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24 Jul 2009 03:34 pm
TrackBack URL for this entry:http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/mt-42/mt-tb.cgi/12424
"When we think about the cops, it's scary, on one level, to conclude that a cop can basically arrest you on a whim. It's scarier still to think that this is what Americans want, that this country is as we've made it."
Damn. Probably the most succinct way to put what most of us seem to be missing. Or, to speak only for myself, what I'VE been missing.
Fear. The great American motivator. Playing on people's fears has become the method of choice to push people one way or another. Once you become afraid, you have lost your way.
It's not "scary" to conclude that "a cop can basically arrest" anyone "on a whim." It's a fact, not only here, but almost everywhere. The world is real, not ideal. Don't be afraid, and you take away some of the power of the 'scary' guys. Don't let fear determine who you are. Being arrested is not being convicted, being convicted can expose unjust laws, and end them. Think of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part, just part, of his greatness, is his courage in the face of the scariest guys, laws, and a pervasive social pathology.
Racism is as American as apple pie, Thanksgiving, and the flag. That's the real, not the ideal. Maybe someday racism will vanish, but that's unlikely.
To think that it is "...scarier still to think that this is what Americans want, that this country is as we've made it," is a spectacular conclusory leap. I don't know that this is what Americans want [I am assuming you mean white Americans] that country is as we've made it. Careful with those pronouns. Who is "we"? Not me. Not a lot of people.
TNC, my guess is you are more tired of this incident than I am, and I'm pretty fargin' tired of it. There are far more important specific and horrific issues and incidents to spend our resources on.
Here's a chance to make peace, truly. Let's smoke a pipeful of hash, drink some wine, and groove a bit. All of us. Even the most puritanical amongst us. You can watch.
"It's not "scary" to conclude that "a cop can basically arrest" anyone "on a whim." It's a fact, not only here, but almost everywhere."
Well, I think things can be both scary and facts. For instance, on this earth, there exists a beast called a Kamodo Dragon. So, it's a fact that dragons exist on this earth, and that happens to scare me.
As an aside: Komodo Dragons aren't that scary. They're lizards about three feet long and usually don't attack humans (though they've been known to eat small dogs). I met one when I was a kid once. Fed it a sandwich.
Personally, I'm far more scared of cops than Komodo Dragons...
Maybe zeek, but what about the fire-breathing. Yikes!
Actually Komodos can reach lengths of over 9 feet and their saliva contains venom which has led to the death of at least one person recently (see wikipedia). With that out of the way, well said TNC, as ever. That is the matter in a nutshell...the policing practised in the USA occurs because of the acquiescence of much of the population.
I have found that people desire/need respect. Certainly a man that has become a professor at Harvard deserves respect, but no more than a police officer who seeks to keep a community safe. Both are men with strengths and weaknesses. Because a man is a professor, that in no removes his responsibility as a part of humanity to extend respect. What I find disturbing is the ability some have to show respect to those they agree with while showing contempt for those they do not agree with--the term 'cop' is disrespectful. Can police officers abuse their authority--sure. Can citizen's misuse their 'rights'--sure. However, until there is respect on both sides, there will be no communication, no progress, no hope of becoming better.
"I hope Crowley, Gates and Obama get that beer soon. They need to pour out a little something for Shem Walker. We can't all go to Harvard."
Word. Thanks for that T.
My condolences to those who knew Shem Walker, but there seems to be a disconnect here. Ta-Nehisi, and most of his readers, think a cop in Cambridge (Crowley) acted out of bounds by arresting a guy who "sassed" off to him in his own house. Didn't Shem Walker act out of bounds by (allegedly) kicking a guy in the head who didn't answer him when he asked him to get off his stoop? It's a tragedy the man is dead, but how about tapping someone on the shoulder if he's wearing an earpiece or headphones, before escalating to violence?
How about not moving from shoes to guns?
How about not murdering a citizen who does not present a clear, present danger to anyone else's life?
How about cops actually keeping the peace?
Come on, Doc. I bet if you take a deep breath even you would see the problems with what you wrote. You know that Walker didn't represent a clear & present danger to that cop he was fighting with -- or the other cop, had Walker gotten hold of the first cop's weapon? I don't know that, which is why I wouldn't characterize what could be a justified shooting as a "murder". I do know that if the man kicked a cop in the head, that was an unnecessary escalation of force. I understand the desire for cops to show restraint, but the rest of us need to show some restraint too.
come on Dave,
If the cop had identified himself as a cop there would have been no incident. Or even better yet informed Walker they were going ot use his house for a stakeout in advance.
Someone who lives in a high crime neighborhood, with a lot of drug dealing especially, is not going to react well to someone who refuses to get off his front stoop and doesn't dientify himself.
Come on, Dave. The weapon didn't come into play until the undercover police officer pulled it out. And if he had police training, he'd know that you don't pull a weapon on someone unless you are ready to use it. He had fellow officers rushing to his aid when he drew his piece.
I have no problem with pointing out Walker's violent actions as contributing to his own tragic death. But suggesting that the cop HAD to shoot Walker because Walker might have gained possession of his weapon is absurd. The power and authority we invest in police officers comes with a responsibility, a responsibility which was not demonstrated by this officer to tragic result.
re: Marcos El Malo (Replying to: Doctor Cleveland) July 24, 2009 6:19 PM
Come on, Dave. The weapon didn't come into play until the undercover police officer pulled it out. And if he had police training, he'd know that you don't pull a weapon on someone unless you are ready to use it.
Unless NYC police standards are radically different from DC's, that gun should not have come out at all, unless the officer felt in imminent danger of his life or was facing an assailant otherwise presenting a major threat. At least, those were the constraints I was under functioning as armed security, with Metro police oversight, in DC (granted, that was a few decades back...)
I think you mean Cambridge, Mass., not DC. , but thank you for confirming.
Come on Dave.
No cop can shoot someone because they might have a gun, somewhere. Still less can you kill someone because they might hypothetically get your gun.
Neither can you kill someone because they might do something awful in the future. You cannot kill someone for a hypothetical.
That is why I said clear and present danger, which is the standard, and which henqiguai's source cites as "imminent." Clear and present are words with real meanings, not just bombast for the titles of airport novels. "Clear" means clear, Dave. As in, a weapon you can see. A danger that is real, obvious, in the here and now. "Present" means NOW, in real time, right here. Not "he might have a gun hidden in the car" or "he might return with a weapon later" or "Who knows what revenge he may take once he grows to a man?" Now. A weapon in sight now. That is the standard. The absolute and universal standard for police training.
If someone flashes a pistol, a cop should absolutely draw, and absolutely command the person with the gun to drop it. Identifying oneself as police is a necessary part of that command.
But the cop should never have drawn without seeing a lethal weapon in play. Police are trained specifically never to draw their weapons unless the danger is imminent. Drawing a gun never calms the situation down. It creates danger.
Killing someone who is not a threat is, in fact, murder. I chose these words very deliberately. If you don't think it's murder to kill an unarmed man, that's on you.
The man just exudes class. I love my President.
What the President said:
"I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station. I also continue to believe, based on what I heard, that Professor Gates probably overreacted as well. My sense is you've got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve the incident in the way that it should have been resolved and the way they would have liked it to be resolved."
If the President wants to silence the howling hounds of Baskerville and return the focus to health care reform, he had to go up to that podium and make nice.
I agree with your comment, but I think that's what's irking many people about President Obama. His agenda is his, whereas his election platform was designed to make it feel like it was ours.
This is why I am so disappointed at his closing the door on gay rights issues. It's why a few friends of mine always twitch over the cap and trade argument. It's why his shrugging almost-answer to this - rather than craft a response along the lines of him trying to bat down his association with Reverend Wright - is so disappointing to my black friends as well.
When he was elected, it felt like he was an avatar of our collective will. As change-y as the winds were, it turns out he's still a politician with a specific agenda. Sorry if your top 10 isn't completely filled with Economy and Healthcare.
So far, it doesn't seem like the economy is far enough up on Obama's list. Back in February I noted that the stimulus bill Obama signed was, as T-N C might call it, "weak sauce", and that Republicans should have been smarter about pointing out its weaknesses and offering a more effective alternative:
There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of the stimulus bill Obama recently signed -- e.g., that it won't provide enough stimulus when it's needed most, that many of its provisions aren't likely to be temporary and will strain the long term fiscal picture, etc. -- but dogmatically opposing fiscal stimulus during a long recession (especially when monetary policy has already taken the Fed funds rate to near-zero) is bad politics and bad economics. The smarter approach for Republicans in Congress would have been to demand a more effective stimulus -- one with more temporary, fast-acting measures (e.g., more aid for the unemployed, a payroll tax holiday, a temporary tax credit to encourage businesses to move up capital spending to this year, etc.).
Instead Obama signed a bill that was a grab-bag of Dem policy priorities that didn't do enough to jolt the economy. Now we have the highest unemployment rate in 25 years and it's heading higher.
I guess if the economy is going to keep getting worse, Obama can't afford to piss off the working class folks who voted for him such as Crowley's father.
Dave thank you for your insight.
What to you do for a living?
I want to start calling you "Joe the (insert occupation here)"
Thanks, Irish Pirate. I recently started my own business, so you can call me Dave the entrepreneur if you want.
Joe the business owner it is.
Do you understand the difference between gross and net or are you fully channeling the philosopher King that is Joe the Plumber?
Ah, I missed the snark the first time. My bad.
In answer to your question, of course I understand the difference between gross and net. Now that we've gotten that established, feel free to point out what that (or Joe the Plumber, for that matter) has to do with what I wrote.
TIA
They interviewed Crowley's father? Link?
Are you really that clueless? Unemployment doesn't come down overnight. What bill was a grab-bag of Democratic policy priorities? The stimulus? No, it wasn't!! He watered it down a ton to get all of 3 Republican votes. Get your facts straight next time.
Brixtonville, when it comes to health care, that's my agenda as well. I am self-employed and pay my own health insurance. My monthly premium has more than doubled in the past four years even though I have raised my deductible to $10k.
I am a middle-aged Black woman who thinks the whole fracas with Gates was overblown and unnecessary. I also think it was unwise for the President to tag the entire Cambridge police department with the "acting stupidly" label. Yes, the police sergeant overreacted and probably arrested Gates because he pissed him off. But, Prof. Gates does not warrant being the poster child for police malfeasance and racial profiling based on this incident.
I am ready to move on to health care and education reform.
I'm ready to be able to get benefits for my partner of 10 years from my government job. That's not in the plan apparently, though.
Forgive me for being bitter that President Obama couldn't stop to say as much about Proposition 8 during the election as he could about Gates' run-in with the police. Priorities and agendas indeed.
@ Brixtonville:
When he was campaigning, Obama said he would address health care, education and energy in his first year as president. I never heard him say he would address benefits for domestic partnerships.
Also, the Prop 8 vote cannot be laid at Obama's feet. Next time the gay leadership in California has to be more strategic about outreach and messaging to ALL communities.
Right, you didn't watch him pander on Logo or listen to him on Air America. I don't mean that as any sort of attack; I mean that as an observation based on you saying you never heard him say any of those things.
I'm not blaming Prop 8 on him. I'm saying it's pretty obvious how much of a vote-mobilizing effect he had on every constituency. He could have lifted one literal finger, had Axelrod dispatch a squad of interns to twitter something, and things would have changed. Tell me I'm wrong.
Also, for what it's worth he dropped his energy agenda as soon as the price of oil went down. Once he was elected he stopped needing our votes and stopped pandering to us as an audience.
What the President also said (that is being ignored by the media):
but as I said at the press conference, be mindful of the fact that because of our history, because of the difficulties of the past, you know, African Americans are sensitive to these issues. And even when you've got a police officer who has a fine track record on racial sensitivity, interactions between police officers and the African American community can sometimes be fraught with misunderstanding.
My hope is, is that as a consequence of this event this ends up being what's called a "teachable moment," where all of us instead of pumping up the volume spend a little more time listening to each other and try to focus on how we can generally improve relations between police officers and minority communities,
And one more:
are some who say that as President I shouldn't have stepped into this at all because it's a local issue. I have to tell you that that part of it I disagree with. The fact that this has become such a big issue I think is indicative of the fact that race is still a troubling aspect of our society. Whether I were black or white, I think that me commenting on this and hopefully contributing to constructive -- as opposed to negative -- understandings about the issue, is part of my portfolio.
Thanks batgirl for those excerpts. People tend to grab at the shiniest statements and ignore the nuance.
When I heard that race line, I thought, that it was a bit of a cop out. He's said that before.
The fact that this has become such a big issue is indicative that police abuse is a troubling aspect of our society. He didn't want to go there.
I agree. I mean what do you guys expect him to do? Drop everything and issue an Executive Order calling for Crowly's head? Issue legislation making sure that Blacks be treated fairly by law enforcement?
That would be nice, but imagine all the complaints afterwards: "Who does he think he is?" "Why do minorities get all the attention?" "What happened to the economy?" ..blah..blah..blah.
Damned if he do..damned if he don't.
It seems to me that the whole country has a kind of creepy worship of authority going on, and that this plays into accepting both crap like arresting Gates for contempt of cop, and for much worse crap like cops beating up or shooting people on small provocation, or doing no-knock raids in the middle of the night. And I wish Obama had tried to start a conversation on this, because we need to talk and think about it, and at least the big broadcast and print media is never going to get around to having that conversation.
But the problem is, Obama is a politician, with an agenda and some intuition about what he can and can't do. At a guess, he figures he can't possibly change this widespread, long-running tendency in the country, and that trying will expend all his political capital on something that's not going to accomplish anything. On the other hand, he probably guesses that he can do something about healthcare. This is broadly what he's done on torture and gay rights and domestic spying, right? He's been broadly on the right side of these issues, but he hasn't been willing to take up a serious, bruising political fight over these issues.
This p-sses me off, but it's worth remembering that Obama really does know a lot more about politics than I do. It may be that he's right. It may also be that he really doesn't see these issues as being as important as I do, or maybe doesn't even see them as being major issues at all. There's no way to tell.
Anyway, Ta-Nehisi, I don't think you should feel let down. This kind of discussion you'be been hosting on this topic needs to happen. There need to be more people talking about the kind culture of impunity and abuse that has grown up around the police in a lot of places, the crazy overuse of no-knock warrants, and the over-willingness of almost everyone to defer to the cops over all those things. Obama may be unwilling or unable to lead that kind of discussion right now, but you can, and it matters.
Meh. I wish I was a journalist sometimes. I would have immediately followed up and asked the President to explain to us the lesson of this particular teachable moment. And then Obama would have wandered back into the weeds trying to answer that, and David Axelrod would be standing off in the wings slapping his forehead repeatedly. It would have been fun to watch.
Bottom line folks: Obama screwed up. He's not a community organizer anymore, or a State Senator, or even a U.S. Senator. He's the President of the United States, for heaven's sake. Presidents shouldn't opine on local arrests without knowing all the facts. He stepped in it when he did, and he turned off a lot of people who voted for him. That's why he tried to walk it back today.
He didn't screw up; he was asked about it in a national press conference and his response wasn't pc enough for some because he used the word stupid. He could have just as easily said "hastily taken without regard to consequence." But given the brouhaha made of the incident without his participation, I think he was absolutely accurate in noting that the incident however trivial speaks to something still alive in our history. I mean, just this site has had probably close to a thousand responses to it and counting. If conservatives who voted for him are turned off to our President being sensitive about racial matters or discussing them, they must have missed the speech in Philadelphia.
Obama talked about the teachable lessons in the statement.
If we take the case file as fact, the professor overreacted to being questioned by the police and the policeman overreacted by dragging the professor down to the station.
And Obama himself could have used a more PC word than "stupid".
A lesson for everyone involved.
"Rutherford B. Hays did not so much fail, as the country made a choice--we'd rather kill Indians and expand, then protect citizens from terrorism. "
That killed me man. Aside from just the police issue, which is big, but look at torture. We've said its ok, we really have. And that's why it's hard to just get outraged at the figureheads to an extent; if you step back, its just a manifestation of a greater stupidity and cowardice.
Aside from just the police issue, which is big, but look at torture. We've said its ok, we really have.
Yup. There have been and continue to be people trying to fix this, but the nation said, "OK." If the Bush era proved anything, it's that we're a nation of bullying cowards.
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
This was, for me, the most disturbing part of the reaction to Gatesgate(sorry). An alarming number of people seem to think that any failure to treat an authority figure with anything other than deference is grounds for arrest.
Do people believe the boot will never be on their faces or do they just have a taste for licking it?
The former. For sure.
Sadly, I think it's a little bit of both :(
I was talking to my Dad an hour ago, and he's old, and I let him spout sometimes without going for any sort of rhetorical takedown. That's just our dynamic, I'm not satisfied with it, but he's 80 and I don't expect to expand his mind with any wisdoms I could drop.
In any case, he's old school (clearly) and he's certainly in the deferential camp. And maybe he comes from a time and a narrower culture in which the cops wore blue and the robbers wore horizontal stripes and a five o'clock shadow. It's no question to him that Gates was far out of line, and that Crowley was humble and righteous. That's just what cops are.
From what I'm seeing in my Facebook threads, there are quite a number of people who want to retain a halcyon vision of law enforcement, cos that's what has worked for them. There's even been a few perceptions of 'snooty Harvard professor' vs working-class folk.
My feelings are closer the mean on this blog, and the discussion has been illuminating, and far better than anything else out there. But there's one theme that's common to too many threads, on too many topics - "I can't believe people feel this way." Yeah, they do. I don't have anything intelligent to say much beyond that, other than we ought to figure out a way in ourselves to quickly get past the disbelief, and engage what they're bringing.
Sorry, rambly.
Blockqoute fail. The first two lines are quoted from the post.
I've disagreed with you before on the just how empty the glass is, and I'll do it again. I do so aware of the fact that a life of privilege may be what is allowing me to say this.
You write "Only the people can do that [change the fact that a cop can basically arrest you on a whim]. And they don't seem particularly inclined" -- and respectfully, I have to disagree.
We are here, having this conversation, first of all. We -- the folks who read, comment on, and write this blog -- are also "the people," and there seems to be a pretty powerful consensus among us about what needs to change (I can't speak for those who don't comment, but I'm guessing they're more with us than agin us).
