Race, the Race, and Summer Storms....

Been away for a while, but with the campaign truly heating up.  These are the things that caught my attention:

First up I am glad Chris Matthews said this to RNC chairman Reince Priebus:


The naked and wanton racial animus that the Republican Party is trucking in, is saddening.   Republicans have suffered no consequences for this.

Now some of this is because talking about racial issues is horrifically difficult.  This piece by Ta-Neshisi Coates, Fear of a Black President, is one of the best pieces I have read on race in sometime.  I would highly recommend reading it if you have not.  

The King I know....

With the recent anniversary of the "I have a Dream" speech, I find myself a bit reflective. When people talk about Dr. King there is this sort of (what is the opposite of demonization?) Santa Clausification.

I understand the need retroactively claim a hero. But let us not forget while King was alive, he was hated and unpopular to large swaths of the public.

So it is important to remember what Dr. King and his contemporaries actually did for the African American community. Not the country at large, but specifically African Americans. I personally do not have the words to describe it, nor did I live it. But my parents did, and my grand parents as well. I remember the "stories" and the "lessons", about how to act. The pervasive sense of fear that existed in this country for a segment of the population.

Nah...I am sure they are just lazy...

The Pew Research Center released some truly disheartening numbers on the wealth disparities between Caucasians and minorities in this country.
Pew goes into some detail about how the recession has hit minorities much harder then their white counter parts, but few have actually looked at the numbers.

According to the study, the inflation-adjusted median wealth among Hispanic households fell 66% from 2005 to 2009. Black households suffered a 53% drop in net worth over the same period. By contrast, whites saw a decline of 16% in household wealth.

In 2009, the typical black household had just $5,677 in wealth. Hispanic families had about $6,325 in wealth. The average white household had a net worth of $113,149.

The study also showed that a third of black and Hispanic households had zero wealth, meaning that their debts were larger than the value of all their assets.

Overall, the study attributed much of the disparity to the decline in home values, which hit black and Hispanic households hardest.

In addition, the downturn in the housing market was most severe in states with large populations of Hispanics and Asians, including California, Arizona, Nevada, Florida and Michigan, according to the study.

Combine that with the unemployment numbers for blacks and you have a much clearer picture of the problems we face as nation.

Talk about those shiftless "others" all you want, but there are still serious structural impediments to economic progress amongst minorities.

-Cheers

The bar...

Is simply higher for a minority then it is otherwise. I do not know why I forgot this. But today I feel sorry for the President. I wish he had not had the state of Hawaii release his "long form" birth certificate. It will only embolden the opposition.

The President has done more then any other, to prove his citizenship. Now he has asked the
state of Hawaii to wave its privacy laws.

The problem is, they will never stop. The main impulse behind the birther movement is bigotry. They do not believe he is legitimate. There is nothing that will dissuade him. Now they will ask for his college records, then his tax forms, probably even his children's birth records.

They will never stop.

-Cheers

Oh no that isn't racist.....

Yep. I am glad, that someone has these facts! I did not know I was on welfare!

Wow....seriously. Wow....

You know sometimes when you call someone racist...they are in fact racist.

-Cheers

These days are still those days....

In honor of the anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball, I wanted to post something nice and reflective.

But as it seems to be the case these days, I am finding it increasingly hard to note the progress made. Instead focusing on the distance we still need to travel.

Two stories caught my eye this week:

Via Balloon Juice, Mickey Kaus is a Jackass. Now you might be wondering why someone would say that, here is the offending text in a blog post Mickey wrote about President Obama's badness as a politician:

Cost doesn’t go into why Obama managed to get to the top of politics without being all that good at it. The answer is distressingly obvious: Obama’s the biggest affirmative action baby in history.

Now this bothers me. It bothers me on a personal level. We are not talking about Flava Flav being the President, Jay-Z or even Al Sharpton. We are talking about a Harvard trained constitutional lawyer, who was a state legislator and then a U.S senator. Despite what you think of the Presidents politics, he earned his place in life. Fighting against the constant racial inequities that most individuals of a fairer heritage have no inkling of.

This is very personal to me. That someone who seemingly knows nothing of the individual he comments on or how he won his office would make such a comment is jaw dropping. That I have had people say similar things about myself probably doesn't help matters. Evidently because I am black getting into Northwestern/U of I is impossible with out the help of affirmative action.

