When is racial profiling not racial profiling? When the facts or circumstances fail to fit the accepted definition.
In 1999, the Oxford American Dictionary (OAD) provided a definition of racial profiling for the first time. “Racial profiling: an alleged police policy of stopping and searching vehicles driven by people from particular racial groups.” In 2005 the ACLU provided the broader definition as follows, "Racial Profiling" refers to the discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. Criminal profiling, generally, as practiced by police, is the reliance on a group of characteristics they believe to be associated with crime… Racial profiling does not refer to the act of a law enforcement agent pursuing a suspect in which the specific description of the suspect includes race or ethnicity in combination with other identifying factors.” Intent is a key element in evaluating this circumstance. It does not appear by any of the facts as stated that Sgt. Crowley focused on, targeted or arrested Dr. Gates based upon his race (human), ethnicity, religion, or national origin.
One unfortunate outcome of the Dr. Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. arrest in Cambridge, MA has been a rush to judgment by many who should know better. To immediately place Dr. Gates’ unfortunate arrest into the category of “racial profiling” does a great disservice to the volumes of cases that fit the accepted definition.
Sgt. Crowley was not passing by Dr. Gates’ home and upon seeing a Black man in a White neighborhood decided to investigate this seemingly strange occurrence. Sgt. Crowley was responding to a reported breaking and entering at Dr. Gate’s residence. Most police officers will tell you, safety first; better to be tried by twelve than carried by six. Sgt. Crowley’s primary concern was to ensure that there were no perpetrators on the scene and that the gentleman that he encountered (Dr. Gates) had every right to be there. It is also important to have some understanding of police procedure in these types of situations before passing judgment on what transpired.
At one point Dr. Gates is alleged to have said to Sgt. Crowley that he (Crowley) had no idea who he was messing with. Is it possible that this question may provide some insight into how this circumstance escalated to the point that it did? It is incumbent upon all citizens, no matter what their status or station in life to obey the legitimate commands of the police. One must never underestimate the blindness that attends arrogance.
Many are appalled that our beloved Skip Gates could be arrested in his own home and charged with disorderly conduct. According to Dr. Gates, "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." That’s probably true, but is race really the reason why?
Dr. Wilmer Leon is the producer/host of the nationally broadcast call-in talk radio program "On With Leon" and a Teaching Associate in the Department of Political Science at Howard University in Washington, DC. Go to www.wilmerleon.com or email wjl3us@yahoo.com.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals knows how to grab attention. And show off its laundry.
The animal rights group, which every year stages a protest at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, had two of its members dress in Ku Klux Klan garb outside Madison Square Garden on Monday.
Their goal, according to a post on the PETA website, was to draw a parallel between the KKK and the American Kennel Club. "Obviously it's an uncomfortable comparison," PETA spokesman Michael McGraw told the Associated Press.
But the AKC is trying to create a "master race" when it comes to pure-bred dogs, he added. "It's a very apt comparison."
The group passed out brochures implying the Klan and AKC have the goal of "pure bloodlines" in common.
"I can't speak for everyone, but the vast majority of the people exhibiting and handling and showing at Westminster are more interested in the health of dogs than anything else," Westminster spokesman David Frei told the AP.
"We want to produce the next generation of healthy and happy dogs," he said, "not just for the show ring but for the couches at home."
Bystander Fatima Walden told the AP the KKK imagery was inappropriate no matter what the message.
"They could have used something else as an example," she said. "You should be considerate to everybody."
Other than a shouting match during the hour-long protest, police said the scene remained calm.
I don’t like Charles Barkley very much, I have to be honest about that. On an appearance on ESPN, I was asked by Charles’ buddy, Stephen A. Smith, what I think about Barkley possibly running for Governor of Alabama. My comment was that “Charles Barkley is a man who always says what’s on his mind. But the problem is that there is never anything in his brain to begin with.”
So, if I don’t like you and I give you a compliment, then that really means I like what you just did.
Charles Barkley, the man I can’t bear to listen to on TNT, recently called out his alma mater, Auburn University for their decision to hire the woefully unqualified Gene Chizik over Turner Gill, a coach who actually deserved the job. Gene Chizik has amassed the stellar record of 5-19 over the past two seasons at Iowa State University. The “geniuses” at Auburn University also paid their last coach, Tommy Tubberville, $5.1 million dollars to hit the road after going 85-10 during the last 10 seasons. This is the same brilliant thinking which leads us to believe that sub-mediocre human beings like George Bush and Sarah Palin are qualified to run the free world. Now I remember why I left the south.