Also, the nation as a whole is having this conversation. Are all the people who should say all the right things saying all the right things? No. Is there racism, classism, stupidity, and all manner of us-vs-them to spare? Yes.
But it's out there, for everyone to see, and for a lot of really good people, of good will, to pull apart and try to set right. I know that I am not the only one who changes what she says to her kids about the world after stuff like this happens -- and all of those kids are coming up with different cues and different values and a whole new way of looking at the world. (And yes, it matters -- in ways too deep for me to fully comprehend -- that they look at the Oval Office and see a Black man, and look at the White House, and see a Black family. The very eyesight of an entire generation is changing as a result of this family, and though we cannot truly comprehend how just yet, but man, does it matter).
The problem for me is not that the American people, writ large, don't want to change the social reality that made this mess possible, but that not enough of us want it badly enough to make the effort that it takes to bring change sooner rather than later. I want greater social justice NOW, and I certainly want it by the time my kids can vote. It is a source of endless frustration and not infrequent pain to me that it cannot, will not happen as quickly as it, by rights, should.
But it will happen, and it will happen because a lot of people actually are inclined to make it so.
Thanks for this post. I'm feeling what you're feeling.
I'm also pissed with myself for expecting more from this moment, either from Obama, from Gates, or from general public discussion. I know that you can't fight with a few centuries of history, or a knee-jerk predilection to believe that you can't criticize the cops, in one moment (teachable or not), but I wish that people weren't so afraid of a complicated discussion or fight that they pull the plug out of fear we can't talk about this stuff and work on health care (or anything else) at the same time.
And each time we miss the chance to push back on police misuse of authority makes each next moment of police misconduct a surer thing. Citizen oversight responsibility in a democracy is a muscle that goes soft with disuse. Maybe what I'm feeling isn't just fatigue but political despair.
"Citizen oversight responsibility in a democracy is a muscle that goes soft with disuse."
Absolutely.... absolutely.
There is such a huge disconnect between black and white people when it comes to the criminal justice system.
I remember a (loud) discussion I had with an African American friend about the Ray Lewis case.
I sad, "Wait a minute, the two guys who got stabbed to death were black. Where's the justice for them?"
He responded. "Putting a few more black men in jail ain't gonna' fix anything. You just don't get it"
He's right. I don't.
Well, here are the Presidents in my memory--can't remember Truman, but Ike, JFK, LBJ, Tricky Dick, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Points of Light Bush, Clinton, W--for all that I would like more from President Obama, none of the above in my now long time lifetime would have ever thought to do what I just saw President Obama do. Too bad so many who oppose him have no idea how lucky they are to have someone whose politics differ, yet holds them in such high esteem.
Amen.
hate to say i told you so, about obama, but i told you so. i was off by a few hours. i thought he'd fold after the evening news. he didn't last that long. anyone expecting this president to be any kind of a leader - which is what it would take for him to step up and use this situation as one where the country could actually learn something from the incident - are always going to be sadly disappointed.
hate to say i told you so
No you don't.
tnc,
lol!!! actually, i do. i keep hoping for more. i actually think that obama has a lot of steel in him, but he keeps it under wraps for political purposes. in fact, his somewhat non-apology apology is indicative of his true feelings: he thinks that he's right, and wants to hold out for that position, but politically he understands what his safest course is. he does, naturally, the safest course.
You know I've thought about this, and just concluded that his battles are often not our battles. He'll stand on certain things.
Anyway, I changed my mind after reading your posts concerning the police report. I gave Crowley the benefit of the doubt, but your trap-theory made sense and is well founded in the facts.
He folded? Not quite sure of that, seems more like he moved on. To me knowing when to pick and choose your battles is one of the best hallmarks of a true leader. This isn't exactly the moment or the scenario to dig in on for the sake of making a point and considering the circumstances of where this all has gone what would that point even be?
He is a leader. A fairly selfless one considering he put Healthcare above digging in his heels.
Personally, I don't think there was a whole lot to "learn" from this incident. I think there are almost every day more egregious injustices that speak to our time than this. Personally, I think if we don't get some improvement in our health care system going soon, if we mire in petty bs, our citizenry will suffer far more than a single man has in this case.
Do the police abuse their power? Have blacks, and Latinos as our President pointed out--a point I have not read riffed on in all these many posts--been at the butt end of such abuse? Is a part of our society so threatened by the truth of that on one hand and so low down and venal on the other as to make hay out of the issue even being raised?
Our nation blithely went along with stripping habeas corpus, the very foundation of individual justice of all of Western Civilization; I have had whole college classes full of students who did not even know what it was or whence it came.
I have lived through riots that were started by police, started by them, because people peaceably had assembled to protest a war that history has since proven was an epic mistake that cost Americans tens of thousands of lives and our enemy hundreds of thousands if not millions. We were committing war crimes; we were openly using chemical warfare on children and presenting it on the evening news.
Perspective. I am far angrier with our President that he's put the banking fox in charge of the banking hen house than having had the good sense to diffuse, which is the absolute best way to problem solve it, this rather small time injustice. Sorry, I think the lesson to be learned from this is how one can blow things out of all proportion.
I didn't hear folding. Folding would have been not to comment on it in the first place, I think. That would have been the political thing to do, and much easier for him in terms of who would have been pissed at him then, and their access to NYT headlines and morning cable agendas. The standards seem to be ridiculously high for Obama. I can't remember a president in my lifetime talking to the American people directly about race in a way that doesn't assume we are all dumb asses. Actually, I can't remember a president talking about race at all, but I could very well be wrong that it hasn't happened and would be interested in anyone filling me in if it has.
Obama was teaching us how to look at an important conflict, see the good intentions of people involved, helped us understand the origins of the conflict, and see that, perhaps, we can just slow down, sit down together, share a drink, see each other as people, and create something better. Pretty damn good accomplishment I say.
I am not disappointed. I'm proud.
frankie d,
Read what CitizenE wrote. It's true. Don't trash Obama when you don't know your own history, unless you are 12. If you are 12, you get a pass. But, if you are over 20, it's all on you.
don't know my own history? such a presumption is laughable. i watched the dogs being sicked on black protesters in my dad's home state of alabama in real time. i watched my mom cry her eyes out the night martin luther king was killed. i watched tanks roll down the streets of my hometown, detroit, while snipers sat on the tallest apartment buildings in my neighborhood and i was scared to death as we had to lie on the floor and away from the windows to avoid getting shot during a riot whose epicenter was 8 blocks from my home near the lodge freeway. i was one of those young black kids who was stopped and arrested by the "big four", roving gangs of cops who terrorized black folks in detroit in the early '70's, killing almost 30 men in a couple of years span, abusing their power so greatly that a real leader, coleman young, was swept into office as a backlash to their outrageous and murderous conduct. not know my history? hardly. and fortunately, i've seen real leaders in action, and what obama presents is a far cry from real leadership. he's bill clinton, II, calculating every move in order to horde his political capital. (on a somewhat tangential note, i'll wager right now that michelle obama will follow hillary's lead and enter political life after barack leaves office. and obama will follow bill's lead and make certain that he doesn't spend his political capital as he leaves office, so that michelle can benefit. as hillary did.) what could obama have done? easy... he could have confronted the issue head on. for instance, he could have assembled a group of the most prominent african-american men in america and had a roundtable discussion that focused on the harassment they've received at the hands of police over the years, and demand that each and every jurisdiction in the country address the issue with new policies and oversight. shed light on the issue, illuminate it, and propose solutions, in a positive, constructive way. as i've posted here before, i'd bet that not only obama, but every prominent african-american of note has suffered his own version of what happened to gates. instead of backing down to one cop and one police union for the sake of saving capital for some future fight that never seems to materialize, he could confront the issue at hand and truly address a problem that just about every african-american deals with or has dealt with. that would be true leadership. and it would be leadership consistent with the best leadership in our history. what obama said initially was measured and correct. instead of hedging and folding when confronted, he should have taken the opportunity to try to address a real problem.
Coleman Young? Seriously? He won some battles but lost the war.
this is what gates has posted:
"It was very kind of the President to phone me today. Vernon Jordan is absolutely correct: my unfortunate experience will only have a larger meaning if we can all use this to diminish racial profiling and to enhance fairness and equity in the criminal justice system for poor people and for people of color.
And to that end, I look forward to studying the history of racial profiling in a new documentary for PBS. I told the President that my principal regret was that all of the attention paid to his deeply supportive remarks during his press conference had distracted attention from his health care initiative. I am pleased that he, too, is eager to use my experience as a teaching moment, and if meeting Sgt. [James] Crowley for a beer with the President will further that end, then I would be happy to oblige.
After all, I first proposed that Sgt. Crowley and I meet as early as last Monday. If my experience leads to the lessening of the occurrence of racial profiling, then I would find that enormously gratifying. Because, in the end, this is not about me at all; it is about the creation of a society in which 'equal justice before law' is a lived reality."
http://www.theroot.com/views/gates-says-yes-beer-crowley
sounds a lot like what i've advocated. unfortunately, it doesn't sound anything like what obama is intending to do. other than the having a beer part. what appears to be on the horizon is this: gates and crowley meet for a beer at the white house. they come out, afterwards for a joshing, grinning photo op. they all make nice, friendly statements about how this one little misunderstanding has been resolved, helped along by obama's penchant for reaching out. the issue disappears. except for interesting little posts that gates puts up over at the root, which hardly get any attention. and the president will have thankfully - from his perspective - avoided a thorny political issue. if i'm wrong, i will be the first to acknowledge that fact. but i'd bet just about anything on the scenario just imagined.
@rogerm, no doubt that is true. but it had as much to do with forces beyond his control that are more complex than can be gotten into here. my simple point was that back in 1973, when cops were literally murdering black men in the streets under the crazy STRESS program, coleman young stood up and said, we're mad as hell and we're not going to take this anymore. he ran on a platform to disband STRESS, which he did upon winning election. i was not referring to his long and complex history as mayor. i specifically talked about his leadership during a time period when exactly this same issue - police harassment and profiling - was front and center. and while obama is certainly faced with a different electorate and dynamics, some matters are universal. when you are right - and he was right, initially, you don't back down. period.
Frankie D
"when you are right - and he was right, initially, you don't back down. period"
I'll give you that. Coleman Young was no shrinking violet. Also, during his reign, garbage got picked up and streetlights worked.
I do like a Prez who has a healthy enough ego that he can admit a mistake.
It is also possible to read far too much into this incident between Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley.
It strikes me as two men with egos who both could have and should have acted better.
Gates should have been less of an asshole and Crowley should have just walked away. That's a very important phrase for Police. "Walk away".
Not every hostile interaction needs to result in an arrest.
The debate about this reminds me of "Finnegans Wake". An old Irish song that Jimmy Joyce turned into a reflection on life, death and resurrection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnegan%27s_Wake
I've read my way through quite a few of these posts and their comments, and this seems to be one of the prevailing views. But the longer it sits with me, the more disquieting it gets.
The problem is that it elides the power imbalance here. The cop is the one with the gun, the one with the cuffs, the one with the power to detain. It's absolutely appropriate for him to have a higher standard of behavior - a much higher one. And the "well, Gates acted like a jerk too" formulation is a concession otherwise, and is really only a short step away from "he had it coming."
In the end, it just feels like blaming the victim. Sometimes you have to stand up for assholes, too. And for reasons that I'll have trouble expressing, it also feels like a close cousin of the stomach-turning "if they got busted, they musta been guilty of something" sentiment.
(BTW, I'm not really trying to pick on you in particular. This has been one of the running themes of the discussion.)
I place MORE of the blame for this situation with Sergeant Crowley.
Also police procedure which seems to be if someone is acting out "arrest him".
Cops need to have thick skins. They also need to know when to walk away.
An elderly, and Professor Gates seems to be an old 58 year old, man with a cane is not particularly dangerous.
Trying to conflate this case with some of the more egregious police incidents of recent times strikes me as a stretch.
This isn't Shem Walker being shot on his mom's steps.
This isn't the incident in Philly with the enraged cop in the convenience store.
Sergeant Crowley may be a horrible cop. I don't know. At the very least he may be a good cop who made a bad decision.
He also may be one of those people who values "procedure" more than common sense. Some people are very comfortable with "procedure".
My mom has a line she likes to use about "walking in another man's moccassins".
When I deal with people I often try to picture where they are coming from. If both Gates and Crowley had tried that this situation would not have garnered any attention.
Gates should have thought "here's a cop responding to a potential break in" and Crowley should have thought "here is a man in his OWN house getting a bit pissed that I'm here."
This is not for this comment persay, where you are being so sincere, but just to note, I appreciate your style, even if I, from the time I was a kid, was taught to be wary of the cracker persuasion.
I wonder if it would have turned out differently if Crowley had a partner there to tell him, "Forget it, Jake. It's Harvard."
"Crowley should have thought 'here is a man in his OWN house getting a bit pissed that I'm here.'"
It's even more than this (and I have not seen/heard this remarked anywhere). It was a guy who is presumably not at the height of bodily vigor (vide: cane) who has just got off a plane after many hours (with who knows what complications) of transatlantic travel, with who-knows-what fatigue and concerns about tomorrow's obligations, etc., etc.
I realize that these may seem like "high-class problems," especially to the world-view most likely to be the lot of a policeman. But, added to the fact that the man was being yelled at for accessing his own home in a way that no white man of his class would have been -- well -- as a white man of his class, I must say I want to know more about the mile he had just walked in his mocasins.
Rodger Evans,
Where did you get that Gates was being yelled at for accessing his own home? If it's a fact of the case, what is its source?
If it's not, I plead with you to stick to the facts, which are damning enough. Even if we stick to the police report, it looks pretty bad for the officer.
Well, hold on here. In the moment of the arrest, yeah, the cop has the power. But who has the power of the press conference afterward? The Harvard professor with political connections? Or the cop? Let's not forget that Gates supposedly tried to pull a "Do you know who I am?" kind of move. What's the implication? "Mess with me and I'll get you fired?"
I'm not saying that the cop is right and Gates is wrong, I'm just saying that the power balance is more complicated than "the cop has all the power."
In the moment of the arrest, yeah, the cop has the power.
Thing is, the whole flap is about what happened in the moment of the arrest. The whole controversy seems to basically be: was it, or was it not, "contempt of cop," and is it ok if it was?
Gates, to be sure, has much more power to respond to the process than most people. And I have no doubt whatsoever that the wealthy, well-known, or connected frequently can get into that sort of powerplay pissing-match and win. But as this demonstrates, sometimes they don't.
But the basic protections should be alike for the weak and the strong, as well as the nice and the jerky. Which is why "oh, and he was kind of an asshole too" is so frustrating. Because it cements the idea that that's enough, that a citizen can somehow be "in for it" just by offending a cop. And when that person has nothing to come back with the way that Gates did, they're really screwed.
Bingo,
if this had been Henry Gates Harvard Janitor how many people think the charges would have been dropped?
He would probably have been held in jail overnight at least, if not forced to go to court.
But who has the power of the press conference afterward? The Harvard professor with political connections? Or the cop?
Was Gates' press conference on ABC News tonight? Was Crowley's? It was Crowley's. Gates is nowhere to be seen? Why? Lets face it. Obama was in a no win situation here. If he didn't come to Gates' defense, the TradMed would have blasted him for not coming to the defense of a friend. They were just waiting for a moment like this. I mean Jake Freakin' Tapper was in Boston today trying to interview(unsuccessfully) Crowley. Isn't Tapper the ABC News WH Correspondent?
We don't know how this will play out in the weeks and months ahead. If I were Crowley, I do believe I'd be feeling like making up with Gates as soon as possible, in whatever way I could that didn't screw me over too badly with my job or union. I'd be wanting to have that beer, and make a nice, personal apology and shake his hand and mean it. Because it's just got to make your stomach hurt when the guy you just arrested for contempt of cop turns out to be a personal friend of the president.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, I imagine he's thinking of all the ways someone with that kind of connections could manage to screw him over, all the ways against which the police union and the public's love of tough guys in uniform would offer very little protection. He's thinking that the next time he makes a small misstep, or does something else questionable, he's likely to find himself on the front page again. And whatever he says, I'm sure he's very much wishing he'd let Gates yell at him with a calm "have a nice day, sir" as he was leaving.
CitzenE,
on behalf of crackers everywhere I thank you.
In fact my cracker mother thanks you.
My cracker sister thanks you.
My cracker father thanks you.
And I, cracker that I am, Thank you.
Marcos,
I thought something similar about Sergeant Crowley. If he hadn't been the "Sergeant" or had another cop there from the beginning I suspect cooler heads might have prevailed. Someone who could have said "fuck it, let's get a donut".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZUfHE1FPrs
My ex wife might also concur. Some of my best friends--it's true-- as well.
I think that video proves that we have the best, uh, architecture, here in Los Angeles.
The government represents the people, and thus one must see red-lining, housing segregation, and housing covenants not as the machinations of bureaucrats, but as a manifestation of popular will.
I half agree with this. It's legitimate to trace responsibility for what bureaucrats and police do with the authority granted to them by the people, but it's not the whole story, as evidenced by our outrage at specific instances. When we're confronted by stories like Gates and the Philly cop, a lot of us experience a moment "Wait, what? They're doing what with the authority I've given them?" That's a basic tension of delegating authority over ourselves, and it isn't easily resolved by pointing the finger in just one direction.
Yeah, a lot of stuff that happens isn't remotely in keeping with the will of the people, so much as the will of the interest groups who drive policy. A great deal of it is really hard to understand or even find out about if you're not tracking it for a living. Much of what remains is the outcome, not of some kind of "will of the people," but rather of administrative and political processes that are neither rational nor under anyone's direct control.
So, it's got the consent of the people in the sense that we haven't torn down the country over it (as we did over slavery once; that was an issue where the stakes were worth it). But the existence of farm subsidies or huge military contracts for basically useless stuff or out-of-balance re-embursement rates for Medicare or a lack of standards for all kinds of probably-bad stuff in drinking water, none of that seems to reflect the will of the people nearly so much as the results of political processes.