The President is a Harvard trained constitutional lawyer, who was a state and national legislator. That hardly sounds unqualified. Bad at politics? That is completely possible. But an Affirmative Action baby? Not hardly. Implying such is the worst sort of bigotry out there.

Combine that with this and you don't have to wonder why minorities are quick see bigotry, or to comment that racial issues have not noticeably changed.

The Weekly has obtained a copy of an email sent to fellow conservatives this week by Marilyn Davenport, a Southern California Tea Party activist and member of the central committee of the Orange County Republican Party.

Under the words, “Now you know why no birth certificate,” there’s an Obama family portrait showing them as apes. (I won't post the picture, because I find it offensive)

I know that Mr. Robinson, would have just held his chin up, smiled and took it. Because that was
the only way he could get that door open for rest of us. He had to take it and endure, so that we all would even have the chance.

That is courage. I wish I had it.

The President has some of it. Sometimes it is easy to forget, the risks he has taken to get to the White House. The vitriol he has to take and endure, all the while keeping up that smile. So that the rest of us have a chance.

Savage his policies. He doesn't deserve this sort of attack.

-Cheers

Down the rabbit hole....

The subject of race in this country is always a prickly issue. So much so, that I tend to wade in only very occasionally.

This is even more true, when the subject at hand, has some relation to the societal/institutional force referred to as "white privilege", a topic that is always certain to get strong responses.

With that said, I came across a post this morning that I found fascinating. It was titled "An Object Lesson in White Privilege: What if Sarah Palin were Black?". A provocative title to say the least. The article-OpEd, is highly worth the read. I would also recommend reading the comment section to see the sorts of responses that are made (Preemptively if you compare the Republican and Democratic parties of today with those same parties from the mid 20th century, you are already on shaky group. Back then there were liberal republicans and well the dixie-crats broke off from the democratic party in spectacular fashion over civil rights. So a straight comparison is misleading at best.)

This passage in particular spoke to me:

To be White is to be "normal," "invisible," and quintessentially "American." It is also the freedom to be an individual. When crazy white people bomb buildings, kill cops in the name of radical right wing politics, go on shooting rampages, or more generally just act like fools, it is never framed as a "White" problem. I would suggest that these actions are rarely, if ever, interrogated for what they reveal about Whiteness and/or white folk at large. In short, there is no "I hope that person isn't white" moment. Why? Because a given white person's actions are usually a reflection of their individual shortcomings, not a commentary on white people as a whole.

This is a very hard thing to convey to someone. How do you explain the sort of hurt you feel, when all your accomplishments are judged through an "affirmative action" prism? As if you are always part of some sort of collective.

It is saddening how internalized this is. When Mike took his job in news, one of the first things I asked him was to, "...never interview that black guy in the tank top and missing teeth, about anything. Ever.". I felt something similar to that after the recent tragedy in Arizona. My thoughts in order were:

1. I hope this wasn't political
2. Man I hope those people are alright
3. Ugh..I hope he (cause they predominately are "hes") isn't Muslim.

That may seem strange to most people, that someone would think in that fashion. But ask yourself how the coverage would have been different if Jared Loughner had instead been Muhommed Fahad, Jose Calderon, or Tyrone Jackson.

Anyway, I really don't have much to add to the discussion, but thought it was an interesting thought experiment.

But in answer to the challenge of the linked post I guess my response would be: If Sarah Palin were Black we would have never heard of her. The details of her life combined with ethnicity would have made her toxic from day one.

Simply put, the standards that ethnic minorities are held to is always directly related to the stereotypes they live under.

-Cheers

You think you have had a bad at work....

Imagine being this guy:


I am pretty confident I would have been fired on the spot for my response.

Also I would like to reiterate, if you ever have to make the statement "But I'm not a racist.". Sadly, you probably are.

-Cheers

On bigotry.

Recently there have been a number of polls, articles, news stories about the rise of Islamophobia in the country.

A couple weeks back Howard Dean defended the the American people and the opponents of Park 51, from the accusations of intolerance and bigotry:

I think some of my own folks on my end of the spectrum of the party are demonizing some fairly decent people who are opposed to this. And, again, in no way am I defending, you know, the right wing of the Republican Party. But there are 65 percent of the people in this country are not right-wing bigots. Some of them really have deep emotional feelings about this.