One would think that Turner Gill of The University of Buffalo might have been a good pick. He took Buffalo to their first bowl game in school history, and soundly defeated unbeaten Ball State, who was ranked #12 in the country. The problem was that Gill posed the great deal breaker of nearly every head football coaching contract in NCAA sports: He was Black.
Sure, if he were trying to be a wide receiver, he’d be a lock. If he were trying to be a janitor or cafeteria worker, I am sure that Auburn University would have recruited him heavily. But Gill doesn’t realize that for schools like Auburn (and Kentucky, Tennessee and many other schools in the NCAA, particularly the SEC), Black men are only supposed to sacrifice their bodies on the field for virtually no wages, with little hope of actually earning the millions of dollars the NCAA pays its head coaches. Over 50% of all college football players are black, yet less than 4% of their coaches are Black. The athletes earn over $2 Billion per year for the NCAA, yet many of their families live in poverty. In other words, the NCAA has become the ultimate plantation, lawn jockeys and all.
Terry Bowden, Richard Lapchick and the rest of the country are calling it for what it is: Good old fashioned racism. They are stating, as I’ve said all along, that there is a time when African Americans must demand fairness in college sports, for the NCAA has shown almost no commitment to fairness when it comes to matters of race. Like our broken financial system, the system of college sport has created a network of irresponsible, illogical and unintelligent cronyism leading to embarrassing and inefficient outcomes. Paying $5.1 Million dollars to get rid of a good coach so you can pay more money to get a bad one is flat out stupid. Even if you are a racist, you should at least be a smart one.
I applaud Charles Barkley for pointing out the obvious, that Auburn University and the NCAA need a wake-up call. This isn’t 1955 anymore.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is a Finance Professor at Syracuse University and a faculty affiliate at the College Sport Research Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He does regular work in national media, including CNN, CBS Sports, BET and ESPN. For more information, please visit www.BoyceWatkins.com.
How to Accept It’s a Post-Racial Society (a.k.a., How You Can Learn to Stop Making Excuses, Throw Away All Your Race Cards and Accept We Are Living in a Post-Racial Society)
If you’re like me, you justifiably shed tears at the incredible symbolic power unleashed this week when Americans chose Barack Hussein Obama to be our 44th president. Moreover, his victory speech rightfully reminded us after eight years in the Bush wilderness that indeed “our union can be perfected.” That there is genuine “hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow,” and the progress we can make for our children in the next 100 years of American history.
I must admit, though, by the next day I felt rather daunted by the enormity of that task. So I was relieved to discover through the searingly insightful analysis provided recently by some conservatives that, as far as continued progress in racial justice is concerned, we are finally off the hook.
Yes indeed, with Obama’s election, “America has completed its evolution into a racial meritocracy,” wrote Phillip Morris of the Cleveland Plains Dealer. Our country, according to Jonathan Kay of the National Post, “has finally become a fundamentally post-racial society,” where in fact, Laura Hollis tells us at townhall.com, “racism is dead.”
I’m developing a handy guide to help you navigate the new world that awaits you at the stroke of noon on January 20, 2009. I’m calling it, “How You Can Learn to Stop Making Excuses, Throw Away All Your Race Cards and Accept That We Are Living in a Post-Racial Society.”
It will be a pocket-sized book full of quotes from those who have evolved to a pure state of total colorblindness. These quotes will remind readers of the inexhaustible cure-all that was the 2008 presidential election:
In the coming months, for example, you might find yourself worried that Black, Latino, and American Indian kids are far more likely to attend public schools with substandard textbooks, less qualified teachers, and woefully under-funded budgets. Should this occur, just open your guide to the Education Section, where you’ll find nuggets of wisdom like this one from Reagan-era Education Tsar Bill Bennett: “I’ll tell you one thing that [Obama’s election] means, you don’t take any more excuses from anybody who says ‘The deck is stacked,’ ‘I can’t do anything,’ ‘There’s so much in-built this and that.’” Did you get that? According to Bennett, it is perfectly sensible to extrapolate from Obama’s individual educational and electoral achievements to conclude that no one can ever again claim that systemic resource deficiencies affect racial outcomes. I mean, “in-built this and that” is so Jim Crow. “There are always problems in a big society,” he so cogently reminds us.
But if that doesn’t make you feel better, be patient, and before you know it you’ll be lobbying Congress with me to change our national motto from E pluribus unum to Electus unum abandonae pluribus. The power of this logic isn’t limited to education.
