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It was just last week that President Obama spoke at the NAACP Convention and gave an incredible speech that received a rousing standing ovation. He covered a lot of ground, but frustratingly he never made mention of police brutality and the high number of incidents that have taken place with young Black and Brown people being shot or mistreated. He has gone out of his way to comment on almost all police killings including the ones in Oakland, Pittsburgh and last week in Jersey City.
Since that speech we have seen Jersey City police kill a woman who had a knife , but was never warned before being shot to death. Her husband, residents and witnesses accuse the police of wrong doing.
We’ve heard about the false and dubious arrests of prominent Hip Hop figures and community activists like; Paradise Gray of X-Clan and Wise Intelligent of Poor Righteous Teachers.
We’ve heard about Black police officers in Philadelphia suing fellow white officers for posting up and running a website full of racist rants called Domelights. What was the final straw that prompted the lawsuit was white officers referring to the young Black kids who were recently discriminated by a white run country club as ‘Ghetto Monkeys’ .
Since the NAACP speech, we’ve seen the angry white pundits like Pat Buchanan and even some Senators make over the top racist remarks about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Buchanan was so angry that he came on a primetime news show and called Sotomayor a Minor Leaguer and stated that white men weren’t getting a fair shake. He said the race pot needed to be stirred up. He then went and made the outrageous assertion that this country and its wars were built and fought 1005 by white people.
Since that speech we’ve seen KKK square off with the New Black Panthers in Paris, Texas after they attempted to disrupt a rally being held to protest the freeing of two white men accused of dragging a young man Brandon McClelland to death.
On that same day Henry Louis Gates the prominent 58 year old Harvard Professor who heads up the African studies department was arrested in his own home after police initially approached him accusing him of breaking into his own home.
I guess President Obama has heard enough and finally said something. He accused Cambridge Police of acting stupidly. It took me by surprised. Now I hope it calls up Attorney General Eric Holder and has him start investigating police misconduct and start holding folks accountable. They better start holding those serious conversations about race and do this quick before Holder or Obama get arrested and mistreated over a minor incident by police who are resentful about these two Black men holding so much power.
That may seem like a off the cuff remark, but I remind people as I close out that back in the late 1800s after slavery had ended, Black folks were moving into positions of power. We were getting into elected offices. We even had a Black senator. We were moving on up as jealous and resentful white folks saw the upward move as a threatening. This was called the Reconstruction period. Enter DW Griffith and his movie Birth of a Nation. This was where the Ku Klux Klan was introduced and depicted as heroes who saved this country from ‘Uppity Negroes’ getting power.
It wasn’t too long after Birth of a Nation came out that the KKK increased its membership in huge numbers and that mobs of white people started rioting, burning down and even bombing Black cities and neighborhoods. From Chicago to Cincinnati to Tulsa, Oklahoma, roving mobs of angry whites came through and destroyed these cities and the people within them. After that came along period of lynchings. These things happened almost everyday in places throughout the country prompting singer Billie Holiday to do the song ‘Strange Fruit’.
Let’s not wake up and find ourselves repeating history as more and more racist shed their masks and start showing their true colors and expressing their true hatred for Black and Brown people.
Something to Ponder
-Davey D-
Mass. policeman who arrested Gates won’t apologize
Prominent College Professor Henry Louis Gates was mistreated in his own home by a white police sergent who refuses to apologize
NATICK, Mass. – A white police sergeant accused of racism after he arrested renowned black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home insisted Wednesday he won’t apologize for his treatment of the Harvard professor, but President Barack Obama said police had acted “stupidly.”
Gates has demanded an apology from Sgt. James Crowley, who had responded to the home near Harvard University to investigate a report of a burglary and demanded the scholar show him identification. Police say the 58-year-old at first refused and then accused the officer of racism.
Gates said Crowley walked into his home without his permission and only arrested him as the professor followed him to the porch, repeatedly demanding the sergeant’s name and badge number because he was unhappy over his treatment.
Obama said Wednesday he didn’t know what role race played in the incident but added that police in suburban Boston “acted stupidly” in arresting Gates even after he offered proof that he was in his own home.
Looks like President Obama has had enough of all these police terrorism incidents-he has finally spoken out by saying the police acted stupidly
“I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry,” Obama said. “Number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And number three — what I think we know separate and apart from this incident — is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately, and that’s just a fact.”