I was thinking earlier this week about the connection between all of this and the Senate almost passing a bill which would make it legal to carry a concealed weapon in any state, as long as your home state approves. Maybe there is no line between to the two, or maybe I just haven't connected them yet.
I think there is a line between the two. To me it has something to do with people's willingness to dismiss the "civil rights" complaints of others fairly easily, so long as they themselves dont ever expect to be affected by the loss. People who would never think of keeping a gun in the house, much going through the trouble to get a concealed carry permit see taking the right to do so away as a completely reasonable sacrifice for the public good. Same thing for people who could never imagine themselves or their relations ending up on the wrong end of a billy club or bullet- To them it's reasonable to give the police this vast leeway to ensure they can safely do their jobs. Similar things pop up all the time, from gay marriage to secret wiretapping and government surveillance. Ultimately in this majority rules/minority rights society, those minority rights typically come in the form of constitutional protections. I wonder (and I can only wonder because I really don't know) whether the legislation that supports this type of extremely broad arrest powers would pass constitutional muster if challenged.
Excellent point. My brother (cop, gun-rights advocate) and I (immigrant defense attorney, gun-rights apathetic) have this talk a lot. You may have just tipped the scales in his favor in my mind.
I can hardly believe Obama's comment on this case became a media firestorm. Seriously, how were the actions of the police officer not "stupid" in this case? It really makes me feel pessimistic about this country that, as you say, apparently we're all OK with police officers arresting anyone who gives them a little sass.
It makes me think about police procedurals and the like on TV. How often are the police just plain wrong on those shows? Like, what, once a season? At most? Ok, I don't watch a lot of those shows, so I don't really know. But for example, I have a friend who watches 24. And I've asked him, is Jack Bower ever wrong? Has he ever tortured someone mistakenly? And, apparently, over the 6 or so seasons, it's happened maybe once, and even that time Bower figured out he was wrong before the "actual" torture started.
Hollywood narratives are all about certainty. Unfortuantly, the real world has very little that is certain about it. And I think, in modern America, we all "know" way too much. To sort of reiterate Coates, I'm not blaming Hollywood - I think they are making the entertainment that people want. But the US didn't always buy into the certainty of the police. "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" How many people agree with that sentiment these days?
Just because this case really gets on my nerves, one more thought: What the hell is the point of the first amendment if you can't sass the police inside your own home?
...and the Fourth Amendment, too.
I wasn't surprised. I pretty much knew it was going to blow up as soon as I heard him say it. I have to wonder did Obama not realize it? Was there a point to him coming out as he did and then back tracking? Is it just some sort of a ploy to get the press to forget missing his Aug deadline on health care?
I think it was just poor word choice on the fly. It's hard to always strike the "right" tone and he ultimately created a distraction that he wanted to end...so he waited a bit, saw how crazy it was getting and then he got together with his people and said, what's the best way to try to fix this?
Does anyone actually think this is what he wants to be talking about right now?
I don't know, I think making a bad special olympics joke on Letterman might be "poor word choice on the fly." Wading into the Gates thing had no other outcome other than the ****storm that followed. I mean criticizing the police and discussing a "racially charged" incident- that's about as much of a power keg as you're going to get. It wasn't his word choice, it was the subject matter. And he had to know as much. So why say anything? I mean the only way for him to have said anything on this topic and it not totally change the subject on him was if here were to give a total political speak non answer. And he didn't know that? Maybe he is that naive, but somehow, I don't think so.
Obama has an instinct and a gift for conciliation. One would hope he would use it to make this a teaching moment.
Obama's first reaction showed that he knows that when it comes to interactions between police and people of color, it's the police who are most in need of schooling.
I'm older and white and it really bothers me too that I might be arrested in my own home and dragged to jail and detained for 4 hours. His attorney said he was sick and needed his bronchial medicine and he couldn't even have that while being detained. It is just a real nightmare.
In order for police to properly maintain law and order, they need o be shown respect, and that means no sassing them. It doesn't mean you have to bend over for them, or that you cannot disagree, but it does mean that you cannot be a dick. I really don't understand the opinion that you should be able to disrepect on duty officers with no consequences. Of course in an earlier post TNC said he would be loathe to call the cops in almost all situations, even if he witnessed a drug deal taking place. I know he wants bad urban neighborhoods and black neighborhoods in general to become safer, less crime ridden places. How do you think that is going to happen if people show less respect to the police than to the criminals? I do not comprehend this attitude at all.
I was thinking earlier this week about the connection between all of this and the Senate almost passing a bill which would make it legal to carry a concealed weapon in any state, as long as your home state approves.
Somewhat off topic but I wished to address this. Liberals rail against the DOMA, which says that States do not have to honor other State's marriage laws. You want States to be forced to honor the laws of other States. Yet here you hate the idea that States would be forced to honor the laws of other States. The only difference is if you like the law in question or not. Personally, I dislike this particular gun law as I am for State's Rights in a general way. Liberals, please man up and pick your philosophy and choose one side of the issue to be on. Either you are for DOMA and against this Law or the other way around. You cannot be against both.
"I really don't understand the opinion that you should be able to disrepect on duty officers with no consequences."
What should the consequences be? Should laws be made up to combat this type of thing? And really, cops disrespect law-abiding citizens all the time, so why doesn't that cut both ways? I've yet to see consequences for cops that disrespect 'civilians.'
I think respect goes both ways. And if a cop treats me like a criminal in my own home, I have a right to be disrespectful without getting arrested. That's the First Amendment, plain and simple.
As to DOMA - they're different issues. Family law, like custody and marriages, is an area of the law where the states have agreed that they will respect the legal status of individuals when those relationships cross state lines. The arrangement comes from the understanding that you shouldn't have your marriage invalidated or your child custody questioned just because you crossed state lines. The right to carry a gun, like the right to vote in a local election (and most other state issues) don't carry over from state to state. Each state can decide what their standards are. DOMA is offensive because it subverts that understanding between the states and essentially divorces families who cross state lines.
The perspective that TNC outlines is very clear in the Morning Joe clip he posted earlier. That panel went to great lengths to remove race from it, to not say that the cop was racially motivated, but to say that it's wrong to arrest you in your own house simply for your words and attitude. And Mika Brzezinski & Mike Barnicle thinks that is appropriate behavior for the police.
Check this story: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=8163051
Juan Williams says it was not a case of racial profiling and further indicates the fault lies with Gates: "As someone who has been stopped, as a black person in America, I have a very deferential approach to cops. I don't speak to them in aggressive tones. ... It's just that cops can be very prickly, especially with a black guy."
Simply astounding. People get so worked up about the government taking your guns away, but they seem fine with the law coming into your house and arresting you.
So Williams is saying in the same sentence that racial profiling isn't a factor, but he as black man knows he has to act differently around cops?
How does he keeps his head from exploding? The man is a professional writer, does he not understand the meaning of what he just said?
Williams knows what he just said. The problem is that his bread is buttered by Faux Noise. Did you really expect Williams to tell the honest truth?
"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."
I'm sure the Michelle Bachmann, Glen Beck, etc. crowd who are so concerned about our descent into tyranny will vocally oppose such a totalitarian idea.
It is curious that the people who scream about 'small government' seem to put their complete trust in police officers. They don't trust the government to run healthcare or the automotive industry, but they sure trust them to arrest whoever they want. That's one of the reasons I'm glad TNC gave props to the Agitator earlier. At least Radley Balko, and some of those types are consistent. I might not always agree with them, but at least they're not hypocrites.
Yah. Could someone do us a favor and book Beck and Bachmann for disorderly conduct?
I hear you. And its not just the law and order industrial complex - such 'small government' types like Glenn Beck are amongst the biggest cheerleaders for an imperial foreign policy.
Its more about how they would rather deal with the poor and disenfranchised - be it at home or abroad. In my opinion that is what the War on Drugs is about more than anything. As a politician or pundit its far easier to posture and put your opponents on the defensive as 'tough -on-crime' guy. Certainly much easier to soundbite and appear confident. And then of course there is all the healthy profits to be made. (See Bill Maher in yesterday's Huff Post)
Some of the most consistent anti-war writing I find at Antiwar.com which definitely comes from a libertarian perspective. Not that the libertarians don't have their issues and inconsistencies, (see Pat Buchanan) but that's a whole other thread.
You know, the beauty of your argument is that it can be turned 180°. It is curious that the same people seeking expansion of our government and it's intrusion into our private lives get so bent out of shape when the government does exactly that with the power we've already given it.
Just saying, you might want to be careful about the strawmen you construct.
Well, your point is a somewhat valid one, but I don't think what I said is a straw man. I'm speaking in general, and certainly in my personal experience. The same people that complain about the government's larger role are the same people who are prone to always taking a police officer's side. It is curious, and it is true.
Also, I've never seen people that support the government having a larger role suggest that there shouldn't be stricter oversight on these government agencies. I'd assume that most progressives would be all in favor of great oversight into police conduct. That seems perfectly in step with their beliefs.
Also, the party that is supposed to be about small government is also that party that REALLY cares what you do in your private lives. But I suppose we could debate that. So I guess I don't see your comparison to be a complete 180.
If you want to argue that GOP politicians that pontificate on the part of small government are hypocrites, I'll grant you that. They are usually the same ones that also want to legislate morality and are willfully blind to the contradictions (assuming that the principle underneath smaller government is the principle of liberty and not just misplaced nostalgia).
But that's a far cry from your average person that wants a smaller federal government and more local control. I don't see how that conflicts with trusting or at least respecting the local police.
(Truthfully, I think there are quite a few "small government" people that really want a more responsive government, and one way to achieve that is by shifting responsibilities from the federal level to local levels. We're willing to pay for services, but we hate seeing (and paying for) waste and boondoggle. I think you'll find a lot of non crazy people that DON'T attend tea parties who feel this way.)
"It is curious that the people who scream about 'small government' seem to put their complete trust in police officers."
Not the principled ones among them. A Ron Paul, say, is as mistrusting of the police, or at least police power, as any Black Panther.
Agreed. I guess the people I'm talking about are the people that pretend to be principled.
I'm a bit confused at all the "expectations" for what else Obama is supposed to or should do in this situation. His responsibility is largely to govern, not teach.
You still have to put the whole incident in context. There was no physical violence involved. There were no racial epithets involved. There are no outstanding charges. An individual was detained for four hours, released, and then charges were later dropped. The incident did not involve the federal government nor Washington DC.
That specific incident has ended. Will whatever happen, happen again in other circumstances? Sure, but that would be true no matter what Obama would say or do himself.
He did what every politican is taught to do in circumstances like this, which is to try to end the news cycle of a story that you don't see a lot of utility in to move to another one that has more utility.
Right now, that appears to be healthcare and the economy. And if you want Obama to focus on other topics more than the economy, then you're going to have to wait a pretty long time, because it's pretty important (to the country and his re-election) and will require a lot of his political capital.
"I have been talking too much lately. I need to get back to the Civil War...
Yeah dude, that's what I've been saying.
We can't do squat about this other stuff.
We can keep talking about it and enlightening...that works. It's moving in the right direction but it will take years. Maybe our kids will see the day. Don't give up hope.
But back to the real stuff to talk about.
Like McClellan. He built a kick ass army. Wouldn't fight it though. What's up with that?
Held 2 corps in reserve at Antietam when he had Lee's line in the center (sunken road) stretched so thin he only had to reach out and tap it! How could he not make the effort?
It's all good T.
He had never failed before. Fear of ruining that West Point rep. Grant, on the other hand, had nothing to lose.
Yeah but 2 Corps! Held in reserve!
The confederate line in the center was held by a single brigade (I think, if memory serves...) and were bled white from the assaults of Sumner (again, I'm spit-ballin, I think that's who it was).
Jackson was done on the left. There was hardly anybody on the right at Burnside's bridge (of course, he didn't know these things.)
It he would have just pressed he would have split Lee in half and he could have served both halves of the rebel army as he saw fit.
The war would have been over.
Sometimes you just need to make the effort.
Hang in there bud.
There are so many "The war would have been over" moments in the Civil War its almost not worth talking about them. If the Union had instilled anything approaching disipline in its men before the first battle of Bull Run the war would have been over. If the Confederate leadership would have listened to Jackson and marched on Washington in the hours directly after First Bull Run they would almost certainly have taken the city while the Union troops were in complete disarray and then the war would have likely been over. The early years of the War before attrition took its toll on the South had a lot of this, as Union material and manpower advantage and Confederate skill and competency advatage were at play.
No, I don't think West Point had anything to do with the leadership style of McClellan v. Grant. McC was very good at training, staffing and organizing an army. That was his great accomplishment, and to him sending his troops into battle, destroyed his investment in the creation of a great army. Of course, his soldiers adored him for keeping them out of battle. Some generals are good at raising and training an army, others are good at fighting the enemy. Grant, Sherman and Sheridan fell into the latter category. Also, McC personal beliefs led him to be a lukewarm supporter of the Union cause, and Lincoln's evolving sense of slavery and emancipation. McC ran against Lincoln in 1864 as an anti-war Democrat, and lost. Certainly an 'iffy' guy I'd want fighting for the Union. He also had a grandiose perception of himself, which didn't help him with his fellow generals or Lincoln.
If I recall correctly, any battlefield 'victories' McC may have been given credit for were few and small in scale.
After McC lost his command, and the generals who understood what the goals of the war had to be took over, everything changed.
"A Landscape Turned Red" by Stephan Sears, is about the best book out there on Antietam. McC leadership was inept, cowardly and caused unimaginable carnage. Instead of being relieved of command, he should have been tossed out of the army at the very least.
"I need to get back to the Civil War."
This IS the Civil War. We're all just re-enactors.
Just kidding - sort of, but while I think this may have been stretched out a bit on the blog, the discussion was filled with worthwhile observations from a variety of perspectives. I'm not sure you need to understand the Civl War better to sort this event out, but if you don't see it as a convoluted, admittedly complicated extension of those floodgates having been opened, you won't understand it at all.
I feel ya.
more like ripples on the pond from the rock that was the CW.
But the ripples are subsiding.
Just gonna take some time.
My sister-in-law reports often on the adventures of her seven-year-old twins, with today's note on a visit to the Dollar Store saying: "She got a hairband/wig with green hair and he got a disturbing police office kit with handcuffs, sunglasses, and a pistol. Tried to arrest the cat. Not sure what the charge was but "loitering" comes to mind."
I suggested "driving while cat" and "being a public feline."
Yes, a lame, tame joke between well-meaning white women in their forties.
I respectfully offer its very lame, tame, mayonnaise-like folly as proof that the country made at least a little progress this week in understanding why the arrest seemed so important.
Please do not joke about "driving while cat". My uncle was killed by Toonces.
Serioulsy LOLing over here. =D. Not that I mean to be insensitive. Sorry for your loss. ;)
I'm relieved The Gates Affair might go to bed finally.
And I'll drink to the Shem Walkers of our cities tonight--we can't wait for these larger personalities to do it.
Did you say drink? I believe that means it's happy hour time.
Who's buying?
I'm thinking a Crown Royal Manhattan straight up may do the trick...
PG and Stacey save me a seat. I'll make ya laugh.
TNC, I think you are doing an excellent job communicating a morass of conflicting emotions that I think has to be shared by black people by events like Gates' arrest.
Cops are supposed to be the friends of responsible people. They uphold the rule of law that allows us to enjoy the good things that come of being productive, law-abiding citizens. But if you are a responsible black man in the U.S., you cannot escape that nagging suspicion that maybe the cop isn't going to be your friend and that could turn out very badly for you.
I vaguely know the feeling from the days when I was a young man with the long hair, the tie dye, multiple earrings and a dime bag in my pocket and I was not expecting the city cops in West Phila to be reliably on my side. But I cut my hair, changed my shirt and presto, now I'm a privileged white male again. I personally cannot know what it's like to be a black man and live my whole life knowing this could be around the corner any time. I don't think white folks really can.
I don't know if there's "profiling" specifically here, but there's definitely bias. The cop made a judgment call and there's plenty of solid research that shows that is exactly where implicit racism comes in. There's no way an older white man with a Harvard ID gets arrested there unless he actually throws a punch at the cop.
And yeah, if I were black and living in his beat, I'm not sure how I'd feel about that cop carrying a gun around my neighborhood and my kids either.
Obama has to walk it back for the political realities -- there are still too many racists in the country (subtly and otherwise). While you are reading about the 1860s, I've been reading about the 1960s -- Perlstein's Nixonland. And I cannot believe how violent the civil rights struggle really was right at the time of my birth. The Civil War didn't end in the 19th century. I'm not completely sure it's over now.
The acceptance of unchecked authority and torture that Dan W and Methodgrind refer to is a grave concern for me. Democracy is fragile and can easily fall into dictatorship. I wish I could share ellaesther's optomism that we are heading in the right direction but I see to many people who love America more than they love freedom. The Roman Republic died the day Cesar crossed the rubicon even though Rome continued on for centuries aftward. I would rather see America fall than see it become a totalitarian state.
This is part of what seperates the liberals from the conservatives. They see the march towards totalitarianism in socialized medicine and we see it in people being arrested for sasing an officer of the law.
It's scarier still to think that this is what Americans want, that this country is as we've made it. And then finally it's even scarier to understand that no president can change that. It's not why he's there. He is there to pass health-reform--not make us post-racist, or post-police power, or post-whatever. Only the people can do that. And they don't seem particularly inclined.
You've hit at the heart of it, again. The President's remarks were only controversial because there is so little congruence between the fundamental, baseline views about the significance (or lack thereof) of race in America. I've found the chatter of the tv commentariat very illustrative of this point. I feel that I've watched dozens of exchanges similar to the Morning Joe clip you posted today. The whole "I know there's a history ... and I could never understand your experience... but what's an officer to do with a negro as uppity as Skip Gates?" It's as though no one knows that one of the main things that they do in the police academy is to teach officers that they 1) will take verbal abuse and 2) how to deal with it while neutralizing and controlling the situation. That's the job. You get no pity points because a middle aged black professor insults your mother.
"I feel pretty stupid for going hard on this, and stupider for defending what Obama won't really defend himself."