Take, for example, the skyrocketing foreclosure rates currently ravaging many of those very same communities with these low-performing schools. When you find yourself getting indigestion thinking about today’s massive evaporation of African American and Latino wealth – in large part the product of predatory refinancing loans targeted at older homeowners who needed emergency cash – well, reading additional quotes about the power of Obama’s triumph will be the best antacid your declining real wages can buy. According to the Wall St. Journal the “One promise of his victory is that perhaps we can put to rest the myth of racism as a barrier to achievement in this splendid country. Mr. Obama has a special obligation to help do so.”
Ah great idea. The Obama Administration could use a new Cabinet-level position devoted to ridding our society of that pesky racism myth. It only clutters our simple, tacit interpretation of data such as $0.62 on the $1.00: roughly, the stagnant median family income for Latinos, Blacks, and American Indians compared to white families for at least the last seven years. What other explanation do we need beyond the well-understood notion that people of color are historically about 62% as hard-working as whites? Now that a majority-white America has demonstrated its inclusiveness at the polls, it should be self-evident that remaining effects of past and current discrimination in hiring, salaries, and promotion throughout our economy are illusions that have long since disintegrated.
But in case it’s not self-evident, my booklet will include defiant quotes from folks like Former UN Ambassador John Bolton, who got a little testy last week on the BBC when explaining what electing the first African American president should mean: “It is a very significant historical fact. And I take it therefore around the world, criticism of the United States for being a ‘racist’ nation will now stop. Right?”
You tell ‘em, John! And while we’re taking leaps of logic, I’ll go one better with respect to the snooty Europeans: until those hypocritical, socialist wealth redistributors have elected a leader of Barack Hussein Obama’s skin tone, I see no reason to look toward their societies for any policy ideas or values – health care, in particular. As our lame duck Decider in the White House has said, we have the “best health care system in the world,” so why commit as a nation to tackling the persistent racial inequities in health outcomes, in healthy work and home environments and in access to affordable health care?
There’s no need, my friends, because the Obama milestone single-handedly provides Americans with a clear record of colorblindness that inoculates us from any systemic blame in any sector of society where the “race complainers” cry foul. It really makes you wonder why people of color didn’t think of this electoral inclusiveness thing before.
Better late than never, though. And as far as current racial inequities are concerned, we need only follow the wisdom contained in my forthcoming guide, and ignore Obama’s call to continue perfecting our union. Let the “post-racial” happy days roll.
Remember back seven years ago to the aftermath of September 11th, when the world was divided into the good and the axis of evil, those who had democracy and those whose envy of it drove them to murderous fundamentalism? Remember the charge of the extreme right – that anybody who didn't support the ‘War on Terror’ or didn't show the appropriate level of ambivalence towards Islam or Middle Easterners, or paused to quibble over whether or not “enemy countries” had weapons of mass destruction, was unpatriotic and insufficiently American? Remember how the left, the middle, and the moderate right took issue with that kind of Manichean thinking while the war hawks said it didn't matter if those who were leading us to war were honest or which Middle Eastern country we bombed, because we were representing the concepts of freedom and democracy, thus the nitty-gritty about reality and truth weren't important?
I've been stunned to hear that same kind of rhetoric from the left. Either you support President-elect Obama or you're a too cool for school revolutionary snob, a Gloomy Gus, or someone too idealistic, unrealistic, or cynical to be pragmatic or useful. It doesn't matter who Obama is, what he does, says, or stands for - he represents hope and change and that's good enough. The left is currently doing what the right once did: conflating concepts with reality. The right said supporting democracy and freedom and supporting the ‘War on Terror’ were one and the same. The left says supporting hope and change and supporting Barack Obama are one and the same -- and their elision is just as dangerous. Just as by employing the words freedom, equality, and justice the Founding Fathers were able to hide a white, male, propertied oligarchy in the guise and language of democracy, Obama is hiding imperialism, neo-liberalism, and corporatism behind the language of progressivism.