He said federal officials need to continue working with local law enforcement “to improve policing techniques so that we’re eliminating potential bias.”
Crowley said Wednesday he’s disappointed by the heated national debate triggered by the incident and insisted he followed proper procedures in arresting Gates last week in Cambridge on a charge of disorderly conduct. The charge was dropped Tuesday.
Officers were responding to the home Gates rents from Harvard after a woman reported seeing “two black males with backpacks” trying to force open the front door, according to a police report. Gates, who had returned from a trip overseas with a driver, said he had to shove the door open because it was jammed. He was inside, calling the company that manages the property, when police arrived.
Gates was accused by police of “tumultuous” behavior toward the officers. But Gates countered by saying Crowley was clearly responding to racial profiling and “couldn’t understand a black man standing up for his rights, right in his face.”
source:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090723/ap_on_re_us/us_
harvard_scholar_disorderly
There are horrible examples of brutality and bigotry in this country and police services have been a part of that. I don’t think that happened in this situation. Just some unlucky working joe who happened to arrest a rich and powerful man.
Its not like the cop will ever be able to clear his name but the professor will be able to spend every Sunday for the next year on national talk shows.
People of color deserve equal treatment and respect, but so does the truth.
Obama said it right, “I probably would be shot”. Just glad the brother finally spoke up. And glad Soledad did the interview and showed the positve educated Blacks reaching back. Now that was balance. We ain’t all hip-hop or ballers. That program and Obama speaking out made my night. Don’t argue with white people on this, they are going to always stick together and the police were created to serve and protect “them’ not you. Remember, the Constitution wasn’t initially written for us.
Well, I’m a white soccer mom and got ticketed by a black cop because I ran a stop sign with a smail speed. I messed up and paid for it dearly. Also fessed up to it and my life goes on. He happened to be black, I happened to be white, but I chose not to scream racism and I chose not to ruin my day over it.
This professor dude is flashing his badge, throwing his weight around, and won’t let it go, does anybody see the problem here? Hellooo! He will keep that up as long as he has an audience, so I suggest we stop being his audience.
I hope the cop doesn’t appologize, he did his job well. The cops stick out their neck so we (including that black professor and his mansion) are safe and sound. So for once the cops show up in time for what is possible robbery in progress and they catch flack from this Gates dude. I personally don’t care if that cop is black or white or green, they all are in same shoes. They have the autonomy as to whom they will arrest on legal grounds, and they should exercise that autonomy. Go cops, protect yourself and others, and deffinitely don’t take any flack from some guy who flashes his Harvard badge. I know that most of this country is on your side. And Sgt. Crowley, congrats to you for standing your ground. What a man! No appology needed here. Perhaps a ticket for wasting your time, you’ve got bigger and better things to do.
And perhaps Harvard should look into what kind of characters they have on staff.
@Robert Jr. James McClendon
Your ‘bias’, Gates (and anyone else who insists on the self-righteous promotion of there skin color) is as expected and at fault for perpetuating the problem as the stereotyped raciest cop. That Obama commented on the topic is of no consequence beyond the kind of ‘brotherly’ cred you desperately cling to to justify your bias. On just about any blog or site covering the topic you can read commenter’s, identifying themselves openly as African Americans, denouncing the entire situation as nonsense under the circumstance and that they were ashamed of Gates.
Your own wording about not arguing with white people is ironic because it applies as much to you as anyone else.
I think the one most injured by this incident is Obama.
Obama was in a news conference trying to gain national support for a health care initiative that appears to be stalled. His “acted stupidly” comment will turn the focus of the entire hour news conference into a race issue.
Details of the incident between Prof Gates and Sgt (name?) are emerging.
I am white and I live 20 miles south of Boston. I mention this only to say that, among the Greater Boston cities and towns, Cambridge is considered a bastion of lift-wing, politically correct, liberalism. It is a college town. I have to think that Cambridge police responding to a break-in, in progress, would focus on: 1) securing the scene, then 2) figuring out what occurred. My sense is that, in the process of securing the scene, voices were raised, tempers flared, and maybe, words were used.
National Health Care is the big loser of this local event.