From my perspective, some great discussion: helped me to think more clearly about the issue, and -- to echo a point above -- about our flabby appreciation of freedoms so slowly and painfully claimed.
NB: I say 'our' advisedly. The racial implication to police abuse of power is clear and raw. But in a way, focus on the racial implication distracts from the fact that such abuses of power are -- or can very quickly become -- crimes against our state: vis. the Philadelphia police [non]-scandals.
When wearing the uniform provided by our state, your actions reflect on the state. One important duty is to maintain the legitimacy of the state in the eyes of its subjects. Dereliction of duty is a serious charge, but one at the very bottom rung of a ladder of offenses reaching to treason.
TNC, I don't think you have anything to feel stupid about. I agree that some great discussion ensued. And it's totally o.k. to have thoughts mature and evolve in real time on this blog. Now feel better! (I'll refrain from using an emoticon here, though I want to sooo bad).
I hope Crowley, Gates and Obama get that beer soon. They need to pour out a little something for Shem Walker. We can't all go to Harvard.
nothing more needs be said.
Thanks for not just calling this to an end but for bringing it into some kind of resolution. As I said a while ago I have quit, for now, reading A-Sully, but his kind of principaled/philosphical conservatism remains profound on these kinds of matters. There are limits to what our governments can do, human-all-too-human limits. Just as Obama found out that there are limits to community organizing, and limits to academic discussions. The rest of these matters fall on us in our everyday lives as citizens. While I applaud the idea behind Obama's new Corp it may give the impression that this call to service only applies to people in special programs It's good to talk these things through, good to get other opinions, good to reflect. But if we don't then start to act on these matters than it's all just an exercise in catharsis. We vent, fight, bond, feel better, and go on like nothing happened. Please pick something to do that makes things a little better. Could be parenting like ee, or volunteering, I teach ESL to Sudanese refugees, or whatever. A good test for how much you care about something is what you're willing to do about it. Thats not absolute because there are again limits to time, abilities and efficacy, but still it seems to stand. Being right is not even half-way there, doing right is all that we can do.
yes that's right can't spell/type but tutors in english, it's all in the reading comprehension and of course the grade school level of the material doesn't hurt.
TNC wrote: "When we think about the cops, it's scary, on one level, to conclude that a cop can basically arrest you on a whim. It's scarier still to think that this is what Americans want, that this country is as we've made it."
I was thinking along these lines earlier today, actually. Even assuming Crowley's report is 100% accurate, why do so many people think it's ok for a cop to arrest someone for being a jerk? Then it hit me: it's because those people want there to be consequences for being a jerk generally. The fact that it's a cop handing out the consequences is irrelevant. If someone's being a jerk in line at the supermarket, there's a school of thought that says he deserves to get knocked on his ass by whoever he's being a jerk to. It's a very blue collar / rural attitude (trust me, I have roots in both). Arresting someone for disorderly conduct is just seen as the equivalent of that.
I understand your point.
But then I have to ask: why don't those same folk seem insistence on NOT wanting consequences for cops who are jerks?
Should read: "why do those same folk seem insistence on NOT wanting consequences for cops who are jerks?"
Because they have a knee-jerk expectation that those in authority (the current president and Bill Clinton excepted) are never jerks, and so if something goes bad in an interaction between a police officer and another person, it is obviously the other person's fault.
Please, please tell me Coates heads over to The Dish and works out Chris's last post on Gates, in which he says that an "unsubstantiated" charge of racism is like saying n-----. My own take on that follows:
It bears careful repetition that Obama did not indicate that Crowley was a racist.
Beyond that, the notion that the word "racist" is now sometimes on par with the word "n-----" (sent from a work computer) is ridiculous. Just leaves one breathless, and ought to constitute another teachable moment. What you're necessarily saying is, don't risk making the accusation, because in the case that it's untrue, it's an unpardonable sin and an example of bigotry toward a whole group of people -- toward a whole race.
I have unorthodox views on accusations of racism, myself, but you just dropped a whopper, Chris. Don't say "racist" unless everyone will instantly agree because, if you're viewed as incorrect, it's like a deep slur against a whole people that deliberately recalls centuries in chains and hanging from trees. That kind of yearning for equivalence is why a man like Gates, no professional race-baiter, snaps. So many fail to understand, and fail so confidently, that they remain as monuments to the existence not of racism itself, but of noblesse oblige. We will bless you as equal and worthy of respect -- but you cannot question one of us unless we'd agree with you, in that instance. It's shorthand for annoucing to the world that you'll keep your own shop clean, that if any minorities shout "racism" it's a violent sin and a transgression beyond what they're entitled to say, because they can't venture to say it say it unless they're sure it will be "substantiated."
Be real. Accusations should never stand if they're unsubstatiated. But the people who make those accusations even if they're wrong, should not be equated with those who use racial slurs. Pure noblesse oblige. Pure partitioning of discourse drawn largely along racial lines.
[quote]When we think about the cops, it's scary, on one level, to conclude that a cop can basically arrest you on a whim. It's scarier still to think that this is what Americans want, that this country is as we've made it. And then finally it's even scarier to understand that no president can change that.[/quote]
This is the core of the matter. As someone who has been associated with various elements of the hippie community I've seen several of the same kind of provocation/counter-provocation/arrest sequences in person. I am sure there are plenty of incidents where race comes into play, but there are also instances where I don't think it has much to do with race.
On the one hand I understand that police have to maintain control in each and every situation day in and day out. And I understand that good people have bad days and sometimes lose control. But the amount of leeway that has been given to state authorities, from torture to harassment by arrest, since 9/11 is utterly astonishing.
If there is a connection that TNC is trying to make to the concealed weapon law, maybe it's this. The reaction that I had to watching what happened in Iran is that things would have gone down very differently in the United States. There would have been much more bloodshed, but it's also unclear that the state troops would have been able to suppress the population. We're increasingly in an era where Americans seem inclined to give away basic human rights to the government. Not concede, just give. And if you're worried about it, well, that's just because maybe you have something to hide.
Forgive me TNC, but I fail to see why you should feel stupid, at all, for spending time on this issue. Although the President may not be able to offer the rigorous critique of law enforcement abuse of authority that many would like, I thought reading your posts, and the corresponding comments, were extremely helpful in fleshing out my own views. At the end of the day, even if I take the officer's versions of events at 100% face value, which I don't, I still think his actions were wrong, and that he abused his power. I also discovered that this incident brought to the surface underlying issues that I have with how one is supposed to conduct themselves for the authorities. Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not advocating that people just act like a-holes to the cops for the fun of it, but if you genuinely feel like they are doing something wrong, or you haven't done anything wrong, and you want to question their authority for taking certain actions, why should you have to go into the "submissive citizen pose." What I realized is that the general populace has become so frightened of police abuse/brutality, that they will willingly fail to exercise their rights as citizens so they will not suffer harassment. That is deeply disappointing. And at this point, I'm not sure how you put the genie back in the bottle. Because so many are willing to sacrifice their rights for a false sense of security, there will constantly be defenders of this status quo -- this whole episode is strong evidence of that.
Another illuminating aspect of this story is that it revealed that labels such as "conservative" and "small government" mean nothing under certain contexts. It was my understanding, up until this point, that the conservative movement represented a minimalist approach to government intrusion into a citizen's life. But apparently, for some "conservatives" all that goes out the window for police officers -- never mind civil liberties or the abuse of state power. Because police officers risk their lives in protecting the public, our job is not to question their use of discretion to restrain our liberty, we must simply shut up and take it or we deserve to have our rights trammeled upon. Good to know. ( I think this situation is strikingly analogous for the way many Republicans refuse to even acknowledge that the CIA has abused its power, and that anyone who questions their motives or tactics are ungrateful ingrates).
One final point, I'm failing to see how Obama didn't live up to certain expectations. In my mind, though I agreed with his initial comments, I thought it was ill-advised to comment on the matter since he had specifically said he did not know all the facts, and he may let his personal biases influence his opinion since his friend was involved in the incident. That being said, although some on this thread disagree with this, to me, he demonstrated what a leader was supposed to do at this moment in time. Rightly or wrongly his comments did add fuel to a steady flame, and even though he didn't think what he said was particularly controversial or out of bounds, it created more tension around a hot topic. As a Senator he may have more leeway to speak freely and candidly about these issues (or maybe not), but as President, especially with the intense criticism that is constantly being lobbed his way, he has to be careful in deciding when to assert himself into the debate. One of the things that I like about him is that he knows how to bring the temperature down when everyone is in a whipping frenzy, but this time, he added more heat. To me, for him to swallow his ego and say that his comments may have distorted the debate, demonstrates that he is willing to acknowledge his limitations and mistakes.
He is learning how to be a good president.
The police are paramilitary in style and organization. "Yes, sir" is at the core of their relations to their superiors. We, the citizens, are a rank below the rookies and they expect "yes, sir" of us.
But the problem is we did not sign up for this, let alone take the oath, and we do not get the pensions.
So we are understandably rankled when they demand the "yes, sir" business from us.
Their cruisers say, "to protect and serve," but the message they send is that we must serve their whims or get arrested / whacked.
How do you propose that police departments be organized? You want a return to the patronage system of policing?
And what do you mean that you did not "sign up for this"? Sign up for what? Please be more specific, so I can tell if you're protesting this injustice or the police in general.
I don't think that there is a problem with the chain of command / paramilitary structure of police forces per se. The problem is they confuse civilians with those below their rank and expect the kind of deference and obedience that a police superior commands of a subordinate.
We, the people, pay the police. They are our servants. Not the other way around. The police confuse this and expect us to obey them as they are sworn to obey their superiors.
We, the people, need only to obey the law. There is no law that says we cannot disrespect the police or call them names anymore than there is a law that says we cannot disrespect our friends and call them names. Putting the force of the law via charges and arrests around a demand for obsequiousness to police authority is against everything this country stands for.
We, the people, did not sign up to part of the chain of command (and do not get their pensions), let alone to salute or take orders from them in the absence of lawful authority for such orders.
Being "loud and tumultuous" in one's home or even upon being lured to one's porch is no crime. Americans are loud. That's who we are. Ask any European. Being loud is not a crime.
OK, I'm glad I asked those questions before making assumptions.
This is an important post, but it also ignores a lot about the way our political system is set up. It is set up deliberately to make it difficult for the majority to get together to accomplish any major change. It is also set up so that much that is important occurs behind the scenes. "The people," for example, mainly wanted people who pollute to have to pay to clean it up, and they got a bill passed that says that. But the people who pollute didn't want to have to pay, so they negotiated with the agency (very few people follow agency rule-making) to make sure that what they had to pay was not much, and spread out over a long time.
I'm not saying that you aren't right that a lot of people in this country want things that are wrong. But mostly people are somewhat conflicted (how they answer depends on how you ask the question) and even when they know what they want, there are a lot of ways to keep it from happening if governmental action is necessarily part of the solution.
It is so nice to have an adult in the White House. It has been too long. Now if we could just get a few more adults in the media, especially on talk radio and over at FOX News. I pray they will take a step back and really listen to what President Obama just said. I desperately pray.
Finally, can anyone remember back to the days of George W. Bush--a long time ago, I know, but those on the right cannot forgive Stephen Colbert for being such a wise ass Latina in correcting the impression that Dubya was captaining the Hindenberg (crash and burn) rather than the Titanic (the icebergs are actually melting these days). One wonders how Colbert managed to keep all that shiney black hair in his head when concieving of the unending disaster movie that was the Bush Administration. "I'm the Decider." Obama is so straight that only he seems to be able to joke about himself with any true humor to it.
It wouldn't have mattered what President Obama had said about the incident or if he had deflected the question, the right was going blather on about it. And if he had said nothing to begin with, the left may have busted his chops as well.
TNC
After just reading this and the rest of your post, and none of the comments, I have to wonder if you had taken Obama's statement the wrong way..or maybe you feel Obama should do more than he should?
The concession over the word 'stupidly' was expected. It's too harsh of a word (no matter how true) for him to get away with. However, no where in that did I get the sense that he is giving Crowley a pass. He said he still thought the situation (leading up to Gates being lead out of the house and being arrested) went too far. At least that was my impression. Maybe I missed something..
I am going to read the comments now. Just let me end with saying that you should not feel stupid about going hard on this. I certainly don't. I guess I didn't have such high expectations that Obama was going to do anything more than comment on the situation. I don't see him calling Crawley so much as an apology as making sure none of this gets in the way of his job. Like you said, his job is not to fix race relations- his job is to fix the economy and health care. Let Gates and Crawley duke it out.
Did I hear you say..." his job is not to fix race relations- his job is to fix the economy and health care.? Whose job is it? It is yours?
“The government represents the people, and thus one must see red-lining, housing segregation, and housing covenants not as the machinations of bureaucrats, but as a manifestation of popular will.”
It may be correct that each of us (white people) holds part of a collective responsibility for these government-sanctioned crimes, though I don’t think ‘will’ is the accurate word to use here for most people - it may be closer to complacency. And further, education is the only way to truly address this, which must be done in such a way as to be acceptable to those who lack education – in other words, it must be non-threatening.
The exclusionary nature of racial politics itself tends to obscure the political choices available to groups, when dealing with problems such as redlining and segregation. The white people who supported the governments engaged in those racist policies did so, for the most part, without as much knowledge about what they were doing as their black counterparts or us today. I feel I am in danger of justifying their ignorance, but consider what you and I do every day: we buy products manufactured under horribly inhumane conditions, and the exclusionary nature of this consumer / production dynamic allows these conditions to continue. I just went to Marshalls and bought a shirt. I am by doing so most likely supporting child labor of the kind outlawed here a century ago – the kind where young girls lost an arm or a leg in the loom machine while working 18-hour days. A ten-year-old with one name, perhaps an underprivileged member of an ethnic or religious minority in her own nation, could reasonably have made my shirt. Now I don’t vote in the heads of the board at Marshalls who profit directly from this arrangement. But I do vote in state and federal governments which uphold trade agreements with Malaysia, or wherever the clothes are made. And, though tangentially aware of the likely conditions under which my lifestyle is made possible, I do not recognize the full reality of those conditions, and act accordingly by not buying the shirt. Why do I do that?
Well, that’s just how our minds work, in some measure. See no evil, here no evil, speak no evil. Unless you put up a video screen in the aisles of the store or in the voting booth, and show people the injustices they perpetrate by acquiescence, there’s no way radical change occurs. Until I and others learn more and work to establish an alternative, nothing. That’s how change has to occur: education, followed by gradual political movement. Deep down, that may be why I read your blog. I’m here to learn.
You know, this post really ignores the hordes of white people who are and have been actively, maliciously, knowingly racist. Sorry, racists! Want to give credit where credit is due. I still believe that seeing government actions as direct manifestations of popular will is to oversimplify.
And I realize that racism is a larger problem precisely because it is not limited to those who *knowingly* recognize their own biases.
"Evidently Obama, Crowley and Gates are talking about getting a beer together. I hope they have a grand old time"
... that Crowley will have a grand old time of it I doubt very much - he will leave feeling honoured of course but I see no way that he will not also feel patronized - I do not believe in being a classless society possible and remember policeman or the likes was not on the list of desirable jobs Obama spoke about at the NAACP, neither did he mention anything you need your hands for like carpenter or tailor or plumber - people in these professions tend to notice that they are not among the desirables but how would they speak out about it without seeming to be querulous?
The discussion that needs to be had here is why we continually give police and our armed forces passes when they screw up in areas they ARE COMPENSATED FOR AND TRAINED to be proficient at. These aren't regular guys scooped off the street and thrown in an environment they've never been trained to handle. They spend years in training classes(the cop actually ran one!!!!) designed to teach you just how to act in these scenarios. This goes for local cops and military personnel.
This is NEVER raised in any of these issues regarding police/military whether it's Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell or even something non deadly like this confrontation. We continually give these guys free passes under the "it's a stressful job" excuse. They need to be held to a higher level of accountability in these scenarios, not only because of their compensated positions, but also because as defenders of the peace they must be held to a higher standard. You let off 2 full clips of bullets at someone not even firing back at you and already on the ground or you arrest someone for calling you an a-hole? I'm sorry, you just demonstrated the $$ spent on your training was a waste and quote possibly you're in the wrong line of work.
Wish there was some discussion on this topic vs the racial angles of this incident.
re: Silke July 25, 2009 7:02 AM
...and remember policeman or the likes was not on the list of desirable jobs Obama spoke about at the NAACP, neither did he mention anything you need your hands for like carpenter or tailor or plumber - people in these professions tend to notice that they are not among the desirables but how would they speak out about it without seeming to be querulous?
Gracious, Silke, Mr. Obama also didn't mention QA engineers, biostatisticians, ornithologists, entymologists,... And, darn it, you really don't want to be faced with a ragtag mob of querulous and agitated primary school librarians ! Run with the concept of illustrative examples in a time constrained venue, eh ?
And, if your rights were violated, you can hire a lawyer. It's not really that scary. Well, I guess it is scary to teenagers.
There a good sides to this event. It re-assures us that America is still a very racist place. That Obama is bold and humble enough and can apologize, unlike Bush who does not apologize. That Obama is smart enough to put out an uproar, even with a beer, put people together and carry them along to get to his goals, and that while Barack Obama in the White House, white cops will be more careful what they do to people of color. Ask yourself, if Gates was wrong, why were the charges against him dropped. That explains it. It wasn't because the police were trying to defuse the situation. It was because Gates had done nothing illegal.
What the Gates case illustrates is not racial prejudice, but abuse of power. The police forces in the U.S. are generally considered close to the worst among Western democracies when it comes to restraint in the use of force and in due respect for their employers, the tax-paying citizens. U.S. police are trained to demand submission at all times, even when clearly unjustified as in the Gates incident, and to arbitrarily apply the use of force, including deadly force, to achieve compliance for such demands of submission. This “philosophy” is no different from that used by the police in many dictatorships.
Even more troubling than the generally undemocratic and abusive mentality and attitudes of the U.S. police is their acceptance by a significant segment of this country’s population. This may be an indication of a heavy democratic deficit in U.S. culture. The U.S. population who accept as natural a dictatorial police force may be the same who support creationism and reject evolution, or who have decided to believe that Saddam Hussein ordered the 9/11 attacks. All these are traits that distinguish us from the rest of Western civilizations.
