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Gates--the true profiler?

Posted 34 months ago|13 comments|375 views
Written by
As you may have seen i have been following the Gates story and have written a few rants. WEELLLLL time for another.. It seems Prof. Gates may be the actual profiler. It turns out that the woman that called in the 911 call that he assumed was white--she is portuguese, which is european/hispanic. The fact here is Gates did not know if this woman was white or not, but he has just become a hypocrite--he did exactly what he said the cop has done.

Mr. Gates, it is time to apologize to everyone for the controversy and racial madness you have started!
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JAK Gladney
JAK Gladney
Saint Albans, WV
34 months ago: What does Prof. Gates owe the apology for? Being handcuffed in his own home, after proving that he was who he claimed to be?

Obama's biggest misstep was to apologize for his first impression of this case. But he's of the school that says a quick apology--even if you don't mean it, even when you honestly don't believe that you're in the wrong--is the best way of disarming your opponents.
34 months ago: Hey JAK, have you even looked into this perp? Gates is a major racist and his brother is following along. Try going way, way, way back to his entrance application into Yale. "WHITEY"? Your way off base here.
JAK Gladney
JAK Gladney
Saint Albans, WV
34 months ago: Gates grew up in Piedmont, WV (eastern panhandle)--I know his work. Gates is one of the few black scholars who didn't leave Harvard for Princeton in the wake of the Lawrence Summers scandal: before this incident, he had a reputation for being pretty level-headed.

This case is an excuse for people to look at things through predictable racial filters. Take race out of the equation: you come home, after an extended business trip, you're tired and can't get into your house, and a cop, who amazingly doesn't know you (like most cops these days, strangers to their own communities, regardless of size), is demanding to see I.D. You comply, showing TWO forms of identification (maybe he needed to produce a birth certificate), and you're arrested, not for threatening the cop with bodily harm (the standard for arrest in this kind of situation), but for acting in a "tumultuous manner" (as others have said, how far back in the statutes did they have to dig to come up with that charge? It sounds Victorian--I'd be interested to know the last time anyone else in Cambridge was arrested for acting in a "tumultuous manner".)

A man's home is his castle--as law-abiding gun owners are quick to remind us. Chris Hitchens made the point today--someone finally did: "the U.S. Constitution...makes a citizen the sovereign of his own home and privacy. There is absolutely no legal requirement to be polite in the defense of this right."
34 months ago: That long answer did not answer the question. I'm glad you know him so well though. Y might be able to bring something to the table sice we are so uninformed.

I as again to go way, way back. The man has a PHD in history for g-d sake. Why can't we use his history? The guy put in down on paper and later made a statement about it. It does go to the root cause. Gates was, has been and is a racist.
JAK Gladney
JAK Gladney
Saint Albans, WV
34 months ago: The "whitey" comment is a non-issue--if you know anything about Gates beyond the fact that he used the term "whitey" on his application, then you know that he was accepted to Yale, and he's consistently refused to take a separatist academic approach to blacks in American history (the "sweepstakes of oppression" is the phrase he's used). Gates is of the Booker T. Washington school, not Marcus Garvey--any objective look at his career and his works defies your attempts to paint him as a radical.

This arrest looks shakier by the hour. He clearly didn't threaten any of the officers with bodily harm--the standard for disorderly conduct. The 911 call makes it clear that the neighbor couldn't be sure that this was a break-in, and told the dispatcher that. And we were told, by Officer Crowley's union, that the dispatch tape would out Gates as combative, abusive, disorderly--it didn't.

Maybe we should stop talking about race and start talking about the abuse of police power (the law-and-order crowd would have a field day with that). I don't know about Gates, but I wouldn't be pacified by a trip to the White House and a beer.
34 months ago: Really? Do you even know the definition of assault?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/assault

Read the part about verbal (first line).

You try this and tell us all how it turns out.

Submit your application to Yale using a degrading term for Blacks.

