<p>Nice post LGM!</p>
<p>LGM, you are, as usual, wonderful.</p>
<p><a href=“%5Burl=http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062977168-post863.html]#863[/url]”>quote</a>
<a href=“%5Burl=http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062976402-post851.html]#851[/url]”>quote</a> Bottom line: The procreative decisions we as individuals make today will impact future generations. If those decisions are influenced by a [social</a> concept of ‘race’](<a href=“http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm]social”>404 Page Not Found - The American Anthropological Association), then it is inevitable that ‘race’ and all it ills will be propagated.
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Idk about this, **I mean race plays some role in spouse selection<a href=“I%20don’t%20date%20hispanics%20or%20asians”>/b</a> but that is for different reasons. Spouse selection is alot more complex than simply race I mean I like white girls mostly and some black girls and that is pretty much it, but that has less to do with race and more to do with white and black girls being more attractive than other races. So the “race blind” concept is kind of dumb, because some people are more attracted to one race than another…
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</p>
<p>‘Race’-conscious public policy, with all its ills, has its roots in ‘race’-conscious ‘personal policy’. If our society aspires to [REAL</a> Diversity](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe-election-politics/676775-real-diversity.html]REAL”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe-election-politics/676775-real-diversity.html) and a [post-racial</a> society](<a href=“http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-steele5-2008nov05,0,6553798.story]post-racial”>Obama's post-racial promise), it is nothing short of [cognitive</a> dissonance](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance]cognitive”>Cognitive dissonance - Wikipedia) to hold the belief that ‘Everyone is essentially equal, just not that equal when it comes to marriage and family formation’. Or more succinctly: ‘[Diversity</a> for Thee but Not for Me](<a href=“http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTJlNWQ2MjljNGIxNjE0YmNiMzNkNzliZWU0NDNhNmY=]Diversity”>http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTJlNWQ2MjljNGIxNjE0YmNiMzNkNzliZWU0NDNhNmY=)’.</p>
<p>So, LGM… what do you think of Obama’s idea of inviting Crawley & Gates over to his house for a beer?</p>
<p>Calmom,</p>
<p>It couldn’t hurt. </p>
<p>I think each of those men will go there with a different agenda - both feel that they have been wronged. It is hard to find consensus when we feel that we have been personally affronted. </p>
<p>Both sides have their supporters. Both are being villainized in different ways. </p>
<p>I do hope that we can move beyond this incident. There are so many more blatantly obvious, truly awful racist incidents that are ignored, largely because they don’t make the national news.</p>
<p>I wish we were further along with the MLK “colorblind society”…but alas, we aren’t completely there, yet.</p>
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Actually they don’t have very different accounts. They both have similar accounts and Professor Gates’ is particularly thoughtful.</p>
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The legal right, absolutely. But how smart would that have been if there were a burglar in the house?</p>
<p>Are we going to include a discussion of Shanequa Campbell’s charges of racism at Harvard in our “teaching moment”, too?</p>
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<p>You obviously have a point you are trying to make. Just say it</p>
<p>I found the photograph of Professor Gates in handcuffs on his own front porch deeply disturbing. His expression conveys so much and is not easy to look at. </p>
<p>The idea that a police officer would not believe me when I said it was my house just would not occur to me. That I could be arrested after producing ID is far beyond my comprehension. It would not even occur to me to be wary. Even if I lost my tempter and yelled, I’m confident I would not be put in handcuffs (since yelling is not against the law, it seems a logical conclusion.)</p>
<p>Those are just some of the benefits that my race has given me that I don’t even think about until something like this happens.</p>
<p>Who the hell is Shanequa Campbell, and how is she suddenly relevant to this discussion, other than as a platform for the expression of long simmering and barely veiled rage? As FLVADAD said, Just say it</p>
<p>Shanequa Campbell was a Harvard senior who made charges of racism.</p>
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<p>I can’t imagine loudly berating a police officer investigating the report of a crime, continuing to do so after multiple warnings, and **not **ending up in cuffs. Mouthing off to a policeman is almost always a good way to get arrested.</p>
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<p>That’s not an “expression”. The dude is STILL berating the policemen at the top of his lungs, even after being cuffed. If he had ever stopped screaming at the officer for two seconds the entire time, even after being cuffed, the policeman would have probably just walked away. Gates was behaving like a binge drinking college student hell-bent on getting arrested.</p>
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<p>The policeman did believe him. The policeman was trying to get the dude to stop screaming at him long enough to get his ID and determine if there were, indeed, two intruders in the man’s house – the basis of the 911 call that brought the officer to the scene in the first place.</p>
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<p>Aaaaaaaand…?</p>
<p>My bad. I copied the Harvard woman’s name from a site that had misspelled it. It is Chanequa Campbell. That should make your Google searches a little easier.</p>