I think folks should read Skip Gates' essay in the New Yorker published on the 23rd of October, 1995-'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man'. The essay came out in the immediate aftermath of the O.J acquittal and Prof. Gates uses that as a starting point to discuss 'black america's' contentious relationship with the criminal justice system in their country. It is compelling.
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The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood
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I like to say I was prophetic. Okay, so maybe not. Still this is a decent piece on the beginnings of the end of gangsta rap.
Some fun at the brother's expense. This was written after he slapped up Dale Peck.
Here's a piece no one cared about. Meh, whatever, probably the most enjoyable article I did during my stint at TIME. Premiered a month before I got laid-off. The nail in the coffin? Ya think?
Haha! This was fun. After this, I got a bunch of wing-nuts on the internets yelling "Hands off!"' Too bad she's been so terrible at her job. Ah, well.
Me on Russell Simmons. fun, Fun FUN!! Seriously, I got to take a yoga class with the dude.
My first feature for the NY Times Magazine. Man I agonized over this one. Still, props to Paul Tough, my awesome editor on this one.
Here's me going after Al. I didn't so much have a problem with him, as I had a problem with media acting like this dude was the go-to guy for everything black.
This was my first real story at time. I was writing for the Business section, a real change of direction for me. At any rate, it's about Wal-Mart's attempts to colonize the inner-city. As much as I enjoyed this piece, I mostly enjoyed going out to Chicago, which is a beautiful, beautiful city.
This a piece I did about the cops just outside our nation capitol, in Prince George's County, a few years back. I wanted to offer a counter to the dumb, conventional wisdom that if you paint your police force black, you could eradicate police brutality. In fact, Prince George's--one of the richest, blackest counties in the country--also had one of the most brutal police force's in the country.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
"When we think about the cops, it's scary, on one level, to conclude that a cop can basically arrest you on a whim. It's scarier still to think that this is what Americans want, that this country is as we've made it."
Damn. Probably the most succinct way to put what most of us seem to be missing. Or, to speak only for myself, what I'VE been missing.
Fear. The great American motivator. Playing on people's fears has become the method of choice to push people one way or another. Once you become afraid, you have lost your way.
It's not "scary" to conclude that "a cop can basically arrest" anyone "on a whim." It's a fact, not only here, but almost everywhere. The world is real, not ideal. Don't be afraid, and you take away some of the power of the 'scary' guys. Don't let fear determine who you are. Being arrested is not being convicted, being convicted can expose unjust laws, and end them. Think of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part, just part, of his greatness, is his courage in the face of the scariest guys, laws, and a pervasive social pathology.
Racism is as American as apple pie, Thanksgiving, and the flag. That's the real, not the ideal. Maybe someday racism will vanish, but that's unlikely.
To think that it is "...scarier still to think that this is what Americans want, that this country is as we've made it," is a spectacular conclusory leap. I don't know that this is what Americans want [I am assuming you mean white Americans] that country is as we've made it. Careful with those pronouns. Who is "we"? Not me. Not a lot of people.
TNC, my guess is you are more tired of this incident than I am, and I'm pretty fargin' tired of it. There are far more important specific and horrific issues and incidents to spend our resources on.
Here's a chance to make peace, truly. Let's smoke a pipeful of hash, drink some wine, and groove a bit. All of us. Even the most puritanical amongst us. You can watch.
"It's not "scary" to conclude that "a cop can basically arrest" anyone "on a whim." It's a fact, not only here, but almost everywhere."
Well, I think things can be both scary and facts. For instance, on this earth, there exists a beast called a Kamodo Dragon. So, it's a fact that dragons exist on this earth, and that happens to scare me.
As an aside: Komodo Dragons aren't that scary. They're lizards about three feet long and usually don't attack humans (though they've been known to eat small dogs). I met one when I was a kid once. Fed it a sandwich.
Personally, I'm far more scared of cops than Komodo Dragons...
Maybe zeek, but what about the fire-breathing. Yikes!
Actually Komodos can reach lengths of over 9 feet and their saliva contains venom which has led to the death of at least one person recently (see wikipedia). With that out of the way, well said TNC, as ever. That is the matter in a nutshell...the policing practised in the USA occurs because of the acquiescence of much of the population.
I have found that people desire/need respect. Certainly a man that has become a professor at Harvard deserves respect, but no more than a police officer who seeks to keep a community safe. Both are men with strengths and weaknesses. Because a man is a professor, that in no removes his responsibility as a part of humanity to extend respect. What I find disturbing is the ability some have to show respect to those they agree with while showing contempt for those they do not agree with--the term 'cop' is disrespectful. Can police officers abuse their authority--sure. Can citizen's misuse their 'rights'--sure. However, until there is respect on both sides, there will be no communication, no progress, no hope of becoming better.
"I hope Crowley, Gates and Obama get that beer soon. They need to pour out a little something for Shem Walker. We can't all go to Harvard."
Word. Thanks for that T.
My condolences to those who knew Shem Walker, but there seems to be a disconnect here. Ta-Nehisi, and most of his readers, think a cop in Cambridge (Crowley) acted out of bounds by arresting a guy who "sassed" off to him in his own house. Didn't Shem Walker act out of bounds by (allegedly) kicking a guy in the head who didn't answer him when he asked him to get off his stoop? It's a tragedy the man is dead, but how about tapping someone on the shoulder if he's wearing an earpiece or headphones, before escalating to violence?
How about not moving from shoes to guns?
How about not murdering a citizen who does not present a clear, present danger to anyone else's life?
How about cops actually keeping the peace?
Come on, Doc. I bet if you take a deep breath even you would see the problems with what you wrote. You know that Walker didn't represent a clear & present danger to that cop he was fighting with -- or the other cop, had Walker gotten hold of the first cop's weapon? I don't know that, which is why I wouldn't characterize what could be a justified shooting as a "murder". I do know that if the man kicked a cop in the head, that was an unnecessary escalation of force. I understand the desire for cops to show restraint, but the rest of us need to show some restraint too.
come on Dave,
If the cop had identified himself as a cop there would have been no incident. Or even better yet informed Walker they were going ot use his house for a stakeout in advance.
Someone who lives in a high crime neighborhood, with a lot of drug dealing especially, is not going to react well to someone who refuses to get off his front stoop and doesn't dientify himself.
Come on, Dave. The weapon didn't come into play until the undercover police officer pulled it out. And if he had police training, he'd know that you don't pull a weapon on someone unless you are ready to use it. He had fellow officers rushing to his aid when he drew his piece.
I have no problem with pointing out Walker's violent actions as contributing to his own tragic death. But suggesting that the cop HAD to shoot Walker because Walker might have gained possession of his weapon is absurd. The power and authority we invest in police officers comes with a responsibility, a responsibility which was not demonstrated by this officer to tragic result.
re: Marcos El Malo (Replying to: Doctor Cleveland) July 24, 2009 6:19 PM
Unless NYC police standards are radically different from DC's, that gun should not have come out at all, unless the officer felt in imminent danger of his life or was facing an assailant otherwise presenting a major threat. At least, those were the constraints I was under functioning as armed security, with Metro police oversight, in DC (granted, that was a few decades back...)
I think you mean Cambridge, Mass., not DC. , but thank you for confirming.
Come on Dave.
No cop can shoot someone because they might have a gun, somewhere. Still less can you kill someone because they might hypothetically get your gun.
Neither can you kill someone because they might do something awful in the future. You cannot kill someone for a hypothetical.
That is why I said clear and present danger, which is the standard, and which henqiguai's source cites as "imminent." Clear and present are words with real meanings, not just bombast for the titles of airport novels. "Clear" means clear, Dave. As in, a weapon you can see. A danger that is real, obvious, in the here and now. "Present" means NOW, in real time, right here. Not "he might have a gun hidden in the car" or "he might return with a weapon later" or "Who knows what revenge he may take once he grows to a man?" Now. A weapon in sight now. That is the standard. The absolute and universal standard for police training.
If someone flashes a pistol, a cop should absolutely draw, and absolutely command the person with the gun to drop it. Identifying oneself as police is a necessary part of that command.
But the cop should never have drawn without seeing a lethal weapon in play. Police are trained specifically never to draw their weapons unless the danger is imminent. Drawing a gun never calms the situation down. It creates danger.
Killing someone who is not a threat is, in fact, murder. I chose these words very deliberately. If you don't think it's murder to kill an unarmed man, that's on you.
The man just exudes class. I love my President.
What the President said:
If the President wants to silence the howling hounds of Baskerville and return the focus to health care reform, he had to go up to that podium and make nice.
I agree with your comment, but I think that's what's irking many people about President Obama. His agenda is his, whereas his election platform was designed to make it feel like it was ours.
This is why I am so disappointed at his closing the door on gay rights issues. It's why a few friends of mine always twitch over the cap and trade argument. It's why his shrugging almost-answer to this - rather than craft a response along the lines of him trying to bat down his association with Reverend Wright - is so disappointing to my black friends as well.
When he was elected, it felt like he was an avatar of our collective will. As change-y as the winds were, it turns out he's still a politician with a specific agenda. Sorry if your top 10 isn't completely filled with Economy and Healthcare.
So far, it doesn't seem like the economy is far enough up on Obama's list. Back in February I noted that the stimulus bill Obama signed was, as T-N C might call it, "weak sauce", and that Republicans should have been smarter about pointing out its weaknesses and offering a more effective alternative:
Instead Obama signed a bill that was a grab-bag of Dem policy priorities that didn't do enough to jolt the economy. Now we have the highest unemployment rate in 25 years and it's heading higher.
I guess if the economy is going to keep getting worse, Obama can't afford to piss off the working class folks who voted for him such as Crowley's father.
Dave thank you for your insight.
What to you do for a living?
I want to start calling you "Joe the (insert occupation here)"
Thanks, Irish Pirate. I recently started my own business, so you can call me Dave the entrepreneur if you want.
Joe the business owner it is.
Do you understand the difference between gross and net or are you fully channeling the philosopher King that is Joe the Plumber?
Ah, I missed the snark the first time. My bad.
In answer to your question, of course I understand the difference between gross and net. Now that we've gotten that established, feel free to point out what that (or Joe the Plumber, for that matter) has to do with what I wrote.
TIA
I guess if the economy is going to keep getting worse, Obama can't afford to piss off the working class folks who voted for him such as Crowley's father.
They interviewed Crowley's father? Link?
Instead Obama signed a bill that was a grab-bag of Dem policy priorities that didn't do enough to jolt the economy. Now we have the highest unemployment rate in 25 years and it's heading higher.
Are you really that clueless? Unemployment doesn't come down overnight. What bill was a grab-bag of Democratic policy priorities? The stimulus? No, it wasn't!! He watered it down a ton to get all of 3 Republican votes. Get your facts straight next time.
Brixtonville, when it comes to health care, that's my agenda as well. I am self-employed and pay my own health insurance. My monthly premium has more than doubled in the past four years even though I have raised my deductible to $10k.
I am a middle-aged Black woman who thinks the whole fracas with Gates was overblown and unnecessary. I also think it was unwise for the President to tag the entire Cambridge police department with the "acting stupidly" label. Yes, the police sergeant overreacted and probably arrested Gates because he pissed him off. But, Prof. Gates does not warrant being the poster child for police malfeasance and racial profiling based on this incident.
I am ready to move on to health care and education reform.
I'm ready to be able to get benefits for my partner of 10 years from my government job. That's not in the plan apparently, though.
Forgive me for being bitter that President Obama couldn't stop to say as much about Proposition 8 during the election as he could about Gates' run-in with the police. Priorities and agendas indeed.
@ Brixtonville:
When he was campaigning, Obama said he would address health care, education and energy in his first year as president. I never heard him say he would address benefits for domestic partnerships.
Also, the Prop 8 vote cannot be laid at Obama's feet. Next time the gay leadership in California has to be more strategic about outreach and messaging to ALL communities.
Right, you didn't watch him pander on Logo or listen to him on Air America. I don't mean that as any sort of attack; I mean that as an observation based on you saying you never heard him say any of those things.
I'm not blaming Prop 8 on him. I'm saying it's pretty obvious how much of a vote-mobilizing effect he had on every constituency. He could have lifted one literal finger, had Axelrod dispatch a squad of interns to twitter something, and things would have changed. Tell me I'm wrong.
Also, for what it's worth he dropped his energy agenda as soon as the price of oil went down. Once he was elected he stopped needing our votes and stopped pandering to us as an audience.
What the President also said (that is being ignored by the media):
and this:
And one more:
[emphasis mine]Thanks batgirl for those excerpts. People tend to grab at the shiniest statements and ignore the nuance.
When I heard that race line, I thought, that it was a bit of a cop out. He's said that before.
The fact that this has become such a big issue is indicative that police abuse is a troubling aspect of our society. He didn't want to go there.
I agree. I mean what do you guys expect him to do? Drop everything and issue an Executive Order calling for Crowly's head? Issue legislation making sure that Blacks be treated fairly by law enforcement?
That would be nice, but imagine all the complaints afterwards: "Who does he think he is?" "Why do minorities get all the attention?" "What happened to the economy?" ..blah..blah..blah.
Damned if he do..damned if he don't.
It seems to me that the whole country has a kind of creepy worship of authority going on, and that this plays into accepting both crap like arresting Gates for contempt of cop, and for much worse crap like cops beating up or shooting people on small provocation, or doing no-knock raids in the middle of the night. And I wish Obama had tried to start a conversation on this, because we need to talk and think about it, and at least the big broadcast and print media is never going to get around to having that conversation.
But the problem is, Obama is a politician, with an agenda and some intuition about what he can and can't do. At a guess, he figures he can't possibly change this widespread, long-running tendency in the country, and that trying will expend all his political capital on something that's not going to accomplish anything. On the other hand, he probably guesses that he can do something about healthcare. This is broadly what he's done on torture and gay rights and domestic spying, right? He's been broadly on the right side of these issues, but he hasn't been willing to take up a serious, bruising political fight over these issues.
This p-sses me off, but it's worth remembering that Obama really does know a lot more about politics than I do. It may be that he's right. It may also be that he really doesn't see these issues as being as important as I do, or maybe doesn't even see them as being major issues at all. There's no way to tell.
Anyway, Ta-Nehisi, I don't think you should feel let down. This kind of discussion you'be been hosting on this topic needs to happen. There need to be more people talking about the kind culture of impunity and abuse that has grown up around the police in a lot of places, the crazy overuse of no-knock warrants, and the over-willingness of almost everyone to defer to the cops over all those things. Obama may be unwilling or unable to lead that kind of discussion right now, but you can, and it matters.
Meh. I wish I was a journalist sometimes. I would have immediately followed up and asked the President to explain to us the lesson of this particular teachable moment. And then Obama would have wandered back into the weeds trying to answer that, and David Axelrod would be standing off in the wings slapping his forehead repeatedly. It would have been fun to watch.
Bottom line folks: Obama screwed up. He's not a community organizer anymore, or a State Senator, or even a U.S. Senator. He's the President of the United States, for heaven's sake. Presidents shouldn't opine on local arrests without knowing all the facts. He stepped in it when he did, and he turned off a lot of people who voted for him. That's why he tried to walk it back today.
He didn't screw up; he was asked about it in a national press conference and his response wasn't pc enough for some because he used the word stupid. He could have just as easily said "hastily taken without regard to consequence." But given the brouhaha made of the incident without his participation, I think he was absolutely accurate in noting that the incident however trivial speaks to something still alive in our history. I mean, just this site has had probably close to a thousand responses to it and counting. If conservatives who voted for him are turned off to our President being sensitive about racial matters or discussing them, they must have missed the speech in Philadelphia.
Obama talked about the teachable lessons in the statement.
If we take the case file as fact, the professor overreacted to being questioned by the police and the policeman overreacted by dragging the professor down to the station.
And Obama himself could have used a more PC word than "stupid".
A lesson for everyone involved.
"Rutherford B. Hays did not so much fail, as the country made a choice--we'd rather kill Indians and expand, then protect citizens from terrorism. "
That killed me man. Aside from just the police issue, which is big, but look at torture. We've said its ok, we really have. And that's why it's hard to just get outraged at the figureheads to an extent; if you step back, its just a manifestation of a greater stupidity and cowardice.
Aside from just the police issue, which is big, but look at torture. We've said its ok, we really have.
Yup. There have been and continue to be people trying to fix this, but the nation said, "OK." If the Bush era proved anything, it's that we're a nation of bullying cowards.
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
This was, for me, the most disturbing part of the reaction to Gatesgate(sorry). An alarming number of people seem to think that any failure to treat an authority figure with anything other than deference is grounds for arrest.
Do people believe the boot will never be on their faces or do they just have a taste for licking it?
The former. For sure.
Sadly, I think it's a little bit of both :(
I was talking to my Dad an hour ago, and he's old, and I let him spout sometimes without going for any sort of rhetorical takedown. That's just our dynamic, I'm not satisfied with it, but he's 80 and I don't expect to expand his mind with any wisdoms I could drop.
In any case, he's old school (clearly) and he's certainly in the deferential camp. And maybe he comes from a time and a narrower culture in which the cops wore blue and the robbers wore horizontal stripes and a five o'clock shadow. It's no question to him that Gates was far out of line, and that Crowley was humble and righteous. That's just what cops are.
From what I'm seeing in my Facebook threads, there are quite a number of people who want to retain a halcyon vision of law enforcement, cos that's what has worked for them. There's even been a few perceptions of 'snooty Harvard professor' vs working-class folk.
My feelings are closer the mean on this blog, and the discussion has been illuminating, and far better than anything else out there. But there's one theme that's common to too many threads, on too many topics - "I can't believe people feel this way." Yeah, they do. I don't have anything intelligent to say much beyond that, other than we ought to figure out a way in ourselves to quickly get past the disbelief, and engage what they're bringing.
Sorry, rambly.
Blockqoute fail. The first two lines are quoted from the post.
I've disagreed with you before on the just how empty the glass is, and I'll do it again. I do so aware of the fact that a life of privilege may be what is allowing me to say this.