To me this is a hollow sounding rationale. Simply because a majority supports something does not imbue it with virtue.

Why is that?

Well Jim Crow laws were widely accepted through much of the country not long ago. Women were disenfranchised until the turn of the last century, and that was popularly held belief. When surveyed, American troops supported segregation pre-WWII. Bigotry can be just as popular in this country as baseball and apple pie. If history has taught
us nothing else, it has taught us that; and there was nothing virtuous about any of the above . It is and was that the time, just simple bigotry.

Ta-Nehisi Coates does an admirable job of talking eloquently about this. Simply because a lot of people believe a thing it still can be prejudiced or biased or even racist.

The notion that that there are no actual bigots in America is hinted at in Dean's last sentence, that opposition to Park51 comes from "deep emotional feelings," as opposed to a presumably thin and shallow bigotry. In fact, bigotry is often quite substantive and emanates from "deep emotional feelings." The planter in the antebellum South who refused to emancipate his slaves was not committing evil simply because it felt good. He was, in the main, doing it to protect the interest and welfare of his children. In other words, he had "deep emotional feelings" about the fate of his progeny and the nature of their inheritance.

That about sums it up, for me.


-Cheers

The world of intended consequences...

One of my main objections to the Arizona law is that it would disproportionately affect people of Hispanic and Latino descent. Why do I think that? Well I could cite my own life experiences, but I would prefer something less subjective. Just take a look at the statistics from New York's "stop and frisk" laws (actual statics embedded at the linked cite).

From 2005 to 2008, approximately 80 percent of total stops made were of Blacks and Latinos, who comprise 25 percent and 28 percent of New York City's total population, respectively. During this same time period, only approximately 10 percent of stops were of Whites, who comprise 44 percent of the city's population.....

..Between 2005 and June 2008, only 8 percent of Whites stopped were also frisked, while 85 percent of Blacks and Latinos who were stopped were also frisked.

It is definitely having an effect.

The data demonstrates a paucity of stops resulting in weapons and/or contraband yield across racial lines. Of the cumulative number of stops made since 2005, only 2.6 percent resulted in the discovery of a weapon or contraband. Though rates of contraband yielded were minute across racial groups, stops made of Whites were slightly more likely to yield contraband.

Arrest rates during the period of 2005 through the first half of 2008 were low for all racial groups at between 4 and 6 percent of all NYPD-initiated stops during that period.

If we want to talk about racial issues in this country we have to do a much better job of it. Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) writes about "The Myth of White Privilege", but he does a fair job of ignoring or minimizing the effects of structural racism/bigotry in our society. If Arizona's law had been enacted as written I am confident there would have been more stories like this one from Florida:

The incident that provoked the lawsuit occurred in April when Janet Lovett and her husband took their 7-year-old son, who is autistic, to the Children's Splash Park in Tavares. While she was in the park, Lovett was splashed by water, which soaked the front of her white T-shirt and made her padded bra visible.

Janet Lovett's lawyer said the Florida woman is suing the city of Tavares for violating her rights because she was arrested after her shirt got wet at a kiddie splash park there.

"She was ultimately approached by an individual [who] professed to be a city employee and [told] she was not appropriately dressed for the park," Marks said. "[He told her] she would have to change into a bathing suit or some other clothing."

Marks said his client left her husband with their child, put a towel over her shoulders and walked out of the city-owned park. She was planning on going home to get a bathing suit when she was approached in the parking lot by a police officer.

"[The] police officer confronted her and started essentially quizzing her and demanding information from her, stating that she needed to put Mrs. Lovett's name in a database," Marks said.

Lovett, a Peruvian native who was granted American citizenship in January, speaks English, albeit "not perfectly," Marks said. She said she explained the situation to the officer and requested to speak with her husband. The officer allegedly denied that request and asked Lovett to produce her identification. She had none with her and told the officer it was in her car.

"I started shaking. I [felt] nervous. My son was inside [the] park with [my] husband. I was alone," Lovett said in an interview with ABC-affiliate WFTV. "[I was] very scared. I [had] never been arrested before."