<p>BTW, I’m not a ware that CC has a rule that all posts must have a clearly stated “point”. That would certainly tend to drive down forum traffic, though.</p>
<p>From some posters, certainly.</p>
<p>For me, one of the most enlightening aspects of threads such as these is that the discussions provide me with a window on a perspective that I do not often hear expressed frankly–that of African-Americans, who, despite their differences, seem to share significant premises about the way that the world works, premises that differ substantially from mine… So I thank our Black posters for their willingness to so openly express their views. In the same spirit, I thought that I might elaborate on my own perspective on the Gates incident in greater detail.</p>
<p>I’d like to begin with a thought experiment. Suppose that Allen Dershowitz had acted the same way when a police officer who came to investigate the report of a burglary at his house, loudly berating the officer even after the officer explained the situation, following the officer to his porch and continuing to loudly call him an anti-Semite in front of a gathering, and after being warned of the consequences if he didn’t stop, was arrested for disorderly conduct and then released at the station. Wouldn’t we be outraged at Dershowitz? Why would we care? Because in a well-ordered society, police shouldn’t be subject to abuse from prominent, well-connected people who try to throw their weight around.</p>
<p>Make no mistake. Henry Gates is every bit as prominent and well-connected as Allen Dershowitz (although Gates is a much more accomplished scholar and hopefully, not as much of an arrogant, self-centered jerk), and used to deference from others on that account. Of course, Gates is also African-American, and has no doubt been at times subjected to a variety of indignities because of his race. But the very fact that he and other prominent Black people have experienced such indignities might lead him to perceive racism in perfectly innocent situations.</p>
<p>Against this background, let’s first review what we know:</p>
<p>While the neighbor who reported the alleged break-in may have been influenced by racial considerations, the initial decision to investigate was not.</p>
<p>Perhaps believing that Officer Conway had been the one who had observed Gates’ efforts to enter the house, and had identified him as a burglar because of his race, Gates was belligerent from the moment Conway appeared and continued to berate Conway and invoke his connections throughout the incident (Gates has admitted as much). Gates CHOSE to follow Conway to the porch and continued to heap invective on him even after a crowd had gathered.</p>
<p>Conway has been unwavering in his story throughout. By contrast, Charles Ogletree and Gates jumped at the chance to bail when Obama provided them with the opportunity, even though campaigning against disparate racial treatment in the criminal justice system is at the heart of what Ogletree does.</p>
<p>Finally, what did Conway have to gain from picking a fight with an African-American who has identified himself as a Harvard professor? (By the way, I don’t think Gates ever provided us with specifics about his version of what went on in the house before they went to the porch. What is it exactly that he thought that Conway did wrong?). Do you think he really needs this? Isn’t it more plausible to believe that he just wanted to get the situation resolved and get the heck out of there?</p>
<p>By contrast, isn’t it entirely plausible that (particularly given his experiences as an African-American) Gates reacted in a manner common to prominent and well-connected people when they are challenged by trying to throw his weight around. And as to the arrest, if you don’t think you are going to be arrested you continue to loudly berate and insult a police officer in front of a crowd–no matter who you are–then you are an idiot. That’s how the world works–even if you are Henry Gates OR Allen Dershowitz.</p>
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She is a young woman from Bed-Stuy who worked her way to Harvard. Depending upon whom you believe, she was either a criminal or in the wrong place at the wrong time, and her life is ruined. Four weeks from graduation she was kicked out of Harvard with no diploma. Someone died in the incident, so it was terribly tragic, but I just don’t believe it’s a cut-and-dried circumstance. I just really don’t think it equates with the Professor Gates thing which seems like a misunderstanding and testosterone overload.</p>
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Actually, he did. And it’s pretty honest and insightful in a lot of ways. I don’t think I can link but it’s at theroot.com Both men are very close in agreement as to how the interaction began and what set off the confrontation. It’s pretty clear that Professor Gates assumed he was being profiled as a criminal while the officer thought he might be or have been the victim.</p>
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<p>That’s a pretty passive way to put it. Chanequa’s dope dealer friend was murdered in the stairwell of a Harvard dorm by the boyfriend of another Harvard woman in a drug deal setup. The murder weapon was then hidden under the bed of a third Harvard woman (without her knowledge). The murderer and the murdered dope dealer friend of Chaneuqa’s both had access to the Harvard dorm using student supplied security cards.</p>
<p>Chanequa claims that her dismissal from Harvard was racist and the fact that she was a known drug dealer on campus with connections to drug murder had nothing to do with it. I just thought maybe we should include her charges of “racism” to a broader “teaching moment” about accusations of racism.</p>
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Intentionally so since I thought the case was still winding its way through the criminal justice system.</p>