You write "Only the people can do that [change the fact that a cop can basically arrest you on a whim]. And they don't seem particularly inclined" -- and respectfully, I have to disagree.
We are here, having this conversation, first of all. We -- the folks who read, comment on, and write this blog -- are also "the people," and there seems to be a pretty powerful consensus among us about what needs to change (I can't speak for those who don't comment, but I'm guessing they're more with us than agin us).
Also, the nation as a whole is having this conversation. Are all the people who should say all the right things saying all the right things? No. Is there racism, classism, stupidity, and all manner of us-vs-them to spare? Yes.
But it's out there, for everyone to see, and for a lot of really good people, of good will, to pull apart and try to set right. I know that I am not the only one who changes what she says to her kids about the world after stuff like this happens -- and all of those kids are coming up with different cues and different values and a whole new way of looking at the world. (And yes, it matters -- in ways too deep for me to fully comprehend -- that they look at the Oval Office and see a Black man, and look at the White House, and see a Black family. The very eyesight of an entire generation is changing as a result of this family, and though we cannot truly comprehend how just yet, but man, does it matter).
The problem for me is not that the American people, writ large, don't want to change the social reality that made this mess possible, but that not enough of us want it badly enough to make the effort that it takes to bring change sooner rather than later. I want greater social justice NOW, and I certainly want it by the time my kids can vote. It is a source of endless frustration and not infrequent pain to me that it cannot, will not happen as quickly as it, by rights, should.
But it will happen, and it will happen because a lot of people actually are inclined to make it so.
Thanks for this post. I'm feeling what you're feeling.
I'm also pissed with myself for expecting more from this moment, either from Obama, from Gates, or from general public discussion. I know that you can't fight with a few centuries of history, or a knee-jerk predilection to believe that you can't criticize the cops, in one moment (teachable or not), but I wish that people weren't so afraid of a complicated discussion or fight that they pull the plug out of fear we can't talk about this stuff and work on health care (or anything else) at the same time.
And each time we miss the chance to push back on police misuse of authority makes each next moment of police misconduct a surer thing. Citizen oversight responsibility in a democracy is a muscle that goes soft with disuse. Maybe what I'm feeling isn't just fatigue but political despair.
"Citizen oversight responsibility in a democracy is a muscle that goes soft with disuse."
Absolutely.... absolutely.
There is such a huge disconnect between black and white people when it comes to the criminal justice system.
I remember a (loud) discussion I had with an African American friend about the Ray Lewis case.
I sad, "Wait a minute, the two guys who got stabbed to death were black. Where's the justice for them?"
He responded. "Putting a few more black men in jail ain't gonna' fix anything. You just don't get it"
He's right. I don't.
Well, here are the Presidents in my memory--can't remember Truman, but Ike, JFK, LBJ, Tricky Dick, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Points of Light Bush, Clinton, W--for all that I would like more from President Obama, none of the above in my now long time lifetime would have ever thought to do what I just saw President Obama do. Too bad so many who oppose him have no idea how lucky they are to have someone whose politics differ, yet holds them in such high esteem.
Amen.
hate to say i told you so, about obama, but i told you so.
i was off by a few hours. i thought he'd fold after the evening news.
he didn't last that long.
anyone expecting this president to be any kind of a leader - which is what it would take for him to step up and use this situation as one where the country could actually learn something from the incident - are always going to be sadly disappointed.
No you don't.
tnc,
lol!!!
actually, i do.
i keep hoping for more.
i actually think that obama has a lot of steel in him, but he keeps it under wraps for political purposes.
in fact, his somewhat non-apology apology is indicative of his true feelings: he thinks that he's right, and wants to hold out for that position, but politically he understands what his safest course is.
he does, naturally, the safest course.
You know I've thought about this, and just concluded that his battles are often not our battles. He'll stand on certain things.
Anyway, I changed my mind after reading your posts concerning the police report. I gave Crowley the benefit of the doubt, but your trap-theory made sense and is well founded in the facts.
He folded? Not quite sure of that, seems more like he moved on. To me knowing when to pick and choose your battles is one of the best hallmarks of a true leader. This isn't exactly the moment or the scenario to dig in on for the sake of making a point and considering the circumstances of where this all has gone what would that point even be?
He is a leader. A fairly selfless one considering he put Healthcare above digging in his heels.
Personally, I don't think there was a whole lot to "learn" from this incident. I think there are almost every day more egregious injustices that speak to our time than this. Personally, I think if we don't get some improvement in our health care system going soon, if we mire in petty bs, our citizenry will suffer far more than a single man has in this case.
Do the police abuse their power? Have blacks, and Latinos as our President pointed out--a point I have not read riffed on in all these many posts--been at the butt end of such abuse? Is a part of our society so threatened by the truth of that on one hand and so low down and venal on the other as to make hay out of the issue even being raised?
Our nation blithely went along with stripping habeas corpus, the very foundation of individual justice of all of Western Civilization; I have had whole college classes full of students who did not even know what it was or whence it came.
I have lived through riots that were started by police, started by them, because people peaceably had assembled to protest a war that history has since proven was an epic mistake that cost Americans tens of thousands of lives and our enemy hundreds of thousands if not millions. We were committing war crimes; we were openly using chemical warfare on children and presenting it on the evening news.
Perspective. I am far angrier with our President that he's put the banking fox in charge of the banking hen house than having had the good sense to diffuse, which is the absolute best way to problem solve it, this rather small time injustice. Sorry, I think the lesson to be learned from this is how one can blow things out of all proportion.
I didn't hear folding. Folding would have been not to comment on it in the first place, I think. That would have been the political thing to do, and much easier for him in terms of who would have been pissed at him then, and their access to NYT headlines and morning cable agendas. The standards seem to be ridiculously high for Obama. I can't remember a president in my lifetime talking to the American people directly about race in a way that doesn't assume we are all dumb asses. Actually, I can't remember a president talking about race at all, but I could very well be wrong that it hasn't happened and would be interested in anyone filling me in if it has.
Obama was teaching us how to look at an important conflict, see the good intentions of people involved, helped us understand the origins of the conflict, and see that, perhaps, we can just slow down, sit down together, share a drink, see each other as people, and create something better. Pretty damn good accomplishment I say.
I am not disappointed. I'm proud.
frankie d,
Read what CitizenE wrote. It's true. Don't trash Obama when you don't know your own history, unless you are 12. If you are 12, you get a pass. But, if you are over 20, it's all on you.
don't know my own history?
such a presumption is laughable.
i watched the dogs being sicked on black protesters in my dad's home state of alabama in real time.
i watched my mom cry her eyes out the night martin luther king was killed.
i watched tanks roll down the streets of my hometown, detroit, while snipers sat on the tallest apartment buildings in my neighborhood and i was scared to death as we had to lie on the floor and away from the windows to avoid getting shot during a riot whose epicenter was 8 blocks from my home near the lodge freeway.
i was one of those young black kids who was stopped and arrested by the "big four", roving gangs of cops who terrorized black folks in detroit in the early '70's, killing almost 30 men in a couple of years span, abusing their power so greatly that a real leader, coleman young, was swept into office as a backlash to their outrageous and murderous conduct.
not know my history?
hardly.
and fortunately, i've seen real leaders in action, and what obama presents is a far cry from real leadership.
he's bill clinton, II, calculating every move in order to horde his political capital.
(on a somewhat tangential note, i'll wager right now that michelle obama will follow hillary's lead and enter political life after barack leaves office. and obama will follow bill's lead and make certain that he doesn't spend his political capital as he leaves office, so that michelle can benefit. as hillary did.)
what could obama have done?
easy...
he could have confronted the issue head on.
for instance, he could have assembled a group of the most prominent african-american men in america and had a roundtable discussion that focused on the harassment they've received at the hands of police over the years, and demand that each and every jurisdiction in the country address the issue with new policies and oversight.
shed light on the issue, illuminate it, and propose solutions, in a positive, constructive way.
as i've posted here before, i'd bet that not only obama, but every prominent african-american of note has suffered his own version of what happened to gates.
instead of backing down to one cop and one police union for the sake of saving capital for some future fight that never seems to materialize, he could confront the issue at hand and truly address a problem that just about every african-american deals with or has dealt with.
that would be true leadership.
and it would be leadership consistent with the best leadership in our history.
what obama said initially was measured and correct. instead of hedging and folding when confronted, he should have taken the opportunity to try to address a real problem.
Coleman Young? Seriously? He won some battles but lost the war.
this is what gates has posted:
"It was very kind of the President to phone me today. Vernon Jordan is absolutely correct: my unfortunate experience will only have a larger meaning if we can all use this to diminish racial profiling and to enhance fairness and equity in the criminal justice system for poor people and for people of color.
And to that end, I look forward to studying the history of racial profiling in a new documentary for PBS. I told the President that my principal regret was that all of the attention paid to his deeply supportive remarks during his press conference had distracted attention from his health care initiative. I am pleased that he, too, is eager to use my experience as a teaching moment, and if meeting Sgt. [James] Crowley for a beer with the President will further that end, then I would be happy to oblige.
After all, I first proposed that Sgt. Crowley and I meet as early as last Monday. If my experience leads to the lessening of the occurrence of racial profiling, then I would find that enormously gratifying. Because, in the end, this is not about me at all; it is about the creation of a society in which 'equal justice before law' is a lived reality."
http://www.theroot.com/views/gates-says-yes-beer-crowley
sounds a lot like what i've advocated.
unfortunately, it doesn't sound anything like what obama is intending to do.
other than the having a beer part.
what appears to be on the horizon is this:
gates and crowley meet for a beer at the white house.
they come out, afterwards for a joshing, grinning photo op.
they all make nice, friendly statements about how this one little misunderstanding has been resolved, helped along by obama's penchant for reaching out.
the issue disappears.
except for interesting little posts that gates puts up over at the root, which hardly get any attention.
and the president will have thankfully - from his perspective - avoided a thorny political issue.
if i'm wrong, i will be the first to acknowledge that fact. but i'd bet just about anything on the scenario just imagined.
@rogerm,
no doubt that is true.
but it had as much to do with forces beyond his control that are more complex than can be gotten into here.
my simple point was that back in 1973, when cops were literally murdering black men in the streets under the crazy STRESS program, coleman young stood up and said, we're mad as hell and we're not going to take this anymore. he ran on a platform to disband STRESS, which he did upon winning election.
i was not referring to his long and complex history as mayor.
i specifically talked about his leadership during a time period when exactly this same issue - police harassment and profiling - was front and center.
and while obama is certainly faced with a different electorate and dynamics, some matters are universal. when you are right - and he was right, initially, you don't back down.
period.
Frankie D
"when you are right - and he was right, initially, you don't back down.
period"
I'll give you that. Coleman Young was no shrinking violet. Also, during his reign, garbage got picked up and streetlights worked.
I do like a Prez who has a healthy enough ego that he can admit a mistake.
It is also possible to read far too much into this incident between Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley.
It strikes me as two men with egos who both could have and should have acted better.
Gates should have been less of an asshole and Crowley should have just walked away. That's a very important phrase for Police. "Walk away".
Not every hostile interaction needs to result in an arrest.
The debate about this reminds me of "Finnegans Wake". An old Irish song that Jimmy Joyce turned into a reflection on life, death and resurrection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnegan%27s_Wake
It strikes me as two men with egos who both could have and should have acted better.
I've read my way through quite a few of these posts and their comments, and this seems to be one of the prevailing views. But the longer it sits with me, the more disquieting it gets.
The problem is that it elides the power imbalance here. The cop is the one with the gun, the one with the cuffs, the one with the power to detain. It's absolutely appropriate for him to have a higher standard of behavior - a much higher one. And the "well, Gates acted like a jerk too" formulation is a concession otherwise, and is really only a short step away from "he had it coming."
In the end, it just feels like blaming the victim. Sometimes you have to stand up for assholes, too. And for reasons that I'll have trouble expressing, it also feels like a close cousin of the stomach-turning "if they got busted, they musta been guilty of something" sentiment.
(BTW, I'm not really trying to pick on you in particular. This has been one of the running themes of the discussion.)
I place MORE of the blame for this situation with Sergeant Crowley.
Also police procedure which seems to be if someone is acting out "arrest him".
Cops need to have thick skins. They also need to know when to walk away.
An elderly, and Professor Gates seems to be an old 58 year old, man with a cane is not particularly dangerous.
Trying to conflate this case with some of the more egregious police incidents of recent times strikes me as a stretch.
This isn't Shem Walker being shot on his mom's steps.
This isn't the incident in Philly with the enraged cop in the convenience store.
Sergeant Crowley may be a horrible cop. I don't know. At the very least he may be a good cop who made a bad decision.
He also may be one of those people who values "procedure" more than common sense. Some people are very comfortable with "procedure".
My mom has a line she likes to use about "walking in another man's moccassins".
When I deal with people I often try to picture where they are coming from. If both Gates and Crowley had tried that this situation would not have garnered any attention.
Gates should have thought "here's a cop responding to a potential break in" and Crowley should have thought "here is a man in his OWN house getting a bit pissed that I'm here."
This is not for this comment persay, where you are being so sincere, but just to note, I appreciate your style, even if I, from the time I was a kid, was taught to be wary of the cracker persuasion.
I wonder if it would have turned out differently if Crowley had a partner there to tell him, "Forget it, Jake. It's Harvard."
"Crowley should have thought 'here is a man in his OWN house getting a bit pissed that I'm here.'"
It's even more than this (and I have not seen/heard this remarked anywhere). It was a guy who is presumably not at the height of bodily vigor (vide: cane) who has just got off a plane after many hours (with who knows what complications) of transatlantic travel, with who-knows-what fatigue and concerns about tomorrow's obligations, etc., etc.
I realize that these may seem like "high-class problems," especially to the world-view most likely to be the lot of a policeman. But, added to the fact that the man was being yelled at for accessing his own home in a way that no white man of his class would have been -- well -- as a white man of his class, I must say I want to know more about the mile he had just walked in his mocasins.
Rodger Evans,
Where did you get that Gates was being yelled at for accessing his own home? If it's a fact of the case, what is its source?
If it's not, I plead with you to stick to the facts, which are damning enough. Even if we stick to the police report, it looks pretty bad for the officer.
Well, hold on here. In the moment of the arrest, yeah, the cop has the power. But who has the power of the press conference afterward? The Harvard professor with political connections? Or the cop? Let's not forget that Gates supposedly tried to pull a "Do you know who I am?" kind of move. What's the implication? "Mess with me and I'll get you fired?"
I'm not saying that the cop is right and Gates is wrong, I'm just saying that the power balance is more complicated than "the cop has all the power."
In the moment of the arrest, yeah, the cop has the power.
Thing is, the whole flap is about what happened in the moment of the arrest. The whole controversy seems to basically be: was it, or was it not, "contempt of cop," and is it ok if it was?
Gates, to be sure, has much more power to respond to the process than most people. And I have no doubt whatsoever that the wealthy, well-known, or connected frequently can get into that sort of powerplay pissing-match and win. But as this demonstrates, sometimes they don't.
But the basic protections should be alike for the weak and the strong, as well as the nice and the jerky. Which is why "oh, and he was kind of an asshole too" is so frustrating. Because it cements the idea that that's enough, that a citizen can somehow be "in for it" just by offending a cop. And when that person has nothing to come back with the way that Gates did, they're really screwed.
Bingo,
if this had been Henry Gates Harvard Janitor how many people think the charges would have been dropped?
He would probably have been held in jail overnight at least, if not forced to go to court.
But who has the power of the press conference afterward? The Harvard professor with political connections? Or the cop?
Was Gates' press conference on ABC News tonight? Was Crowley's? It was Crowley's. Gates is nowhere to be seen? Why? Lets face it. Obama was in a no win situation here. If he didn't come to Gates' defense, the TradMed would have blasted him for not coming to the defense of a friend. They were just waiting for a moment like this. I mean Jake Freakin' Tapper was in Boston today trying to interview(unsuccessfully) Crowley. Isn't Tapper the ABC News WH Correspondent?
We don't know how this will play out in the weeks and months ahead. If I were Crowley, I do believe I'd be feeling like making up with Gates as soon as possible, in whatever way I could that didn't screw me over too badly with my job or union. I'd be wanting to have that beer, and make a nice, personal apology and shake his hand and mean it. Because it's just got to make your stomach hurt when the guy you just arrested for contempt of cop turns out to be a personal friend of the president.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, I imagine he's thinking of all the ways someone with that kind of connections could manage to screw him over, all the ways against which the police union and the public's love of tough guys in uniform would offer very little protection. He's thinking that the next time he makes a small misstep, or does something else questionable, he's likely to find himself on the front page again. And whatever he says, I'm sure he's very much wishing he'd let Gates yell at him with a calm "have a nice day, sir" as he was leaving.
CitzenE,
on behalf of crackers everywhere I thank you.
In fact my cracker mother thanks you.
My cracker sister thanks you.
My cracker father thanks you.
And I, cracker that I am, Thank you.
Marcos,
I thought something similar about Sergeant Crowley. If he hadn't been the "Sergeant" or had another cop there from the beginning I suspect cooler heads might have prevailed. Someone who could have said "fuck it, let's get a donut".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZUfHE1FPrs
My ex wife might also concur. Some of my best friends--it's true-- as well.
I think that video proves that we have the best, uh, architecture, here in Los Angeles.
I half agree with this. It's legitimate to trace responsibility for what bureaucrats and police do with the authority granted to them by the people, but it's not the whole story, as evidenced by our outrage at specific instances. When we're confronted by stories like Gates and the Philly cop, a lot of us experience a moment "Wait, what? They're doing what with the authority I've given them?" That's a basic tension of delegating authority over ourselves, and it isn't easily resolved by pointing the finger in just one direction.
Yeah, a lot of stuff that happens isn't remotely in keeping with the will of the people, so much as the will of the interest groups who drive policy. A great deal of it is really hard to understand or even find out about if you're not tracking it for a living. Much of what remains is the outcome, not of some kind of "will of the people," but rather of administrative and political processes that are neither rational nor under anyone's direct control.
