What do they call a Black man with a PHD? You know and it is a shame. What’s worst is that my parents told me that as part of the obligatory “don’t get to comfortable with certain folks” talk. Dr. Henry Louis Gates did not listen to the warning that President Obama’s election would not change America overnight. That warning came repeatedly from Obama himself, Rev. Jackson, Rev. Sharpton and everyone who really knows what’s what.
The whole “I can’t believe this happened on Harvard Square” thing tripped me out because Malcolm X told us that the South is everything south of Canada and he lived in the same Boston. Bill Russell said he did not play for Boston but for the Celtics after people got so ugly when he moved into a certain neighborhood. Can you believe that someone broke into his home and defecated in his bed then covered it with the comforter? That was wrong; as wrong as someone who looks like us robbing Mrs. Rosa Parks in her home. I wish she would have done like Pope John Paul II when he was shot and pointed the guy out in a spirit of forgiveness at the Million Man March. While she is a forgiving person, the street in me would have smooth hung my Rockports in his behind.
I love me some PBS with those long projects by Ken Burns but Dr. Gates series about who is related to White people kind of tripped me out—like those Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemming family folks. I don’t want to know so I stop my people when they start that talk or I leave the room because I see those people in the post office everyday. We are not talking about generations removed from the drama because sharecropping (the last part of slavery) did not end until the mid 70s. In other words, there are big farms in my community that got big because the labor was free then systematically cheap.
The USDA/Pigford case is addressing discrimination problems that grew from the county committees deciding who would farm and who would farm for someone else. The progress in Black America that is chronicled by Dr. Gates and Soledad O’Brien might be reversed by the current generation of softer, less focus, bling-preoccupied youth.
So the mayor of Cambridge is a sister and the president was a little rough on the police. Rather than taking Dr. Gates class or attending his lecture, the young Black, White and Brown guys need to catch me on the tennis court after the matches for my class “How to encounter the police and live to talk about it.” Repeat after me, “Officer, I was wrong” while remembering the event for a possible lawsuit.
Finally, what up with Soledad’s CNN Black in America; like she discovered Black America last year. “I have found this fascinating group of people living among us called Blacks and it turns out they are different in many ways from other Americans.” Soledad, Gates and other Harvard Blacks (who outnumber Morehouse, Spelman, Hampton and Howard in the current administration) don’t know our community as well as the Arkansas connection that came with Clinton in the 90s—Black and White. Don’t start that “who’s blacker: Barrack or Bill” nonsense because that was answered this time last year.
On a side note, I am really starting to think President Obama made a deal with Hillary that he would push real reform and let her have it in four year unless he was wildly successful.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Thinking about locals vs. the college community turned me to two classic film scenes. And Good Will Hunting was set in Boston.
Spike Lee’s School Daze: KFC —-Language Warning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNOfAFUT4xU
Good Will Hunting Apples Scene —Language Warning
Project Logic Ga 
I like this video.
BUSTED: The Citizen’s Guide to Surviving Police Encounters
Does Dr. Gates have a book coming out soon? Just wondering. I like your post Slyram.
I read the police report (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0723092gates3.html).
Didn’t Dr. Gates just come from the Black in America 2 taping? His adrenalin must have been high based on the the reports version of his behaviour. Good grief!
His behaviour, based on what I read in the report, kind of reminded me of rappers or gang members who want to create some ‘street cred’ — they get in trouble, get handcuffed, get booked, perhaps even serve time and their new CD sells millions of copies. Or the gang member is now elevated in his community as the ‘new leader.’
If President Obama can state this bias, I should do the same. I enjoyed my time as a Judiciary staffer on the Hill and therefore the law enforcement/crime person on staff. I met with a lot of police officers during the omnibus crime bill debate in the mid 90s. That’s the bill/law that Biden referenced during the campaign as one of his signature laws.
Our military are heroes but before 9/11, people often forgot that police and firefighters face danger also. Police are people also and men in the South (Black and White) know that pride won’t let them hear too much mouth—even when you are right. We see it all the time on the T.V. show Cops.
The sub-debate is almost “what about the people who thing stuff that happens to other people can’t happen to them.” It is called “securing the situation” and even when you are right, when the police tell you to chill out, you are better off chilling out.
I know a hothead in my town who asked the police to cuff him the second they arrived at some drama outside the local club. He later said he did not want to get ticked off and swing on the other party or the police.
“I found the law and the law won” You know the homies in my community are thinking that Gates was thinking “I am not a regular guy…you can’t do me like this.”
slyram,
You’re far, far wiser than most people – of any Race – when it comes to dealing with the police. You’re understanding of the concept and attendant needs of “securing the situation” puts you far ahead of the curve.
People forget that a cop is always – if he’s worth anything as a cop – going to try to maintain security and control of the scene in question. It’s safer for everyone that way. It’s when the scene goes out of control that people get hurt or killed.
If the cop asks you for your ID, even if you’re in your own house which you just broke into, you hand it over promptly, but with no sudden movements. You don’t get up in his face and loudly cry racism or anything else that looks like you’re trying to be distracting or to take control of the situation. 😉
I’m from Florida originally. There, if either Gates or I behaved the way with a lot of Florida cops, either one of us get our heads split open and then hauled off to jail.
Can I talk you into running for office?
First, Donna I will never run for office because the vetting process is a monster.
Jonalan: Helen put the police report on her facebook page and I can believe Gates said something about the officer’s mother and was still walking. In my part of woods, you never do that..period.
Police are people and if you catch one at the wrong time after a long shift, you might push the wrong button. The same thing is true with anyone. When I watch the T.V. show “Cops,” I am constantly saying that someone is lucky the cameras are rolling that day or dude would get his tail kicked by the police. That thin blue line is strong; so you don’t want to make enemies with all area law enforcement. Hell, I am cautious about commenting on the givers of the federal stimulus money because law enforcement and local officials want that money. I can imagine a local official thinking “we need to get his big mouth guy…get the police to pull him over if he is doing 46 in a 45…then maybe he will go off and get a ride up the river to the big house.”
At some point, your reaction to someone being wrong can be worst than the original wrong. When I taught job training to young ladies, one client said that she walked into a well-placed trap. Three young friends worked with her and another one was waiting daily for them to get off. It was clear by the look in their eyes that they wanted my client to quit some their friend could get hire. After lunch, the girls walked in with a fruit basket innocently and asked my student (who was the only Black in the workplace) if she wanted a banana. She went off and the owner walked in a fired her on the spot—mission completed and the girls weren’t technically wrong.
Err on the side of caution.. especially when there is money on table. The managers of that community service program never wondered if I was dating those clients—in a room all day with 30 women but no. Like the banker/boss said recently on that Chris Rock movie “I think I love my Wife”….the boss told Rock’s character “many men loss a lot of money chasing women but few men loss women chasing money.
Don Lemon on CNN actually said that the Gate arrest situation is racial profiling in the sense that Gates was profiling White cops. Interesting and the Black officer at the house said today that he agrees with the arrest but Gates’ reaction would have been different if he was the first officer at the house. I think that Pookie in Roxbury would have gotten his behind grind-up by Five-O if he said something about a White officers’ mother and heaven knows what would have happen if Pookie said something about the brother’s mother. Oh hell no. The quality of the neighborhood was a factor.
I was reading elsewhere on the web and just realized that this post started with an old Malcolm X quote. That Toure is one hip social commentator.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-21/skips-racist-wakeup-call/?cid=tag:all1
That’s because Malcolm X’s 40-year-old quote is still true: “What do you call a black man with a Ph.D.? A n.”