A police report obtained by WFTV indicates Lovett did not give her name fast enough. As a result, she was taken into custody on suspicion of obstructing justice and resisting arrest.

This is what you run the risk of. We have seen this sort of thing play out before. When people are scared/economically distressed minority rights are secondary.

-Cheers

Dissappointment in the Administration...ctd

I just wanted to highlight this post by Ta-Nehisi Coates, because I feel this line absolutely encapsulates the feeling of rage I feel during "Sherrod-gate" (emphasis added Ben Smith):

The argument has been made that this isn't Obama, just the people working under him. That theory elides the responsibility of leaders to set a tone. The tone that Obama has set, in regards to race, is to retreat with great velocity in the face of anything that can be defined as "racial." Granted, this has been politically smart. Also granted, Obama has done it with nuance. But it can not be expected that the president's subordinates will share that nuance.

More disturbingly, this is what happens when you treat the arrest of a black man, in his home, as something that can be fixed over beers. This is what happens when you silently assent to the notion that racism and its victims are somehow equally wrong. The ground, itself, is rigged with a narrative of inversion that goes back centuries. When you treat the two side as equals, expect not just more of the same. Expect worse. ...

On the great American scourge of racism, this administration must stand, sometimes publicly, for something. Failing that it will fall — indeed, already has fallen — for anything.

I think this is the thrust of it. If we want to talk about race in this country we need to do it. Horrible things were done to minorities over the years, and the rise of the "reverse racism" charge needs to be put in its proper place.

Update: Thought this post by Adam Serwer provides a much better analysis then I could.

For all the sound and fury, Breitbart's video was nothing more than an alibi, an attempt to collectively exonerate the right from a charge of racism by turning it back on the NAACP. This is the precise origin of the oppositional culture developed by some conservatives in the aftermath of the 2008 election. It is broadly premised on convincing conservatives they face a similar kind of institutional racism black people have faced throughout history, while maintaining that the sole obstacle to black advancement is the same culture of grievance they're so desperate to imitate. Glenn Beck saying today's America is "like the 1950s except the races are reversed," isn't an observation; it's a demand for absolution. This is the same selfish white guilt rightly mocked when possessed by liberals, curdled into a bitter stew of defensive anger and epic self-pity. Yet even Beck thinks Sherrod was wronged.

[emphasis added mine]. That pretty much sounds correct to me. As someone who has been followed around a store, for simply browsing and been stopped 3 times in the span of 4 city blocks, because they "fit a description", this is all very illuminating to me.

-Cheers

Dissappointment in the Administration...

At least with me, continues to grow. Their handling of the Shirley Sherrod situation is an exercise in extreme cowardice, and my respect for them continues to diminish. If you are not familiar with the issue, I would point you here, here, and here.

This episode dredges up some extremely virulent racial anxieties I have.

I forget, from time to time, that being a minority makes you the other in this country. Even if your family can date its roots back to the antebellum south, you are somehow still not American enough. I am sure most people have no idea what I am talking about here, tribalism being what it is. But it is the reason why I would be loathe to run for any sort of national political office.

I would be hounded to the end of my days about whether I was pursuing a "black agenda". Rarely are any Caucasian candidates/office holders/pundits, questioned in this way. Don't believe me? Just look at the sorts of accusations the president has to deal with, Glenn Beck on the Affordable Care Act: "It's Reparations!". Why? I am not really sure. I think it has something to do with all black people being poor, and our half-black mooslum President wanting to make all those hard working white folks out their pay up for slavery.

Or it is instead about trying to beat a political opponent through whatever means are necessary. Even if it means destroying the life of a woman with this background:

Sherrod is an obscure bureaucrat who helps rural farmers. She is black. As a little girl, she lived in a place where there were lynchings and cross burnings, and she dreamt of going north. Before she came of age, white men murdered her father and were never jailed for it. As a result, she made a pledge to herself: that rather than abandon the South, she would help as many of its black residents as possible.

In a moving speech before the NAACP, she explained how that attitude persisted until an occasion 24 years ago, when she was working for a small nonprofit. She was assigned to help a white farmer whose superior, less-than-friendly attitude she resented.

At first, she gave the farmer less help than was in her power, pawning him off on a white lawyer. Soon, however, God helped her to see the error in her ways, she helped the farmer to keep his land, and ever since she's understood that her calling to help people isn't about black and white, it's about aiding poor people of any color.

