrests of more than 30 black and
Hispanic youngsters — male and female — who were doing nothing more than
walking peacefully down a quiet street in Brooklyn in broad daylight in
the spring of 2007. The kids had to hire lawyers and fight the case for
nearly two frustrating years before the charges were dropped and a
settlement for their outlandish arrests worked out.
Black people need to roar out their anger at such treatment, lift up
their voices and demand change. Anyone counseling a less militant
approach is counseling self-defeat. As of mid-2008, there were 4,777
black men imprisoned in America for every 100,000 black men in the
population. By comparison, there were only 727 white male inmates per
100,000 white men.
While whites use illegal drugs at substantially higher percentages than
blacks, black men are sent to prison on drug charges at 13 times the rate
of white men.
Most whites do not want to hear about racial problems, and President
Obama would rather walk through fire than spend his time dealing with
them. We’re never going to have a serious national conversation about
race. So that leaves it up to ordinary black Americans to rant and to
rave, to demonstrate and to lobby, to march and confront and to sue and
generally do whatever is necessary to stop a continuing and deeply racist
criminal justice outrage.
--
"Universal" American healthcare coverage, explained:
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor
to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
bread." (Anatole France from The Red Lily, 1894)
Phlip
> up as a “teachable moment,” but so far exactly the wrong lessons are
> being drawn from it — especially for black people. The message that has
> gone out to the public is that powerful African-American leaders like Mr.
> Gates and President Obama will be very publicly slapped down for speaking
> up and speaking out about police misbehavior, and that the proper
> response if you think you are being unfairly targeted by the police
> because of your race is to chill.
>
> I have nothing but contempt for that message.
Here's a common pattern among police responding to "domestic
disturbance" calls.
The disturbers calm down and sweet talk the police, who then leave
politely.
A short time later, the police return to the same location, and
someone is dead.
To avoid that pattern, police procedure frequently involves yanking
out one side of the argument, and letting them cool their heels in
jail for a while. And - guess what? no charges are filed.
So, I guess that police must indeed change their standard procedures
if the disturbers are upscale, professional, goateed, or educated,
because we all know perfectly well that only the lower classes have
domestic disturbances that lead to violence...
(On a lighter note, this XKCD is to die for: http://xkcd.com/617/ )
5083 Dead, 216 since 1/20/09
Now all you need in the Gates case is a domestic violence element...
edi...@netpath.net
to spend all the time in the world trying to gently calm down an
agitated screaming idiot like a therapist being paid $100 an hour and
not having to worry about anyone else that hour but that one client.
http://www.Internet-Gun-Show.com - your source for hard-to-find stuff!
tv
As the actor who played Howard Hughes in the movie said," Ivy League
Priques think they own the world."
5083 Dead, 216 since 1/20/09
> Bullshit. You can't expect any overworked, undermanned police force to
> spend all the time in the world trying to gently calm down an agitated
> screaming idiot like a therapist being paid $100 an hour and not having
> to worry about anyone else that hour but that one client.
Poor little racist idiot.
You still haven't figured out that the cops covered themselves in shit on
that one.
Still hoping they'll side with you when the race war comes?