Crowely and Gates

I have tried to my best not to blog about this issue. Mainly because your views on the issue are so radically affected by your ethnicity.

Biases are hard to explain, and transparent. No on thinks they are a bigot. In the abstract we all agree that racial profiling takes place, but when any particular incident happens the individuals involved are always exceptions. The studies on the issue are incontrovertible in a variety of fields from law enforcement to medicine.

But stepping aside from that, Ta-Nahisi Coates actually distills the issue down to its most salient point.

The rest of us are left with a country where, by all appearances, officers are well within their rights to arrest you for sassing them. Which is where we started. I can't explain why, but this is the sort of thing that makes you reflect on your own precarious citizenship. I mean, the end of all of this scares the hell out of me.

A bit about my perspective on these issues. I have a brother who is a police officer, yet despite that I have been pulled over for "DWB" as well as followed around stores. The looks I got, when visiting Mike in Washington MO, with my girlfriend of the time, have colored my world view.

So it is hard to explain to somebody who does not have that sort of experience, what it is like. The very idea that "sassing" a police officer can land you in jail is offensive. Police officers are vested with some of the most awesome powers any individual citizen can have and take incredible risks on our behalf. Yet they are not infallible. They are possessed of the same moral slants as the rest of society, except for the fact that they deal with some of the worst segments of society. Also police have a disturbing habit of covering for each other no matter what.

So I am sympathetic to both sides. But I can not deny the experiences I have had.

If you ever wonder what bias looks like or how it is expressed, we can generally just take a walk around town to illustrate it. If you have never seen a lady clutch her purse just a little tighter or roll up her window up a bit when you walk by. It may be a little harder for you to understand how this situation may feel. I have never been arrested. I have had one traffic ticket for speeding in my life and that is the sort of reaction I have come to expect.

That is the world we live in, and that is the context in which these things must be taken into consideration.

I highly recommend reading Mr. Coates various pieces on the issue. This is the sort of dialog we should be having. Not the reflexive, "cops are wrong, cops are right" milieu.

In closing there is this pieces by Andrew Sullivan in the Times online, that does as good a job of addressing both aspects of this issue in an even handed fashion as I have seen. But I think this would be the most revealing comment.

Equally, I’d wager that if the policeman had seen an older white man wielding a cane through the glass door of a posh house, he would not have demanded that the man come out onto his porch and identify himself. He would have knocked, explained the reason for his visit and instantly accepted a white man’s explanation. Is this racism? If it has never happened to you, no. If it has, yes.

On the web, the comments sections on various blogs and stories were the most honest. Here is one view: “Butt the hell out Obama. You don’t know the facts of the case, you weren’t there, you’re friends with the douchebag, you’re black. Taking Obama’s word is the same as judging a criminal by a jury of his fellow gangster peers.”

Here is another: “Professor Gates might not have been arrested if he’d been more submissive — let the cop win the masculinity contest. Every brotha has played that game as well: you don’t look the popo in the eye, you do say ‘sir’ a lot and maybe you won’t get locked up. Then you go home and stew in the stuff that gives African-American men low life expectancy.”

-edit added an additional article, and I need maps!

I think the implications here are clear enough.

-Cheers