This woman was fired, when she should be lauded for what she has done. She has shown amazing courage and this was her reward. Mr. Coates and Mr. Greenwald I think have the best comments on this episode.

I expect more of the President then this. Not because he is black. But because he is the god damned President, and he should not cater to these glorified bomb-throwers.

Mrs. Sherrod deserved better then this.

So absolutely shitty job, by the media, the NAACP, the Administration, and of course the Right wing activists who have no interest in anything other then destroying their political rivals.

I am sure the media that fell for this will be more skeptical in the future....oh wait, I remember the 90's.


-Cheers

Pulling the curtain back....

Sometimes you get to see what a candidate really thinks about a subject. This is Rand Paul newly minted Republican candidate for Senate in Kentucky on his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Mr. Paul tries to cloak this as an issue of "property rights", by saying that allowing legal recourse against private business owners is some sort of infringement on the 1st Amendment and how most of the complaints against his stance are hypothetical. I highly recommend watching the sheer dissembling that goes on during the interview. The idea that discrimination isn't a infringement on personal liberty is obviously the position of someone who has never been followed around a grocery store, clothing store, or 'encouraged' to leave an eating establishment simply because they look different. I understand there may be a principled argument here, however, the actual historical atrocities that can be brought to bare on this subject out weigh most of them. The lack of acknowledgment there is striking.

Mr. Paul honestly has not seriously scrutinized the consequences of what he espouses. Or at least that is my hope. If that is not the case that is the most callous statement I have heard in some time. Some other thoughts on the subject here, here, here, and here.

Basically I am profoundly saddened that this sort of candidate can still win in the 21st century.....


--update
Seems Mr. Paul has had some second and third thoughts on this matter, TPM has more coverage on the issue.

-Cheers

Round-up...

Just in case I am unable to get a post in tomorrow, I thought I would round up a couple of the the articles/posts I have been mulling over the last few days.

First up we have the controversy over a leaked e-mail from a Harvard Law School 3L (more here).
Andrew Sullivan has been posting the responses he as been getting from his readers here, here, here, here, and here.

With a nice round up of opinions on the Atlantic Wire here.

And here is the relevant section of the email that has cause most of the commotion.
I absolutely do not rule out the possibility that African Americans are, on average, genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. I could also obviously be convinced that by controlling for the right variables, we would see that they are, in fact, as intelligent as white people under the same circumstances. The fact is, some things are genetic. African Americans tend to have darker skin. Irish people are more likely to have red hair.

In general I would be loathe to even talk about this issue, cause it bothers me on a very fundamental level. And I am not even even talking about the rank racism in the statement. It is the complete lack of any scientific rigor or intellectual honesty that gets to me. Here is the thing that I dislike. I really loathe with people who have no science background hold court on science topics. Especially topics such as this. Why? More often then not, they will claim a lack of information or consensus, when if they had taken the time to consult the relevant material, they could see that is not the case. This is especially true when talking about a subject as nebulous as "intelligence".

As these two writers more astutely point out, your right to an opinion does not equal a right to be immune to others opinions on your opinion.

The free speech/freedom of thought angle:

• Not only did one HLS student write an email literally saying that black people might be genetically inferior to white people, but she is being defended by other legal scholars under the pretense that any idea should be up for debate and no one should get offended and oh also maybe she's right. With no recognition of the fact that ideas of genetic inferiority underwrote slavery in this country ......free speech is not a shield from criticism and consequence. Yes, it is a shield against government persecution for your speech, but it does not mean that other people are not permitted to speak out against you; it doesn’t mean that other people should have to accept what you say without attaching words like "racist" or "sexist" or "bigoted" to what you say.
• Agreed "You have the right to express yourself, not to control the reactions of others," writes political science professor Scott Lemieux. "The underlying premise," he thinks, in this debate, "is that one should be able to express bigotry while being exempt from criticism that might make the person expressing the bigotry uncomfortable. And going along with this is the even sillier assumption that people who defend existing social privileges are the real iconoclasts. Please."

On the science front this I find to be a compelling point:

* Nor Is It a Matter of Scientific Inquiry, adds Jesse Taylor at Pandagon.