So, it's got the consent of the people in the sense that we haven't torn down the country over it (as we did over slavery once; that was an issue where the stakes were worth it). But the existence of farm subsidies or huge military contracts for basically useless stuff or out-of-balance re-embursement rates for Medicare or a lack of standards for all kinds of probably-bad stuff in drinking water, none of that seems to reflect the will of the people nearly so much as the results of political processes.
I think there is a line between the two. To me it has something to do with people's willingness to dismiss the "civil rights" complaints of others fairly easily, so long as they themselves dont ever expect to be affected by the loss.
People who would never think of keeping a gun in the house, much going through the trouble to get a concealed carry permit see taking the right to do so away as a completely reasonable sacrifice for the public good.
Same thing for people who could never imagine themselves or their relations ending up on the wrong end of a billy club or bullet- To them it's reasonable to give the police this vast leeway to ensure they can safely do their jobs.
Similar things pop up all the time, from gay marriage to secret wiretapping and government surveillance.
Ultimately in this majority rules/minority rights society, those minority rights typically come in the form of constitutional protections. I wonder (and I can only wonder because I really don't know) whether the legislation that supports this type of extremely broad arrest powers would pass constitutional muster if challenged.
Excellent point. My brother (cop, gun-rights advocate) and I (immigrant defense attorney, gun-rights apathetic) have this talk a lot. You may have just tipped the scales in his favor in my mind.
I can hardly believe Obama's comment on this case became a media firestorm. Seriously, how were the actions of the police officer not "stupid" in this case? It really makes me feel pessimistic about this country that, as you say, apparently we're all OK with police officers arresting anyone who gives them a little sass.
It makes me think about police procedurals and the like on TV. How often are the police just plain wrong on those shows? Like, what, once a season? At most? Ok, I don't watch a lot of those shows, so I don't really know. But for example, I have a friend who watches 24. And I've asked him, is Jack Bower ever wrong? Has he ever tortured someone mistakenly? And, apparently, over the 6 or so seasons, it's happened maybe once, and even that time Bower figured out he was wrong before the "actual" torture started.
Hollywood narratives are all about certainty. Unfortuantly, the real world has very little that is certain about it. And I think, in modern America, we all "know" way too much. To sort of reiterate Coates, I'm not blaming Hollywood - I think they are making the entertainment that people want. But the US didn't always buy into the certainty of the police. "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" How many people agree with that sentiment these days?
Just because this case really gets on my nerves, one more thought: What the hell is the point of the first amendment if you can't sass the police inside your own home?
...and the Fourth Amendment, too.
I wasn't surprised. I pretty much knew it was going to blow up as soon as I heard him say it. I have to wonder did Obama not realize it? Was there a point to him coming out as he did and then back tracking? Is it just some sort of a ploy to get the press to forget missing his Aug deadline on health care?
I think it was just poor word choice on the fly. It's hard to always strike the "right" tone and he ultimately created a distraction that he wanted to end...so he waited a bit, saw how crazy it was getting and then he got together with his people and said, what's the best way to try to fix this?
Does anyone actually think this is what he wants to be talking about right now?
I don't know, I think making a bad special olympics joke on Letterman might be "poor word choice on the fly." Wading into the Gates thing had no other outcome other than the ****storm that followed. I mean criticizing the police and discussing a "racially charged" incident- that's about as much of a power keg as you're going to get. It wasn't his word choice, it was the subject matter. And he had to know as much. So why say anything? I mean the only way for him to have said anything on this topic and it not totally change the subject on him was if here were to give a total political speak non answer. And he didn't know that? Maybe he is that naive, but somehow, I don't think so.
Obama has an instinct and a gift for conciliation. One would hope he would use it to make this a teaching moment.
Obama's first reaction showed that he knows that when it comes to interactions between police and people of color, it's the police who are most in need of schooling.
I'm older and white and it really bothers me too that I might be arrested in my own home and dragged to jail and detained for 4 hours. His attorney said he was sick and needed his bronchial medicine and he couldn't even have that while being detained. It is just a real nightmare.
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
In order for police to properly maintain law and order, they need o be shown respect, and that means no sassing them. It doesn't mean you have to bend over for them, or that you cannot disagree, but it does mean that you cannot be a dick. I really don't understand the opinion that you should be able to disrepect on duty officers with no consequences. Of course in an earlier post TNC said he would be loathe to call the cops in almost all situations, even if he witnessed a drug deal taking place. I know he wants bad urban neighborhoods and black neighborhoods in general to become safer, less crime ridden places. How do you think that is going to happen if people show less respect to the police than to the criminals? I do not comprehend this attitude at all.
I was thinking earlier this week about the connection between all of this and the Senate almost passing a bill which would make it legal to carry a concealed weapon in any state, as long as your home state approves.
Somewhat off topic but I wished to address this. Liberals rail against the DOMA, which says that States do not have to honor other State's marriage laws. You want States to be forced to honor the laws of other States. Yet here you hate the idea that States would be forced to honor the laws of other States. The only difference is if you like the law in question or not. Personally, I dislike this particular gun law as I am for State's Rights in a general way. Liberals, please man up and pick your philosophy and choose one side of the issue to be on. Either you are for DOMA and against this Law or the other way around. You cannot be against both.
"I really don't understand the opinion that you should be able to disrepect on duty officers with no consequences."
What should the consequences be? Should laws be made up to combat this type of thing? And really, cops disrespect law-abiding citizens all the time, so why doesn't that cut both ways? I've yet to see consequences for cops that disrespect 'civilians.'
I think respect goes both ways. And if a cop treats me like a criminal in my own home, I have a right to be disrespectful without getting arrested. That's the First Amendment, plain and simple.
As to DOMA - they're different issues. Family law, like custody and marriages, is an area of the law where the states have agreed that they will respect the legal status of individuals when those relationships cross state lines. The arrangement comes from the understanding that you shouldn't have your marriage invalidated or your child custody questioned just because you crossed state lines. The right to carry a gun, like the right to vote in a local election (and most other state issues) don't carry over from state to state. Each state can decide what their standards are. DOMA is offensive because it subverts that understanding between the states and essentially divorces families who cross state lines.
The perspective that TNC outlines is very clear in the Morning Joe clip he posted earlier. That panel went to great lengths to remove race from it, to not say that the cop was racially motivated, but to say that it's wrong to arrest you in your own house simply for your words and attitude. And Mika Brzezinski & Mike Barnicle thinks that is appropriate behavior for the police.
Check this story: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=8163051
Juan Williams says it was not a case of racial profiling and further indicates the fault lies with Gates: "As someone who has been stopped, as a black person in America, I have a very deferential approach to cops. I don't speak to them in aggressive tones. ... It's just that cops can be very prickly, especially with a black guy."
Simply astounding. People get so worked up about the government taking your guns away, but they seem fine with the law coming into your house and arresting you.
So Williams is saying in the same sentence that racial profiling isn't a factor, but he as black man knows he has to act differently around cops?
How does he keeps his head from exploding? The man is a professional writer, does he not understand the meaning of what he just said?
Williams knows what he just said. The problem is that his bread is buttered by Faux Noise. Did you really expect Williams to tell the honest truth?
"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."
I'm sure the Michelle Bachmann, Glen Beck, etc. crowd who are so concerned about our descent into tyranny will vocally oppose such a totalitarian idea.
It is curious that the people who scream about 'small government' seem to put their complete trust in police officers. They don't trust the government to run healthcare or the automotive industry, but they sure trust them to arrest whoever they want. That's one of the reasons I'm glad TNC gave props to the Agitator earlier. At least Radley Balko, and some of those types are consistent. I might not always agree with them, but at least they're not hypocrites.
Yah. Could someone do us a favor and book Beck and Bachmann for disorderly conduct?
I hear you. And its not just the law and order industrial complex - such 'small government' types like Glenn Beck are amongst the biggest cheerleaders for an imperial foreign policy.
Its more about how they would rather deal with the poor and disenfranchised - be it at home or abroad. In my opinion that is what the War on Drugs is about more than anything. As a politician or pundit its far easier to posture and put your opponents on the defensive as 'tough -on-crime' guy. Certainly much easier to soundbite and appear confident. And then of course there is all the healthy profits to be made. (See Bill Maher in yesterday's Huff Post)
Some of the most consistent anti-war writing I find at Antiwar.com which definitely comes from a libertarian perspective. Not that the libertarians don't have their issues and inconsistencies, (see Pat Buchanan) but that's a whole other thread.
You know, the beauty of your argument is that it can be turned 180°. It is curious that the same people seeking expansion of our government and it's intrusion into our private lives get so bent out of shape when the government does exactly that with the power we've already given it.
Just saying, you might want to be careful about the strawmen you construct.
Well, your point is a somewhat valid one, but I don't think what I said is a straw man. I'm speaking in general, and certainly in my personal experience. The same people that complain about the government's larger role are the same people who are prone to always taking a police officer's side. It is curious, and it is true.
Also, I've never seen people that support the government having a larger role suggest that there shouldn't be stricter oversight on these government agencies. I'd assume that most progressives would be all in favor of great oversight into police conduct. That seems perfectly in step with their beliefs.
Also, the party that is supposed to be about small government is also that party that REALLY cares what you do in your private lives. But I suppose we could debate that. So I guess I don't see your comparison to be a complete 180.
If you want to argue that GOP politicians that pontificate on the part of small government are hypocrites, I'll grant you that. They are usually the same ones that also want to legislate morality and are willfully blind to the contradictions (assuming that the principle underneath smaller government is the principle of liberty and not just misplaced nostalgia).
But that's a far cry from your average person that wants a smaller federal government and more local control. I don't see how that conflicts with trusting or at least respecting the local police.
(Truthfully, I think there are quite a few "small government" people that really want a more responsive government, and one way to achieve that is by shifting responsibilities from the federal level to local levels. We're willing to pay for services, but we hate seeing (and paying for) waste and boondoggle. I think you'll find a lot of non crazy people that DON'T attend tea parties who feel this way.)
"It is curious that the people who scream about 'small government' seem to put their complete trust in police officers."
Not the principled ones among them. A Ron Paul, say, is as mistrusting of the police, or at least police power, as any Black Panther.
Agreed. I guess the people I'm talking about are the people that pretend to be principled.
I'm a bit confused at all the "expectations" for what else Obama is supposed to or should do in this situation. His responsibility is largely to govern, not teach.
You still have to put the whole incident in context. There was no physical violence involved. There were no racial epithets involved. There are no outstanding charges. An individual was detained for four hours, released, and then charges were later dropped. The incident did not involve the federal government nor Washington DC.
That specific incident has ended. Will whatever happen, happen again in other circumstances? Sure, but that would be true no matter what Obama would say or do himself.
He did what every politican is taught to do in circumstances like this, which is to try to end the news cycle of a story that you don't see a lot of utility in to move to another one that has more utility.
Right now, that appears to be healthcare and the economy. And if you want Obama to focus on other topics more than the economy, then you're going to have to wait a pretty long time, because it's pretty important (to the country and his re-election) and will require a lot of his political capital.
Yeah dude, that's what I've been saying.
We can't do squat about this other stuff.
We can keep talking about it and enlightening...that works. It's moving in the right direction but it will take years. Maybe our kids will see the day. Don't give up hope.
But back to the real stuff to talk about.
Like McClellan. He built a kick ass army. Wouldn't fight it though. What's up with that?
Held 2 corps in reserve at Antietam when he had Lee's line in the center (sunken road) stretched so thin he only had to reach out and tap it! How could he not make the effort?
It's all good T.
He had never failed before. Fear of ruining that West Point rep. Grant, on the other hand, had nothing to lose.
Yeah but 2 Corps! Held in reserve!
The confederate line in the center was held by a single brigade (I think, if memory serves...) and were bled white from the assaults of Sumner (again, I'm spit-ballin, I think that's who it was).
Jackson was done on the left. There was hardly anybody on the right at Burnside's bridge (of course, he didn't know these things.)
It he would have just pressed he would have split Lee in half and he could have served both halves of the rebel army as he saw fit.
The war would have been over.
Sometimes you just need to make the effort.
Hang in there bud.
There are so many "The war would have been over" moments in the Civil War its almost not worth talking about them. If the Union had instilled anything approaching disipline in its men before the first battle of Bull Run the war would have been over. If the Confederate leadership would have listened to Jackson and marched on Washington in the hours directly after First Bull Run they would almost certainly have taken the city while the Union troops were in complete disarray and then the war would have likely been over. The early years of the War before attrition took its toll on the South had a lot of this, as Union material and manpower advantage and Confederate skill and competency advatage were at play.
No, I don't think West Point had anything to do with the leadership style of McClellan v. Grant. McC was very good at training, staffing and organizing an army. That was his great accomplishment, and to him sending his troops into battle, destroyed his investment in the creation of a great army. Of course, his soldiers adored him for keeping them out of battle. Some generals are good at raising and training an army, others are good at fighting the enemy. Grant, Sherman and Sheridan fell into the latter category. Also, McC personal beliefs led him to be a lukewarm supporter of the Union cause, and Lincoln's evolving sense of slavery and emancipation. McC ran against Lincoln in 1864 as an anti-war Democrat, and lost. Certainly an 'iffy' guy I'd want fighting for the Union. He also had a grandiose perception of himself, which didn't help him with his fellow generals or Lincoln.
If I recall correctly, any battlefield 'victories' McC may have been given credit for were few and small in scale.
After McC lost his command, and the generals who understood what the goals of the war had to be took over, everything changed.
"A Landscape Turned Red" by Stephan Sears, is about the best book out there on Antietam. McC leadership was inept, cowardly and caused unimaginable carnage. Instead of being relieved of command, he should have been tossed out of the army at the very least.
"I need to get back to the Civil War."
This IS the Civil War. We're all just re-enactors.
Just kidding - sort of, but while I think this may have been stretched out a bit on the blog, the discussion was filled with worthwhile observations from a variety of perspectives. I'm not sure you need to understand the Civl War better to sort this event out, but if you don't see it as a convoluted, admittedly complicated extension of those floodgates having been opened, you won't understand it at all.
I feel ya.
more like ripples on the pond from the rock that was the CW.
But the ripples are subsiding.
Just gonna take some time.
My sister-in-law reports often on the adventures of her seven-year-old twins, with today's note on a visit to the Dollar Store saying: "She got a hairband/wig with green hair and he got a disturbing police office kit with handcuffs, sunglasses, and a pistol. Tried to arrest the cat. Not sure what the charge was but "loitering" comes to mind."
I suggested "driving while cat" and "being a public feline."
Yes, a lame, tame joke between well-meaning white women in their forties.
I respectfully offer its very lame, tame, mayonnaise-like folly as proof that the country made at least a little progress this week in understanding why the arrest seemed so important.
Please do not joke about "driving while cat". My uncle was killed by Toonces.
Serioulsy LOLing over here. =D. Not that I mean to be insensitive. Sorry for your loss. ;)
I'm relieved The Gates Affair might go to bed finally.
And I'll drink to the Shem Walkers of our cities tonight--we can't wait for these larger personalities to do it.
Did you say drink? I believe that means it's happy hour time.
Who's buying?
I'm thinking a Crown Royal Manhattan straight up may do the trick...
PG and Stacey save me a seat. I'll make ya laugh.
TNC, I think you are doing an excellent job communicating a morass of conflicting emotions that I think has to be shared by black people by events like Gates' arrest.
Cops are supposed to be the friends of responsible people. They uphold the rule of law that allows us to enjoy the good things that come of being productive, law-abiding citizens. But if you are a responsible black man in the U.S., you cannot escape that nagging suspicion that maybe the cop isn't going to be your friend and that could turn out very badly for you.
I vaguely know the feeling from the days when I was a young man with the long hair, the tie dye, multiple earrings and a dime bag in my pocket and I was not expecting the city cops in West Phila to be reliably on my side. But I cut my hair, changed my shirt and presto, now I'm a privileged white male again. I personally cannot know what it's like to be a black man and live my whole life knowing this could be around the corner any time. I don't think white folks really can.
I don't know if there's "profiling" specifically here, but there's definitely bias. The cop made a judgment call and there's plenty of solid research that shows that is exactly where implicit racism comes in. There's no way an older white man with a Harvard ID gets arrested there unless he actually throws a punch at the cop.
And yeah, if I were black and living in his beat, I'm not sure how I'd feel about that cop carrying a gun around my neighborhood and my kids either.
Obama has to walk it back for the political realities -- there are still too many racists in the country (subtly and otherwise). While you are reading about the 1860s, I've been reading about the 1960s -- Perlstein's Nixonland. And I cannot believe how violent the civil rights struggle really was right at the time of my birth. The Civil War didn't end in the 19th century. I'm not completely sure it's over now.
The acceptance of unchecked authority and torture that Dan W and Methodgrind refer to is a grave concern for me. Democracy is fragile and can easily fall into dictatorship. I wish I could share ellaesther's optomism that we are heading in the right direction but I see to many people who love America more than they love freedom. The Roman Republic died the day Cesar crossed the rubicon even though Rome continued on for centuries aftward. I would rather see America fall than see it become a totalitarian state.
This is part of what seperates the liberals from the conservatives. They see the march towards totalitarianism in socialized medicine and we see it in people being arrested for sasing an officer of the law.
It's scarier still to think that this is what Americans want, that this country is as we've made it. And then finally it's even scarier to understand that no president can change that. It's not why he's there. He is there to pass health-reform--not make us post-racist, or post-police power, or post-whatever. Only the people can do that. And they don't seem particularly inclined.
You've hit at the heart of it, again. The President's remarks were only controversial because there is so little congruence between the fundamental, baseline views about the significance (or lack thereof) of race in America. I've found the chatter of the tv commentariat very illustrative of this point. I feel that I've watched dozens of exchanges similar to the Morning Joe clip you posted today. The whole "I know there's a history ... and I could never understand your experience... but what's an officer to do with a negro as uppity as Skip Gates?" It's as though no one knows that one of the main things that they do in the police academy is to teach officers that they 1) will take verbal abuse and 2) how to deal with it while neutralizing and controlling the situation. That's the job. You get no pity points because a middle aged black professor insults your mother.
"I feel pretty stupid for going hard on this, and stupider for defending what Obama won't really defend himself."