Lone, you don’t read too well. Don’t argue with them, that’s exactly what they want. How ’bout that Soledad O’Brien. White folks hate those type of Black people, upwardly mobile, don’t they. They consider them “upiity-negroes” like they do Gates, Obama, and other Black people that want soemthing out of life. They love seeing us in hip-hop uniform (SAGGIN), in prison, and ignorant. Don’t argue, people. Its their “hatred” coming out.
As far as his Helath Care Program, you type of people weren’t going to support him no matter what. White America are now saying about Obama, “That’s not what we voted for, we voted for the bi-racial ‘only’ side of him, what is he doing?” The President may be bi-racial, but people’s attitudes about race never changed. Your living in denial if you don’t see the disparity of treatment of people of color by the police and the institutionalized racsim that’s been allowed within America’s police departments.
Once it was established that Mr. Gates was in his own home, that should have been the end of it. Clearly tempers were running high on both sides, which escalated into Mr. Gates being arrested at his home. Police are supposed to be trained to deal with the communities they serve. The officer should have used his training to get to the bottom of the issue and calm the situation down. Instead, he allowed his emotions to get the best of him and now he insists he did nothing wrong. That is unacceptable.
I strongly disagree that this is the case of some average working joe who was unlucky enough to arrest a rich and powerful man. The arrest was unwarranted point blank as evidenced by the charges being dropped.
It just hurts me how white people actually believe that this high school graduate police guy, who perhaps never completed four years of military service nor college, couldn’t be wrong. Alot of them immediately took the policemen side without even knowing the facts. We all know that wsn’t racial profiling, but we damn sure know what the cops are during in Philly, Jersey, California, Pittsburg, ect. White America doesn’t see that. Don King said it best – “White America has an uncanny way of makingthe victim the victimizer”. That’s exactly what “some” white Americans have been trying to do. It’s not a crime to get mad in your “own” house.
Damn, Dave, you’re good. You even got the white soccer moms from conservative radio chimming in to support Hip-hop. Boy, you’re good!
Well, thats why they call it politics…Surely you dont expect the Prez to step up like a black activist and speak on the situation.But, I agree, that enough is enough,which is probably why he finally came hard(I mean for a Prez)on them dumb ass cops. Look at the history of this country and how it relates with respects to racial injustice..Real change has come only from outside the realm of politics which has effected political change within.
I recently posted that President Obama should point out the “sins” of white supremists before addressing the “sins” of African Americans (the oppressed).
So I’m very proud that Obama didnot forsake his friend (Prof. Gates).
However, as the President and Leader of this country, President Obama must be careful how he “makes his point”. Race Haters will use that would “stupidly” to fuel further oppression of “colored” people by those in authority positions.
But no, President Obama should not shy away from the TRUTH, but he should weigh his actions and speech wisely.
And to be fair, there are wonder people in all walks of life and in all shapes and colors.
Please read the police report – verified by a Hispanic officer. This should tell you who took it too far and thus got off the hook for being the loudest, most self-righteous individual. http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0723092gates1.html
I just read somewhere on this site about hidden minorities and how Hispanic people never support black people. Nevertheless, the Cops have their Blue Code of honor or whatever. Mr. Gates, its your move. Join us in our struggle against Police Abuse in the “Black” communities. Stop the chatter and let’s get busy.
Bill Cosby? Can’t wait to see him on Larry King again chastising the President and Gates while getting his head rubbed by Larry King ” for good luck”, again.
Davey D we need you hear in Boston ! These Cops are about to bring the Ice T out the youth Cop Killer ! lol
Where is NWA when we need them
F(ck the police @ Sgt Crowley
xenophobia
noun
intense or irrational dislike or fear of people from other countries : racism and xenophobia are steadily growing
in Europe. The cop is a XENOPHOBIC sucker and that’s the bottom line. I love President Barack for this, but what we as a people need to know is what to do when shit like this happens since white people can’t change their racist ways it’s in their veins they are creatures of habit and they have a bad habit of treating blacks like shit and they get it from their ancestors. Let’s be real and get to the bottom line, white cops need help when dealing with anyone other than their own. White cops got the blood of slaves masters running through their veins and Obama is about to stop all that shit..
Hello would you mind stating which blog platform you’re using? I’m planning to start my own blog in the near future but I’m having a difficult time selecting between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and Drupal. The reason I ask is because your layout seems different then most blogs and I’m looking for something unique. P.S Apologies for getting off-topic but I had to ask!