Lurita Doan on Gates: Quiet obedience is what gave us civil rights

[tj2001]

My family played a pivotal role in race issues at Harvard. My father, Lucien Alexis Jr. (Harvard 1942) helped spark the great race awakening at Harvard when he and fellow members of the Harvard lacrosse team arrived for a match at the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1941. The academy insisted that my father, the only black team member, be removed, declaring that no midshipman would take the field with a colored man.

Tempers boiled, and the Harvard lacrosse team prepared to forfeit the game. William J. Bingham, the university's athletic director, intervened, ordering Harvard's coach to send my father back to Cambridge... To save the Harvard lacrosse coach and team members the embarrassment of asking him to leave, my father, quietly, caught the night train back to Cambridge, telling the team it was his idea.

Boston newspapers soon joined in on the side of equality; the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs called for investigations; and another Harvard graduate, President Franklin Roosevelt, was asked to get involved. Yet, even then, Harvard didn't transcend the times... Harvard's leaders, in 1941, were not ready to see the future. Nor are they today. From his statements in the days after his arrest, Gates seems locked in the past regarding race. His first reaction was to demand preferential treatment, see himself as a victim and see his arrest as "the way a black man is treated in America." The message he has sent is that what happened to him was purely about race, when we're far beyond that... The world Gates inhabits, which prefers victimization and demands special treatment, is as wrong today as Harvard's Jim Crowism was in 1941.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-doan2-2009aug02,0,4175835.story

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On April 29, 2008, facing a recommendation by the United States Office of Special Counsel that Doan be "disciplined to the fullest extent" for "the most pernicious of political activity" prohibited by the Hatch Act and an ongoing congressional investigation, Doan submitted her resignation. Doan stated that "It has been a great privilege to serve our nation and a great President."
(i.e. the great village idiot)

[ixion]

1. why is Doan not unemployed? why is she not in jail?

it's where the little lackey belongs.

[Buzz Clik]

3. Do you share the opinion of the author of the OP that her thoughts are not worthy of consideration?

You seem to be falling into the logical fallacy that because of an incident in her past that her ideas on all subjects should be dismissed.

[ThomWV]

4. What the fuck is there not to dismiss? That playing sheep is what brings change?

[Buzz Clik]

6. She did not say that at all.

[ixion]

5. she has shown without question that she is not to be trusted

and from watching her testimony, she's an idiot to boot.

So yeah, I think she's worthless and lame, and in fact belongs behind bars for corruption.

[Buzz Clik]

7. I'm not familiar with her checkered past.

I disagree with her conclusions and was curious about her dad's story, but her article was an interesting read.

[Buzz Clik]

2. I don't agree with all of Doan's editorial, but your thread title is highly misleading.

Doan is not suggesting that quiet obedience is the way to get anything done. Rather, she seems to be stating that Gates's response to the police was rooted in an outdated assumption that every move that police make involving a black man will be drenched in prejudice. She's suggesting that he move beyond that thinking.

[bemildred]

8. An incoherent sequence of straw men.

Mr Gates did not demand "preferential treatment". He did not say "it was purely about race." At best, "We are far beyond that" is an unsupported claim that contradicts simple observation. She makes the ridiculous claim that Gates "prefers victimization." But why bother, it's the "reverse racism" claim dressed up in new clothes, with some sentimental history thrown in as a distraction.