From my perspective, some great discussion: helped me to think more clearly about the issue, and -- to echo a point above -- about our flabby appreciation of freedoms so slowly and painfully claimed.
NB: I say 'our' advisedly. The racial implication to police abuse of power is clear and raw. But in a way, focus on the racial implication distracts from the fact that such abuses of power are -- or can very quickly become -- crimes against our state: vis. the Philadelphia police [non]-scandals.
When wearing the uniform provided by our state, your actions reflect on the state. One important duty is to maintain the legitimacy of the state in the eyes of its subjects. Dereliction of duty is a serious charge, but one at the very bottom rung of a ladder of offenses reaching to treason.
TNC, I don't think you have anything to feel stupid about. I agree that some great discussion ensued. And it's totally o.k. to have thoughts mature and evolve in real time on this blog. Now feel better! (I'll refrain from using an emoticon here, though I want to sooo bad).
nothing more needs be said.
Thanks for not just calling this to an end but for bringing it into some kind of resolution. As I said a while ago I have quit, for now, reading A-Sully, but his kind of principaled/philosphical conservatism remains profound on these kinds of matters. There are limits to what our governments can do, human-all-too-human limits. Just as Obama found out that there are limits to community organizing, and limits to academic discussions. The rest of these matters fall on us in our everyday lives as citizens. While I applaud the idea behind Obama's new Corp it may give the impression that this call to service only applies to people in special programs It's good to talk these things through, good to get other opinions, good to reflect. But if we don't then start to act on these matters than it's all just an exercise in catharsis. We vent, fight, bond, feel better, and go on like nothing happened. Please pick something to do that makes things a little better. Could be parenting like ee, or volunteering, I teach ESL to Sudanese refugees, or whatever. A good test for how much you care about something is what you're willing to do about it. Thats not absolute because there are again limits to time, abilities and efficacy, but still it seems to stand. Being right is not even half-way there, doing right is all that we can do.
yes that's right can't spell/type but tutors in english, it's all in the reading comprehension and of course the grade school level of the material doesn't hurt.
I was thinking along these lines earlier today, actually. Even assuming Crowley's report is 100% accurate, why do so many people think it's ok for a cop to arrest someone for being a jerk? Then it hit me: it's because those people want there to be consequences for being a jerk generally. The fact that it's a cop handing out the consequences is irrelevant. If someone's being a jerk in line at the supermarket, there's a school of thought that says he deserves to get knocked on his ass by whoever he's being a jerk to. It's a very blue collar / rural attitude (trust me, I have roots in both). Arresting someone for disorderly conduct is just seen as the equivalent of that.
I understand your point.
But then I have to ask: why don't those same folk seem insistence on NOT wanting consequences for cops who are jerks?
Should read: "why do those same folk seem insistence on NOT wanting consequences for cops who are jerks?"
Because they have a knee-jerk expectation that those in authority (the current president and Bill Clinton excepted) are never jerks, and so if something goes bad in an interaction between a police officer and another person, it is obviously the other person's fault.
Please, please tell me Coates heads over to The Dish and works out Chris's last post on Gates, in which he says that an "unsubstantiated" charge of racism is like saying n-----. My own take on that follows:
It bears careful repetition that Obama did not indicate that Crowley
was a racist.
Beyond that, the notion that the word "racist" is now sometimes on par with the word "n-----" (sent from a work computer) is ridiculous.
Just leaves one breathless, and ought to constitute another teachable
moment. What you're necessarily saying is, don't risk making the
accusation, because in the case that it's untrue, it's an unpardonable sin and an example of bigotry toward a whole group of people -- toward a whole race.
I have unorthodox views on accusations of racism, myself, but you just dropped a whopper, Chris. Don't say "racist" unless everyone will instantly agree because, if you're viewed as incorrect, it's like a deep slur against a whole people that deliberately recalls centuries in chains and hanging from trees. That kind of yearning for equivalence is why a man like Gates, no professional race-baiter,
snaps. So many fail to understand, and fail so confidently, that they remain as monuments to the existence not of racism itself, but of noblesse oblige. We will bless you as equal and worthy of respect -- but you cannot question one of us unless we'd agree with you, in that instance. It's shorthand for annoucing to the world that you'll keep your own shop clean, that if any minorities shout "racism" it's a violent sin and a transgression beyond what they're entitled to say, because they can't venture to say it say it unless they're sure it will be "substantiated."
Be real. Accusations should never stand if they're unsubstatiated.
But the people who make those accusations even if they're wrong, should not be equated with those who use racial slurs. Pure noblesse oblige. Pure partitioning of discourse drawn largely along racial lines.
[quote]When we think about the cops, it's scary, on one level, to conclude that a cop can basically arrest you on a whim. It's scarier still to think that this is what Americans want, that this country is as we've made it. And then finally it's even scarier to understand that no president can change that.[/quote]
This is the core of the matter. As someone who has been associated with various elements of the hippie community I've seen several of the same kind of provocation/counter-provocation/arrest sequences in person. I am sure there are plenty of incidents where race comes into play, but there are also instances where I don't think it has much to do with race.
On the one hand I understand that police have to maintain control in each and every situation day in and day out. And I understand that good people have bad days and sometimes lose control. But the amount of leeway that has been given to state authorities, from torture to harassment by arrest, since 9/11 is utterly astonishing.
If there is a connection that TNC is trying to make to the concealed weapon law, maybe it's this. The reaction that I had to watching what happened in Iran is that things would have gone down very differently in the United States. There would have been much more bloodshed, but it's also unclear that the state troops would have been able to suppress the population. We're increasingly in an era where Americans seem inclined to give away basic human rights to the government. Not concede, just give. And if you're worried about it, well, that's just because maybe you have something to hide.
Forgive me TNC, but I fail to see why you should feel stupid, at all, for spending time on this issue. Although the President may not be able to offer the rigorous critique of law enforcement abuse of authority that many would like, I thought reading your posts, and the corresponding comments, were extremely helpful in fleshing out my own views. At the end of the day, even if I take the officer's versions of events at 100% face value, which I don't, I still think his actions were wrong, and that he abused his power. I also discovered that this incident brought to the surface underlying issues that I have with how one is supposed to conduct themselves for the authorities. Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not advocating that people just act like a-holes to the cops for the fun of it, but if you genuinely feel like they are doing something wrong, or you haven't done anything wrong, and you want to question their authority for taking certain actions, why should you have to go into the "submissive citizen pose." What I realized is that the general populace has become so frightened of police abuse/brutality, that they will willingly fail to exercise their rights as citizens so they will not suffer harassment. That is deeply disappointing. And at this point, I'm not sure how you put the genie back in the bottle. Because so many are willing to sacrifice their rights for a false sense of security, there will constantly be defenders of this status quo -- this whole episode is strong evidence of that.
Another illuminating aspect of this story is that it revealed that labels such as "conservative" and "small government" mean nothing under certain contexts. It was my understanding, up until this point, that the conservative movement represented a minimalist approach to government intrusion into a citizen's life. But apparently, for some "conservatives" all that goes out the window for police officers -- never mind civil liberties or the abuse of state power. Because police officers risk their lives in protecting the public, our job is not to question their use of discretion to restrain our liberty, we must simply shut up and take it or we deserve to have our rights trammeled upon. Good to know. ( I think this situation is strikingly analogous for the way many Republicans refuse to even acknowledge that the CIA has abused its power, and that anyone who questions their motives or tactics are ungrateful ingrates).
One final point, I'm failing to see how Obama didn't live up to certain expectations. In my mind, though I agreed with his initial comments, I thought it was ill-advised to comment on the matter since he had specifically said he did not know all the facts, and he may let his personal biases influence his opinion since his friend was involved in the incident. That being said, although some on this thread disagree with this, to me, he demonstrated what a leader was supposed to do at this moment in time. Rightly or wrongly his comments did add fuel to a steady flame, and even though he didn't think what he said was particularly controversial or out of bounds, it created more tension around a hot topic. As a Senator he may have more leeway to speak freely and candidly about these issues (or maybe not), but as President, especially with the intense criticism that is constantly being lobbed his way, he has to be careful in deciding when to assert himself into the debate. One of the things that I like about him is that he knows how to bring the temperature down when everyone is in a whipping frenzy, but this time, he added more heat. To me, for him to swallow his ego and say that his comments may have distorted the debate, demonstrates that he is willing to acknowledge his limitations and mistakes.
He is learning how to be a good president.
The police are paramilitary in style and organization. "Yes, sir" is at the core of their relations to their superiors. We, the citizens, are a rank below the rookies and they expect "yes, sir" of us.
But the problem is we did not sign up for this, let alone take the oath, and we do not get the pensions.
So we are understandably rankled when they demand the "yes, sir" business from us.
Their cruisers say, "to protect and serve," but the message they send is that we must serve their whims or get arrested / whacked.
How do you propose that police departments be organized? You want a return to the patronage system of policing?
And what do you mean that you did not "sign up for this"? Sign up for what? Please be more specific, so I can tell if you're protesting this injustice or the police in general.
I don't think that there is a problem with the chain of command / paramilitary structure of police forces per se. The problem is they confuse civilians with those below their rank and expect the kind of deference and obedience that a police superior commands of a subordinate.
We, the people, pay the police. They are our servants. Not the other way around. The police confuse this and expect us to obey them as they are sworn to obey their superiors.
We, the people, need only to obey the law. There is no law that says we cannot disrespect the police or call them names anymore than there is a law that says we cannot disrespect our friends and call them names. Putting the force of the law via charges and arrests around a demand for obsequiousness to police authority is against everything this country stands for.
We, the people, did not sign up to part of the chain of command (and do not get their pensions), let alone to salute or take orders from them in the absence of lawful authority for such orders.
Being "loud and tumultuous" in one's home or even upon being lured to one's porch is no crime. Americans are loud. That's who we are. Ask any European. Being loud is not a crime.
OK, I'm glad I asked those questions before making assumptions.
This is an important post, but it also ignores a lot about the way our political system is set up. It is set up deliberately to make it difficult for the majority to get together to accomplish any major change. It is also set up so that much that is important occurs behind the scenes. "The people," for example, mainly wanted people who pollute to have to pay to clean it up, and they got a bill passed that says that. But the people who pollute didn't want to have to pay, so they negotiated with the agency (very few people follow agency rule-making) to make sure that what they had to pay was not much, and spread out over a long time.
I'm not saying that you aren't right that a lot of people in this country want things that are wrong. But mostly people are somewhat conflicted (how they answer depends on how you ask the question) and even when they know what they want, there are a lot of ways to keep it from happening if governmental action is necessarily part of the solution.
It is so nice to have an adult in the White House. It has been too long. Now if we could just get a few more adults in the media, especially on talk radio and over at FOX News. I pray they will take a step back and really listen to what President Obama just said. I desperately pray.
Finally, can anyone remember back to the days of George W. Bush--a long time ago, I know, but those on the right cannot forgive Stephen Colbert for being such a wise ass Latina in correcting the impression that Dubya was captaining the Hindenberg (crash and burn) rather than the Titanic (the icebergs are actually melting these days). One wonders how Colbert managed to keep all that shiney black hair in his head when concieving of the unending disaster movie that was the Bush Administration. "I'm the Decider." Obama is so straight that only he seems to be able to joke about himself with any true humor to it.
It wouldn't have mattered what President Obama had said about the incident or if he had deflected the question, the right was going blather on about it. And if he had said nothing to begin with, the left may have busted his chops as well.
TNC
After just reading this and the rest of your post, and none of the comments, I have to wonder if you had taken Obama's statement the wrong way..or maybe you feel Obama should do more than he should?
The concession over the word 'stupidly' was expected. It's too harsh of a word (no matter how true) for him to get away with. However, no where in that did I get the sense that he is giving Crowley a pass. He said he still thought the situation (leading up to Gates being lead out of the house and being arrested) went too far. At least that was my impression. Maybe I missed something..
I am going to read the comments now. Just let me end with saying that you should not feel stupid about going hard on this. I certainly don't. I guess I didn't have such high expectations that Obama was going to do anything more than comment on the situation. I don't see him calling Crawley so much as an apology as making sure none of this gets in the way of his job. Like you said, his job is not to fix race relations- his job is to fix the economy and health care. Let Gates and Crawley duke it out.
Did I hear you say..." his job is not to fix race relations- his job is to fix the economy and health care.? Whose job is it? It is yours?
“The government represents the people, and thus one must see red-lining, housing segregation, and housing covenants not as the machinations of bureaucrats, but as a manifestation of popular will.”
It may be correct that each of us (white people) holds part of a collective responsibility for these government-sanctioned crimes, though I don’t think ‘will’ is the accurate word to use here for most people - it may be closer to complacency. And further, education is the only way to truly address this, which must be done in such a way as to be acceptable to those who lack education – in other words, it must be non-threatening.
The exclusionary nature of racial politics itself tends to obscure the political choices available to groups, when dealing with problems such as redlining and segregation. The white people who supported the governments engaged in those racist policies did so, for the most part, without as much knowledge about what they were doing as their black counterparts or us today. I feel I am in danger of justifying their ignorance, but consider what you and I do every day: we buy products manufactured under horribly inhumane conditions, and the exclusionary nature of this consumer / production dynamic allows these conditions to continue. I just went to Marshalls and bought a shirt. I am by doing so most likely supporting child labor of the kind outlawed here a century ago – the kind where young girls lost an arm or a leg in the loom machine while working 18-hour days. A ten-year-old with one name, perhaps an underprivileged member of an ethnic or religious minority in her own nation, could reasonably have made my shirt. Now I don’t vote in the heads of the board at Marshalls who profit directly from this arrangement. But I do vote in state and federal governments which uphold trade agreements with Malaysia, or wherever the clothes are made. And, though tangentially aware of the likely conditions under which my lifestyle is made possible, I do not recognize the full reality of those conditions, and act accordingly by not buying the shirt. Why do I do that?
Well, that’s just how our minds work, in some measure. See no evil, here no evil, speak no evil. Unless you put up a video screen in the aisles of the store or in the voting booth, and show people the injustices they perpetrate by acquiescence, there’s no way radical change occurs. Until I and others learn more and work to establish an alternative, nothing. That’s how change has to occur: education, followed by gradual political movement. Deep down, that may be why I read your blog. I’m here to learn.
You know, this post really ignores the hordes of white people who are and have been actively, maliciously, knowingly racist. Sorry, racists! Want to give credit where credit is due. I still believe that seeing government actions as direct manifestations of popular will is to oversimplify.
And I realize that racism is a larger problem precisely because it is not limited to those who *knowingly* recognize their own biases.
"Evidently Obama, Crowley and Gates are talking about getting a beer together. I hope they have a grand old time"
... that Crowley will have a grand old time of it I doubt very much
- he will leave feeling honoured of course but I see no way that he will not also feel patronized
- I do not believe in being a classless society possible and remember policeman or the likes was not on the list of desirable jobs Obama spoke about at the NAACP, neither did he mention anything you need your hands for like carpenter or tailor or plumber - people in these professions tend to notice that they are not among the desirables but how would they speak out about it without seeming to be querulous?
The discussion that needs to be had here is why we continually give police and our armed forces passes when they screw up in areas they ARE COMPENSATED FOR AND TRAINED to be proficient at. These aren't regular guys scooped off the street and thrown in an environment they've never been trained to handle. They spend years in training classes(the cop actually ran one!!!!) designed to teach you just how to act in these scenarios. This goes for local cops and military personnel.
This is NEVER raised in any of these issues regarding police/military whether it's Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell or even something non deadly like this confrontation. We continually give these guys free passes under the "it's a stressful job" excuse. They need to be held to a higher level of accountability in these scenarios, not only because of their compensated positions, but also because as defenders of the peace they must be held to a higher standard. You let off 2 full clips of bullets at someone not even firing back at you and already on the ground or you arrest someone for calling you an a-hole? I'm sorry, you just demonstrated the $$ spent on your training was a waste and quote possibly you're in the wrong line of work.
Wish there was some discussion on this topic vs the racial angles of this incident.
re: Silke July 25, 2009 7:02 AM
Gracious, Silke, Mr. Obama also didn't mention QA engineers, biostatisticians, ornithologists, entymologists,... And, darn it, you really don't want to be faced with a ragtag mob of querulous and agitated primary school librarians ! Run with the concept of illustrative examples in a time constrained venue, eh ?
"When we think about the cops, it's scary, on one level, to conclude that a cop can basically arrest you on a whim. It's scarier still to think that this is what Americans want, that this country is as we've made it."
And, if your rights were violated, you can hire a lawyer. It's not really that scary. Well, I guess it is scary to teenagers.
There a good sides to this event. It re-assures us that America is still a very racist place. That Obama is bold and humble enough and can apologize, unlike Bush who does not apologize. That Obama is smart enough to put out an uproar, even with a beer, put people together and carry them along to get to his goals, and that while Barack Obama in the White House, white cops will be more careful what they do to people of color. Ask yourself, if Gates was wrong, why were the charges against him dropped. That explains it. It wasn't because the police were trying to defuse the situation. It was because Gates had done nothing illegal.
What the Gates case illustrates is not racial prejudice, but abuse of power. The police forces in the U.S. are generally considered close to the worst among Western democracies when it comes to restraint in the use of force and in due respect for their employers, the tax-paying citizens. U.S. police are trained to demand submission at all times, even when clearly unjustified as in the Gates incident, and to arbitrarily apply the use of force, including deadly force, to achieve compliance for such demands of submission. This “philosophy” is no different from that used by the police in many dictatorships.
Even more troubling than the generally undemocratic and abusive mentality and attitudes of the U.S. police is their acceptance by a significant segment of this country’s population. This may be an indication of a heavy democratic deficit in U.S. culture. The U.S. population who accept as natural a dictatorial police force may be the same who support creationism and reject evolution, or who have decided to believe that Saddam Hussein ordered the 9/11 attacks. All these are traits that distinguish us from the rest of Western civilizations.
I think folks should read Skip Gates' essay in the New Yorker published on the 23rd of October, 1995-'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man'. The essay came out in the immediate aftermath of the O.J acquittal and Prof. Gates uses that as a starting point to discuss 'black america's' contentious relationship with the criminal justice system in their country. It is compelling.