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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-01-09 04:12 AM
Original message
Bob Herbert: Anger Has Its Place
Anger Has Its Place

By BOB HERBERT
Published: July 31, 2009

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/opinion/01herbert.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1249117772-a8KsHLCI0GDejZAg501b+w
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Sarah Ibarruri Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-01-09 06:26 AM
Response to Original message
1. I think.....
the policeman is a racist. No doubt about it. However, racism runs deep among the whites of police precincts throughout the U.S.

Nonetheless, I think the policeman was properly embarrassed, and his primitive-brained reaction, and the differences between the highly intellectual Mr. Gates and the brainless gut reactions of the policeman have been compared. I agree that right wing a-holes are out there at the ready to attack any black person for anything, but the rest of us are ready to strike back with a vengeance, and we did. THAT is why it even became an issue that gigantic. We refused to back down and made it something that would not die, and that, as they say, is a good thing.




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glowing Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-01-09 07:06 AM
Response to Reply #1
2. Gates said that the Police man was not a racist.. I think that the power of the police
to do whatever they want whenever they want is an abuse no matter what color or who you are. Power corrupts; and the police have become corrupted. Think about it; this was a normal arrest for a police person in Cambridge.. cuff, and ask questions later. Mace, and ask questions later. Taze, and ask questions later. This is how granmas in wheelchairs are tazed in the airport. Its an abuse of power.
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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-01-09 10:03 AM
Response to Reply #2
8. The piece of this that everyone can identify with is the abuse of power. n/t
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Sarah Ibarruri Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-02-09 05:11 PM
Response to Reply #2
15. Absolute abuse of power and should not be permitted -
They need to hire people with a brain who can differentiate between a dangerous situation and a situation where the individual needs to be talked to.
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bemildred Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-02-09 05:46 PM
Response to Reply #15
16. Word.
This feeble little old black professor is no threat to anyone, and any cop worth his pay ought to be able and willing to make that distinction.
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Sarah Ibarruri Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-02-09 06:11 PM
Response to Reply #16
17. Yes, unless the person is a psycho, mentally ill, of inferior intellect....
... or a racist.
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1monster Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-01-09 09:00 AM
Response to Reply #1
4. Bill Maher: "I don't think he's a racist. I think he's a cop."
I'm inclined to agree.
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Sarah Ibarruri Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-02-09 05:09 PM
Response to Reply #4
14. Good point! nt
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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-01-09 10:00 AM
Response to Reply #1
7. The Cambridge police department was embarassed
in front of the whole country. And no one wants to be the next department to go through that. This incident has been useful for that if for no other reason.
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Sarah Ibarruri Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-02-09 05:08 PM
Response to Reply #7
13. I totally agree. It makes all cops look like stupid neanderthals nt
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Syntheto Donating Member (283 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-01-09 08:58 AM
Response to Original message
3. Do you honestly beleive...
...that merely by being White, you could go off on a police officer and get away with it?

Here's a test:

Providing you're White, of course...

Start doing a brake job on your classic car in your driveway, in work clothes... a neighbor who is used to seeing you in a suit and tie and carrying an attache case, calls 911 to report that somebody is in your driveway, messing with your car (let's just say you have a '67 Jaguar E-Type..sigh..) and that they don't recognize who it is.

The police pull up and ask you for ID, and to step away from the car... You're irritated, because you can't get the calipers apart on one of the disk brakes, you're tired, and you're running late... you tell the cop(s) that it's your car; you're dirty and you're wallet is in your house... then you go back to what you were doing, dismissing the police officer sent to investigate...

If you want, make it a Black officer, or better yet, a Black Female officer.

She insists you show her identification. You, being an attorney, or some other self-important professional, have a built-in distaste for the working class cop, and you probably make three times what they make in a year, plus you've been published in important papers, and you are highly pissed that some low-life nobody is interfering with you. You might feel uncomfortable with a Black person anyway, as many Blacks are uncomfortable with White people, (Big surprise there, right?) and you might have the worldview that, bottomline, Blacks are always looking for a chance to bag Whitey.

So, you tell the cop that you want her badge number and right now. She asks you calm down and step back from the car. You tell her that perhaps she should get her mother to step away from the car and this is what happens when Blacks get some power and a gun. Except, of course, you're yelling all of this in a loud voice, to insure that your neighbors hear it.

But, of course, merely by being White, the Black Female Officer backs down with a hasty 'Yassuh' and you go back to your business.

Do you really think that's how it works? I submit that you would soon find yourself testing the newest Tazer that your local police department had just gotten in, when you were foolish enough to turn your back on somebody doing their job with an entitlement to respect.

Of course, there would be posts on here saying that the smart-ass got what he deserved; any idiot knows that you don't fuck with the police when they're doing their thing, no matter who you are.

Unless of course, you're drunk or stoned.

Gates was either a smug, self-important fool, perhaps drunk or stoned, or this whole thing was a set up to show that even now in America, with an Black President, it's a White world after all. It backfired. This wasn't a Rosa Parks moment, okay?

You people who keep pushing this garbage disgust me.

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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-01-09 09:31 AM
Response to Reply #3
5. And you people who keep denying obvious racism disgust
the hell out of me.
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nyhuskyfan Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-01-09 09:39 AM
Response to Reply #3
6. While Gates was not without fault...
He was inside his own home. Once the officer understood that, he should have been gone with a "have a nice day, sir" and maybe a "sorry for the confusion".

Or at the very least, he should not have lied on his police report to cover himself.
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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-01-09 06:48 PM
Response to Reply #3
11. Deleted message
Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.
 
Iwillnevergiveup Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-01-09 12:14 PM
Response to Original message
9. What I hadn't appreciated about this story before
was how quickly it all went down - 5 or 6 minutes? Outrageous - I think most cops are a different breed, regardless of their ethnicity.
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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Aug-01-09 04:16 PM
Response to Reply #9
10. I hadn't either. merh tried to show me but I didn't get it.
6 minutes. Looks like Gates wasn't the impatient one, no?
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steven johnson Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun Aug-02-09 07:20 AM
Response to Original message
12. I think the "kill'em all and let god sort'em out" attitude should change
Assuming guilt without probable cause is really stupid.

Punishing someone for the crime of "angry while black" or "comtempt of cop" is stupid and racist.
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