See, there's nothing wrong with hope – as long as the person enjoining you to hope isn't also demanding that you abandon your critical thinking skills. Believe it or not, those of us who criticize Obama are not grumps who enjoy telling children there is no Santa Claus, while merrily kicking puppies. I don't begrudge anyone their elation at this time. When my Creole grandfather, a man who had to leave school in the fifth grade to pick sugarcane, called me nearly in tears that Obama had won the election, I shared his joyful moment with him. I didn't seize that moment to explain that Jason Furhman was heading up Obama's economics team; that as a senator, Obama repeatedly voted to increase funding for the war in Iraq, or tell him about the horrible things Obama has said about black fathers, such as my wonderful grandfather. The problem, however, is that my grandfather supports Obama because he doesn't know those things. Many of the people dancing in the streets right now haven't taken the time to do any research on Obama – so part of their euphoria is based on ignorance. Another significantly large population - much of the black community - supports Obama based on the belief that he is secretly not what he has presented himself to be - that once he has sneaked his way into office he's going to rip apart his button down shirt, revealing a bright Superman "S" and suddenly become Martin Luther King's ideological heir. I've heard another significant faction of people say that it doesn't matter what Obama does or doesn't do, because now little black boys can see a black president and know that they can grow up to be president, too. But that's just it – those little black boys are going to grow up. They're going to analyze and think critically (one hopes) and be affected by Obama's rhetoric and his policies. They're going to need substance, not a symbol. And they deserve better than Obama.
People who say Obama is dangerous, perhaps as dangerous as McCain, aren't crazy. What we realize is that while Obama might, and that's a big might, give in to leftist pressure and pass the kinds of positive legislation he didn't as senator, the benefits of progressive policies he instates risk being undermined by the racist ideology he uses. It's one thing for masses of white people to assume that racism is 90% over. It's another for a black man, Obama, to tell them this is so. Fostering those kinds of illusions is fatal. I've heard it said that Obama is obviously less racist than McCain, and his rural white sycophants, because McCain uses racial slurs and Obama doesn't. That doesn't make Obama less racist – just savvier. It reminds me of how aristocratic slave-owners had a hypocritical disgust for poorer, cruder slave traders, or how you read in many slave-owner narratives that genteel slave-owners proudly called their slaves "servants," instead of slaves. That didn't make the slaves any freer, however. Obama might not call blacks the "n" word, but his descriptions of blacks have depicted them as exactly that. Conversely, Obama may never call Afghans r*gh**ds, but if he starts a war in Afghanistan, Afghan civilians won't be any less dead, and Obama's ability to start a war with Afghanistan might be aided by his genteel language.
You see racists, be they black or white, aren't all as stupid as McCain. As Nancy MacLean noted in her book, Freedom is Not Enough, many racists have gotten hip to equality sounding language. That's why Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action bill was called the California ‘Civil Rights Initiative.’ That's why one racist, nativist, anti-immigration group calls itself Vietnamese for Fair Immigration (though it's run by a white man). Time after time Obama has treated blacks, Muslims, and Middle Easterners with contempt. No matter how beautiful Obama is when he smiles, poised when he debates, or eloquent when he speaks, he is still racist; and his racism, his willingness to undermine minority concerns, his eagerness to appease whites, his enthusiastic obscuring of both past and present issues of justice and equality are perhaps as dangerous to America as anything McCain could do.
As Derrick Bell, the first African American tenured Harvard law professor and one of America's most brilliant legal minds has pointed out, whites tend to allow non-whites to achieve symbolic racial landmarks only when it meets white interests more than black interests; and often by using black figureheads. As blacks place their faith in slow, but sure, racial progress, whites convert old oppressions into more covert forms. Only when blacks are aware of this strategy can they fight for meaningful victories. Interestingly enough, those who criticize Bell tend to do so not because his work is inaccurate, but because it's "depressing." I'm sorry, but my concern isn't being the life of the party -- it's seeking liberation for all people. Those who castigate Americans for not being appropriately jubilant at Obama's election are insisting that blacks content themselves, in perpetuity, with symbolism instead of real change. All those who don't know what Obama stands for, or think he will exhibit qualities contrary to the way he has voted in the Senate and spoken in his speeches, or expect him to be loyal to issues he's flip flopped on, are entitled to do so.
However, it is irresponsible for those of us who believe that hope is only positive when wisely invested, to not use all the research we can gather and all the thought power we can employ, to fight for all people.
Shannon J. Prince is a creative writing major and junior at Dartmouth College. In addition to writing, she is an activist for indigenous and African issues, a ceramics maker, and a travel addict. She has been published in Frodo's Notebook, Falcon Wings, KUHF magazine, Imprint, Rice University's Writers in the Schools Magazine, Illogical Muse, Damn Good Writing, Lost Beat Poetry, Haggard and Halloo, Houston Literary Review, Words on Paper, Bewildering Stories, The Smoking Poet, Muscadine Lines, Ragand, Prick of the Spindle, International Zeitschrift, Conceit Magazine, Snow Monkey, Paradigm, Words Myth, and The Green Muse. She also won Dartmouth's Thomas Ralston Prize for creative writing. Click to e-mail Ms. Prince: Shannon J. Prince