Don't try the old line that "Whitey", "Honkey", "Cracker" and "Redneck" aren't used as demeaning terms by your brothers and sisters.

Just come out and use the (when said by Whites a insult / when said by Blacks a joke) N word.

Let us know your outcome. I am not going to accept the hypocrisy and double standards any longer.

Time to wake up.
JAK Gladney
JAK Gladney
Saint Albans, WV
34 months ago: No: as far as rhetorical punch goes, "whitey", "honky", and "cracker" simply don't have the same sting as the black counterpart. Think of the historical associations with the "n word": lazy, crazy, slow, criminal, foolish. What does "whitey" suggest that would compare--someone in a position of authority? Someone with the institutionalized power to make life or death decisions? "Redneck" suggests the sunburn of people who made their living outdoors, usually farming--it's used by people I know as a badge of honor. I'm more offended by "hillbilly" or "ridge-runner" than I am by "whitey" or "honky" (which, btw, hasn't been in regular use since the '70's).

Words gain meaning through long usage, and depend on who uses them and in what context--this isn't a mystery. And for the white slurs you used (most more rural pejoratives than racial), there's no rooted emotional context: no bank of slavery, minstrelsy, black-face, or Jim Crow to draw from.

You're right: it is time to wake up. The Gates story isn't an excuse for you to flex racially-aggrieved status. It's the story of a man--a reasonably successful man--challenged in the castle of his own home to prove his identity, which he did, and then dragged from his own home like a common criminal. He was justly pissed, as most people would be. It's too bad you can't see it that way.
34 months ago: That would be your opinion. Why would they("whitey", "honky", and "cracker") not have the same "sting" as the black counterpart? Too bad for me?
34 months ago: Since JAK offered the solution I have accepted it! I have come to the conclusion that we all need to start using the term "Blackie". That usage will be acceptable by JAK in everyday conversation.
34 months ago: Dr. Henry Louis Gates held this conversation in 1994 on how impressed he was with racist America-hater Malcolm X.

GATES: "My mother hated white people."

-- "I mean, Malcolm X was talking about the white man was the devil and standing up in white people's faces and telling them off. It was great."


Mr. Gates whether he knows it or not harbors racism.

I really wish that the people who think police are so un-ethical were on some sort of black list(no racial pun intended)so that when they called, or screamed for help--the cops took their time, if they came at all. I think its time to give them a break and let them do their highly hard and stressful job that puts them at deaths door everyday.
JAK Gladney
JAK Gladney
Saint Albans, WV
34 months ago: I'm always glad to have answered your questions, TCG, and try to lay-out careful historical arguments that you completely disregard, & ask questions that you totally ignore while demanding answers to your own. Good talk.

"racist America-hater Malcolm X"--kind of says it all. Just curious, mulletman, but do you know anything about Malcolm X's break, just before his murder, with the Nation of Islam? Or anything about his life before he became an activist?

The "cops have a hard job" argument: is there a law enforcement official in this country who goes into that job thinking, "this will be just like working any other 9 to 5 job"? Of course it's a hard job, and not for everyone--just like being a soldier, doctor, EMT, social worker, etc. And doesn't it stand to reason that people, under such enormous stress, sometimes make honest mistakes?

At any event, I'm tired of this game: pluck some comment from a conservative website, completely out of context, and come running back to the forum like a child on an Easter egg hunt, waving that comment like a trophy. Take some time, read these books for yourself (someday), and take an informed opinion (not MY opinion). Or we can continue to ape the best tv traditions, and just exchange soundbites and pretend that's a substitute for real argument.
34 months ago: Your right police do have a hard job and can make mistakes, and so can educated people like gates. Fact is he should not have told off the cop and in order to bring the situation under control he had to arrest gates. He did not want to leave the scene with gates yelling and screaming and creating a public disturbance. Wise up gates supporters.....you can't blame this one on whitey.
34 months ago: That's is funny. Blame GW bro that's your only option.
I don't answer questions offered as answers to questions.

Good trick though answering a question with a question.

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