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]

Last year, in front of my office on campus there was some multicultural program. They asked people to take a step forward or backward based on what it was like for them when growing up. They asked questions like if their parents had to work multiple jobs to support the family. One of the questions that was asked was whether if their parents told them that if they worked hard, they can be anything they want to be. Some people took a step forward, and many took a step back. I was watching by the side since I just got back from the library. I felt like I wanted to take a step back. I remember since I came to this country, my dad telling me that I will never be like one of them, that I will never fit in, that there are things I just can't be. That left a very heavy impact on my heart. Growing up, I never fit like I could be friends with Americans, namely white people. Around them, I felt smaller, I felt like the stuff I did and the things I knew was weird and not interesting. To some degree it was ironic that my only friends in hs were asian since for a longtime before that I was very wary about being asian people. That somehow being around asian people, people will see me as asian. That people will think less of me. I guess I found comfort amongst Asian people, I knew that at least around them, I didn't have to worry about being judged, I didn't have to feel smaller than them. I did okay in school, but these days I understand the bias there exists in schooling. I wasn't the most stellar student in hs or in college, but I believe I wasn't too bad. In part I know that is because my parents are both educated, and the deep rooted feeling of over a millennium for Chinese people that if they do well in school, they can achieve greatness, even the communist couldn't get rid of this one, not that they tried. And that is what I was told to do, and I guess when you're young, you do what you are told. Especially the one that is raised in the chinese mindset. Anyway, it wasn't until college, where I started feeling like I could be friends with white people, that they won't judge me. That people are very different, my difference is just one of them. I don't think I had good white friends until grad school. At times, I still feel like when I don't know something, or make some food that's a little bit different, they are going to look at me, and I'll feel like I'm less of a person.

I know these issues are not isolated to me. Lots of people of every race deal with self-esteem issues for being a little big, for being a little short, being a little less than not good enough, and it is hard. However, if you place the history of how your parents were raised growing up, their experiences, especially if they were educated, they were told they can't succeed, that if even if they try, they will never make it in this white world, things add up. You create layers upon layers of issues, and it is hard. In the end, I think it's these hardships that makes it less-likely for people to succeed. In the end there are lots of things in this life that is unfair. There have been study done on how tall people are more likely to succeed than people who are short, they make more money and I guess according to these studies that they are happier. That's one of these things that is unfair across the world - being born tall is an inherent advantage over people who are short. It's not to say that short people never succeed, or get the girl, but when it comes down to it, many short men feel like they are not as good. If you add on bald, you are even a little worse off. Is it fair that the short, bald men keep getting the short end of the stick about something they have no control over? Are they less of a human being? Can't they learn and become very valuable members of society? I think most people would agree that they can. But when short, bald men are systematically being looked over for promotions, for marriage, for that leading-man role, then there's something wrong. It's not to say there's something evil about tall men with a full head of hair, but they have to realize that there's something unfair. That just because they're going home with that girl over their shorter, balder friend, it doesn't make them a superior human being. It's just a privilege society has given them, a privilege they have in this world that they did not earn.

Today we had to move some furniture around in one of my other offices. The building manager came in to asked us if we had helped them move the stuff around. Namely, he talked to the white guy in the room. I was sitting right beside him and I've been in this building for almost 9 years now. Even though most of me feel like it is because we haven't interacted that much, he may not know my name, I couldn't help feeling if that guy was looking right past me because I'm Asian. I've worked in groups with people, where the company or manager person automatically started talking to the white male in the group, then the white female, then the none white male, then lastly, the none white female, even in the case where I've done a vast majority of the work. You look at the person in charge, many times it's a white male, you just feel a little smaller, a little less confident in what you have to say. But in the end, it those who do the talking get the credit. Perhaps you can say that it is my fault for not speaking up, but knowing all the tough times and insecurities when it comes to having been brought up/grown up a certain way, I really have trouble believing in that.

I think saying that I can care if you understood or not, or if you agreed or not, maybe the wrong statement. I guess I should've said that I know I can't make you understand or agree. It's something you have to come to agreement your self.