If you are going to lead a scientific inquiry about the relative intelligence of racial groups (assuming all definitional problems are solved and that "intelligence" is a single variable), then there are three potential outcomes, generally speaking:
1.) W (whites) are more intelligent than B (blacks).
2.) W and B are equally intelligent.
3.) W are less intelligent than B.
Whenever this tired old debate is brought up, the only propositions that are ever introduced are 1 and 2. ... Nobody I've ever had this debate with has ever mentioned 3. It's because the debate that you're having isn't about science’s ability to measure racial intelligence as a genetic factor - it's about the defense of racial stereotypes as something you can’t disprove and therefore shouldn’t be so damned sensitive about.

So I might take it a tad personally.

Next up a thought provoking piece in the National Journal called "Do Family Values weaken Families".

Can it be? One of the oddest paradoxes of modern cultural politics may at last be resolved.

The paradox is this: Cultural conservatives revel in condemning the loose moral values and louche lifestyles of "San Francisco liberals." But if you want to find two-parent families with stable marriages and coddled kids, your best bet is to bypass Sarah Palin country and go to Nancy Pelosi territory: the liberal, bicoastal, predominantly Democratic places that cultural conservatives love to hate.

The country's lowest divorce rate belongs to none other than Massachusetts, the original home of same-sex marriage. Palinites might wish that Massachusetts's enviable marital stability were an anomaly, but it is not. The pattern is robust. States that voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in both 2004 and 2008 boast lower average rates of divorce and teenage childbirth than do states that voted for the Republican in both elections. (That is using family data for 2006 and 2007, the latest available.)

And finally, Sarah Palin does not know anything about history. The fetishization of the Founding Fathers is slightly disturbing.

-Cheers

Not to get racial on you....

But this bit from Morning Joe made my stomach turn.


I see something wrong with 5 wealthy Caucasian pundits sitting around musing on what an "American" looks like. My family has lived in the country for over 150 years. Evidently I don't fit that bill....

-Cheers

Throw-a-way bits

So still on my self-imposed health care hiatus I cam across a comment on social bias and how difficult it is to diagnose.

Basically it speaks to an issue I have tried futilely to write about.

Race and bias are just difficult subjects to broach. There are many reasons why that it is, which
could be debated. But that it is a difficult subject is not debatable.

Adam Serwer of the American Prospect wrote a piece on the Limbaugh-Rams story that had one passage that resonated with me:

On the one hand, there's the general anxiety on the right that comes from the recognition that one can't actually treat black people this way and expect there not to be social consequences. On the other, there's actual bewilderment about the very concept of racism -- conservatives understand in the abstract that racism is bad, but they seem incapable of identifying actual racist behavior. Instead, because (a) racism is bad and (b) liberals are bad (c) racism is a quality possessed by liberals. By definition, conservatives cannot be racist, because they are good, unlike liberals, and therefore nothing Rush Limbaugh says is racist. Moreover, while liberals have sometimes intimated racial motivation for conservative criticism where there isn't any, conservatives have refused to recognize when attacks on the president become attacks on black people. Calling the president "an angry black guy" is one of those times.

This blanket refusal to evaluate their own behavior is what continues to make the GOP seem completely tone deaf when it comes to minorities -- the GOP can list as many black Republicans from the 1800s as they like, as long as they continue to adhere to the Bender Theory of Discrimination and refuse to acknowledge even flagrant racism within their ranks, and even imply that minorities are so stupid they're "fooled" into believing racism exists, they will remain a party minorities do not feel welcome in.

Now I do tend to agree that conservatives are more prone to this sort of thinking then their progressive brethren, but it could be generalized to virtually any sort of intellectual coterie. Those who agree with you are somehow more virtuous then those who do not. But I digress. This is something that is become extremely virulent. People toss around racist, and Nazis like hand grenades.

What I mean with this whole post is this. I am not surprised when some says something racially insensitive. What I find shocking is the absolute inability to engage in any sort of self-examination. Someone else is always the "race-baiter". There is always a rationalization. Whether it is Rush's comments on Donovan McNabb, the commentary of two South Carolinian republican chairmen or well just about anything Pat Buchanan says.

There are not racists, they aren't biased! They are just telling it like it is.

No I think Mr. Serwer has the right of it.

-Cheer

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