Perhaps it is if reading a vigorous and generally respectful discussion of a timely issue with disputed facts bothers you that much. Would you really want to hang out in an echo chamber? I wouldn’t.</p>
<p>I find the POV in this thread with which I most agree is the one of the President of the Black Police Officers Association. The police should have taken a different path, President Obama should have used different words, and I think Professor Gates should have just given the ID. Reading his own, personal blog is very enlightening.</p>
If he has a shady history with regard to race we’ll know it PDQ. So far, though, no character assasins have come out. In fact, officers both black and white have praised him. How long after the infamous question did we know all the skeletons in Joe the Plumber’s closet?</p>
<p>Police were there to help…and the funny thing is that his house was apparently broken into while he was away. Crowley teaches classes on racial profiling. </p>
<p>My point was that BO had no business saying anything without knowing the facts…he acted “stupidly”.</p>
<p>Thanks for the moral judgement Mr. Super Moderator.</p>
<p>After considering the wise words from Friar Garland and thinking about being politically correctly, I decided, heck, I still support Crowley and his right to arrest Gates, even if the charge is later dropped. His subjective judgement in a gray area, even if later determined on the wrong side of a nonexistent line when cooler heads prevail, cannot be condemned, simply reversed and we move on.</p>
<p>It may be best if Gates and Crowley could somehow get together and address the problem that exists between black men and police officers. I bet both Gates and Crowley are decent men that come from different places and so their interaction was impacted by that. While not all police officers racial profile it does exist. I understand how an African American male could be put off when he did nothing wrong and is being questioned. I also understand how a police officer who feels he is doing his job could be taken back by what seems to him to be an inappropriate expression of anger. Hopefully these two can get together and make a difference. That said I think the president improperly responded to the question about this incident.</p>
<p>That is what I took from your comment Garland. Perhaps it didn’t come out the way intended? I really like hearing others’ views of something. Where else but here could you get the diversity of opinion and experience? You get the right, the left, the weird, the black, the white, whatever. I happen to believe this particular instance was a guy thing, but I totally get the historical context and Poetsheart, who is one of my favorite posters, puts it into a different perspective. I think that as a society, we don’t mix nearly as much as we should and it’s a great thing to be able to hear and tell from different points of view, even if we don’t always like them.</p>
<p>zmom- it is my experience in government. I have seen abuse that should have been stopped but wasn’t. I have also seen individuals play the system and get away with things because they played the right card. But my biggest concern is when I see to honorable people who should be able to get together and fix a problem get so twisted by their “experiences” that they just make things worse. Sometimes you need to take emotion out of the situation and meet somewhere in the middle. Because sometimes you are not all wrong or all right.</p>
<p>garland posted:
“And I came back to this discussion. I haven’t read it all; what I have read is really, really dispiritng. When even Hunt (whom I’ve always found congenial) is saying things like “I’m sorry, but there are a lot of elements of Gates’ statement quoted above that strike me as very weaselly” and in general excusing this incident, I find myself wondering why I am still here. Or back here.”</p>
<p>Hunt’s contributions to this thread have been some of the most objective and most productive because s/he doesn’t have an agenda and is instead striving to find the middle ground and the truth. Others have ignored all facts and created fictional accounts, complete with “emotions,” that we’re supposed to accept at face value, even though the writers of such posts were nowhere near the set of events and have no idea what really happened. I happen to appreciate Hunt’s contributions to this thread very much.</p>
<p>That is why sometimes I think I am in a parallel universe with the cast of characters here on CC. Every poll I have seen shows a 10% or less agreement with what Obama said about the PD acting “stupidly”. Yet here we get a bunch of talking heads debating disorderly conduct statute, absolute statements on who said what when they weren’t even there, or better yet, conjecture on what happened. All for what? To feed into their little Obama love fest and cry racial profiling by the male white cop.</p>
<p>To ask for ID in any suspected break-in situation is routine as has been shared by others here speaking from experience. The difference in their experience was they resonded with courtesy to the police officer rather than getting their panties in an uproar. </p>
<p>I will patiently wait to see what the final outcome is in this situation, and then read with no surprise how the cast of characters deals with it.</p>
<p>As an extremely well-educated attorney, if nothing else, Obama should have refrained from comment. A good (and objective) attorney knows that all of the facts must be uncovered first before a conclusion like the one he reached (the cops acted “stupidly”) can be reached. I am not an anti-Obama person whatsoever, but I am highly disappointed in his fueling this fire and his commenting on a situation that he already realized (and admitted) that he has no objectivity regarding (he publicly said that he has known and liked Gates for a long time). The police, as badly behaved as they can be at times, do not need the POTUS undermining and criticizing them before an investigation of the event has been completed.</p>
<p>Hey, I was just guessing about what happened to and with Gates, to see how close I could come on my own, before knowing the positions of the people involved. When it comes to Gates’s stated motives and sensibilities, I found I was shockingly exact. The reason I was able to be so exact, despite at the time not having the facts, is because my personal experience, and the experiences of blacks all across these cursed lands, are quite identical when it comes to the police. I am now quite convinced that had Gates been white, that cop would have been kinder, especially in that neighborhood. He would have wondered if Gates was okay, and approached him from that perspective. Instead, since Gates is black, the cop simply did his normal racist cop thing.</p>
<p>It does not matter that he taught some two-bit cop course, likely to white officers, about profiling. It does not matter that he tried to save some basketball player. The racism of the type I have in mind here, causes white people to see criminals first when it comes to blacks, even if the black person is a black professional. It is why Gates’s neighbor reported seeing two “big” black guys when in fact Gates is just this little thing who walks with a cane. The woman was being influenced by racism, the sort that is ubiquitous, that causes you and everyone else to see Jesus as a long-haired white Nordic guy when the fact is that he was no such thing.</p>
<p>I just checked on the makeup of those classes during the last year and
they were mainly black and hispanic. I’m not saying his specific class but
that’s the makeup in the cafeteria of the building where the courses are taught.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Not just some basketball player but Reggie Lewis who was a very big deal in the Boston area.</p>
<p>If the complainant had reported two white/hispanic/Asian men breaking into a house I wonder if the same police officer would have approached the homeowner of the same race in a kinder manner. I really wonder.</p>
<p>
It only “does not matter” if you don’t want progress and don’t aspire to better. But that’s up to each individual.</p>
<p>It absolutely does matter if you’re trying to figure out if he is acting in a racist or part-racist manner. </p>
<p>He’s not going to announce if race is playing a part in his action, so you have to use other circumstantial evidence.</p>
<p>If you try to say it doesn’t matter, doesn’t the “lack of proof” concept drive a level-headed person to conclude you can’t convict of him of being racist? Or are you simply not level-headed because you say “the cop cannot be believed. Gates didn’t do a single thing written in the police report”?</p>
<p>What kind of genetic disorder does it take to produce such dumbfounded,distorted view?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Now you said:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>since Gates is black, the cop simply did his normal racist cop thing…</p></li>
<li><p>It does not matter that he taught some two-bit cop course…</p></li>
<li><p>neighbor reported seeing two big black guys…The woman was being influenced by racism ( She saw 2 men trying to pry a door open who happened to be black )</p></li>
<li><p>Jesus as a long-haired white Nordic guy when the fact is that he was no such thing.
( Now we are even discussing whether Jesus was white ! )</p></li>
</ul>
<p>You are racist against whites just like Gates and countless other blacks. Read what you wrote above. Are you capable of even normal reasoning ?</p>