Proof that racism is alive and well Options

[THECHICKEN]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090722/ap_on_...cholar_analysis

It took less than a day for the arrest of Henry Louis Gates to become racial lore. When one of America's most prominent black intellectuals winds up in handcuffs, it's not just another episode of profiling — it's a signpost on the nation's bumpy road to equality.

The news was parsed and Tweeted, rued and debated. This was, after all Henry "Skip" Gates: Summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Yale. MacArthur "genius grant" recipient. Acclaimed historian, Harvard professor and PBS documentarian. One of Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Americans" in 1997. Holder of 50 honorary degrees.

If this man can be taken away by police officers from the porch of his own home, what does it say about the treatment that average blacks can expect in 2009?

Earl Graves Jr., CEO of the company that publishes Black Enterprise magazine, was once stopped by police during his train commute to work, dressed in a suit and tie.

"My case took place back in 1995, and here we are 14 years later dealing with the same madness," he said Tuesday. "Barack Obama being the president has meant absolutely nothing to white law enforcement officers. Zero. So I have zero confidence that (Gates' case) will lead to any change whatsoever."

The 58-year-old professor had returned from a trip to China last Thursday afternoon and found the front door of his Cambridge, Mass., home stuck shut. Gates entered the back door, forced open the front door with help from a car service driver, and was on the phone with the Harvard leasing company when a white police sergeant arrived.

Gates and the sergeant gave differing accounts of what happened next. But for many people, that doesn't matter.

They don't care that Gates was charged not with breaking and entering, but with disorderly conduct after repeatedly demanding the sergeant's name and badge number. It doesn't matter whether Gates was yelling, or accused Sgt. James Crowley of being racist, or that all charges were dropped Tuesday.

All they see is pure, naked racial profiling.

"Under any account ... all of it is totally uncalled for," said Graves.

"It never would have happened — imagine a white professor, a distinguished white professor at Harvard, walking around with a cane, going into his own house, being harassed or stopped by the police. It would never happen."

Racial profiling became a national issue in the 1990s, when highway police on major drug delivery routes were accused of stopping drivers simply for being black. Lawsuits were filed, studies were commissioned, data was analyzed. "It is wrong, and we will end it in America," President George W. Bush said in 2001.

Yet for every study that concluded police disproportionately stop, search and arrest minorities, another expert came to a different conclusion. "That's always going to be the case," Greg Ridgeway, who has a Ph.D in statistics and studies racial profiling for the RAND research group, said on Monday. "You're never going to be able to (statistically) prove racial profiling. ... There's always a plausible explanation."

Federal legislation to ban racial profiling has languished since being introduced in 2007 by a dozen Democratic senators, including then-Sen. Barack Obama.

U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., said that was partly because "when you look at statistics, and you're trying to prove the extent, the information comes back that there's not nearly as much (profiling) as we continue to experience."

But Davis has no doubt that profiling is real: He says he was stopped while driving in Chicago in 2007 for no reason other than the fact he is black. Police gave him a ticket for swerving over the center line; a judge said the ticket didn't make sense and dismissed it.

"Trying to reach this balance of equity, equal treatment, equal protection under the law, equal understanding, equal opportunity, is something that we will always be confronted with. We may as well be prepared for it," he said.

Amid the indignation over Gates' case, a few people pointed out that he may have violated the cardinal rule of avoiding arrest: Do not antagonize the cops.

The police report said that Gates yelled at the officer, refused to calm down and behaved in a "tumultuous" manner. Gates said he simply asked for the officer's identification, followed him into his porch when the information was not forthcoming, and was arrested for no reason. But something about being asked to prove that you live in your own home clearly struck a nerve — both for Gates and his defenders.

"You feel violated, embarrassed, not sure what is taking place, especially when you haven't done anything," said Graves of his own experience, when police made him face the wall and frisked him in Grand Central Station in New York City. "You feel shocked, then you realize what's happening, and then you feel it's a violation of everything you stand for."

And that this should happen to "Skip" Gates — the unblemished embodiment of President Obama's recent admonition to black America not to search for handouts or favors, but to "seize our own future, each and every day" — shook many people to the core.

Wrote Lawrence Bobo, Gates' Harvard colleague, who picked his friend up from jail: "Ain't nothing post-racial about the United States of America."

Obviously race related...

[Inferia]

Okay, fine. Lets take black and white out of it. Lets just create a situation of an unknown race. Many of us believe that we should raise our kids a certain way so the kids can grow up to be a certain way. We don't let them eat candy before dinner because it creates a poor habit. We tell them to say thank you and please. We tell them to work hard to achieve a better life. Perhaps much of this is based on experience of the parents. That when we don't eat candy before dinner, we can grow to be a healthier adults, we worry about obesity less. We say thank and please, we work hard to achieve a better life because from experience of the parents and the people like the parents that working hard will give them a better life, that being polite will get you things life. And also for parents to neglect their kids, who abuse their kids, there will be consequences. Their kid will grow up not doing will in school, that their kid will have time surviving in this society, maybe the kid will be lazy since they didn't grow up with the mind set that when one works hard that they will get something. Maybe they will know that when they do something wrong, they will get severely punished, maybe they don't want to get beat up so they lie. Maybe if a whole generation of people grew up believing that no matter what they do, there's no way out. No matter how hard they work, they will always be looked at as criminals. What do you tell your kids in this situation? Son, work hard in school, because once you get out in the real world, people will treat you fairly? Because son, it hasn't, it hasn't treated your father fairly. Your father worked hard, but was the first to be laid off. Your father was polite, but people were still rude to me. Your father believe that no matter the color of your skin, people won't judge you because they think the less of you. No. That did not happen to your father. Your father was dragged down, kicked, and made believe that he was and never will be as good as the others. How would this effect a child? How would the thought of this at a very young age make one feel? Sometimes I can only imagine, but most of the time, I know...

You may believe that white privilege is fictional. You may believe that it is an excuse for the weak. I don't care to change your mind, I don't care what you believe in. But when you have kids, you can look into their eyes, and think about the words you say to them. And think about all those other kids in the world who are not hearing what they're hearing. And think about what would it be like if you were to believe no matter how hard you work, you will still get the short end of the stick, and think what they would grow up to be like.