Black America Still Wary of Police After Gates Incident
by Nat Hentoff
After the Obama-Gates-Crowley "beer summit" at the White House ended, Ronald Walter, a black longtime professor of politics at the University of Maryland, said: "Black parents are using this as a case in point of what they have been saying all along" to their children, "Racism hasn't gone away." Children, and especially black males, "are likely to confront it" from police. (Washington Post, July 30).
And on CNN, Colin Powell chimed in with his advice to black children: "When you're faced with an officer who is trying to do his job and get to the bottom of something, this is not the time to get in an argument with him. I was taught that as a child."
Moreover, when President Obama insisted that the situation surrounding the arrest of the Harvard professor was a "teachable moment," former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said: "He's actually right. It is teachable." And Giuliani, customarily brusque, told people, including professor Gates, across the land: "Here's the lesson ... shut up when a cop is asking you questions!" (Fox News, July 31).
Clearly, Mr. Giuliani remains unteachable on this subject. As I reported during his dramatic mayoral career, none of his predecessors since 1958 (when I began covering City Hall) had so alienated black New Yorkers by urging his police to engage in large-scale stop-and-frisks of predominately black residents without charging them with a crime. For a time, he also refused to meet with black leaders.
As for blacks' encounters with police nationally, in 1995, Henry Louis Gates Jr. (before he became a household name) wrote in the Oct. 23 New Yorker magazine: "It's a commonplace that white folks trust the police and black folks don't. Whites recognize this in the abstract, but they're continually surprised at the depth of black wariness. They shouldn't be."
Apparently, Cambridge, Mass., police Sgt. James Crowley missed that issue of The New Yorker.
In the same article, Gates added that "blacks – in particular black men – swap their experiences of police encounters like war stories." Almost as soon I got to know and hang out with black jazz musicians decades ago, I heard a lot of those war stories. I hope, but am skeptical, that a lasting result of Gates' manacling will be the gradual decline in the number of these war stories. In all the continued coverage across the nation of the Gates bust, the one story that gave some substance to my hope appeared in the July 26 issue of the Long Island newspaper, Newsday: "Nassau, Suffolk cite training against racial profiling."
Reporters Zachary Dowdy and Rocco Parascandola told of how the "Nassau and Suffolk police departments said they aggressively work to avoid racial profiling through a medley of training programs and updates for officers."
In Nassau, along with 30 hours of training on cultural diversity in the police academy, a much more enduring practice is "data collection program that requires officers to note the race and ethnicity of motorists they stop on the road."
Detective Lt. Kevin Smith adds that this data is periodically studied to determine if the police department engages in racial profiling.
Furthermore – and I hope other police departments will take notice – Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy told Newsday: "Last year, for the first time, we completed a pilot program where we collected statistics to help identify a baseline for traffic stops and to red-flag officers who differed significantly from peers when making these stops."
What then? "We shared," said Levy, "these data with individuals who were above the norm, sought an explanation, and then possibly referred those individuals for additional training."
This postgraduate education for police officers, if extended nationally and to police on the streets as well, could eventually lead to fewer war stories among black males about the humiliation, and worse, of "driving while black."
I remember that several years ago, in New York City, one of the very highest-ranking officials at One Police Plaza, headquarters of what each mayor calls "New York's finest," was driving, in civilian clothes, a few blocks away from his office. He was stopped in his expensive-looking car apparently because of his color. It was so commonplace a story that it only lasted for two news cycles.
On the street where I live in New York's Greenwich Village, The New School university is on the corner. One morning, I saw two young black men, dressed like preppies. One was carrying a resplendent black briefcase, which I immediately envied, and the other was saying to him: "You probably don't have the receipt. When a cop asks where you got it," pointing to the briefcase, "give him the name of the store. They probably have a record of it."
In the increasingly culturally diverse Big Apple, those two students were quite conscious of "walking while black."
When he was led off his front porch in manacles, professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
reportedly yelled: "This is what happens to black men in America."
What nerve!
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He shouldn't have yelled. He's not 2 years old. He's not a teen. He's a man that's lived a really long time and if he's not mature enough to handle his emotions, no matter the long flight (wawawa) he was on, then he shouldn't be respected-period. He should be treated like the 2 year old he wants to act like.
He wanted respect but couldn't give it in return means he's a hypocrite and a liar and someone that should look past his own skin color and start caring about how he treats humans not job titles.
This "problem" is a self perpetuated problem. The problem only continues to exist because black people continue to allow it to exist in their own minds. They take ever incident and allocate it to racism . They probably don't even know what that means any more. They've victimized themselves so much they are weak be default. Again...lying.
It's disgusting that someone that states he's a professor of anything would be so stupid to act that way and then justify it because he's black and cops hate black people. Please.
If black people (because they want to talk about themselves as a whole not individually) would think more of themselves than what people told them (even their mamas) then they'd be better for it. Thinking you're a victim because you dress like you wish to be treated like trash isn't anything but going on how you want to be perceived. I've been to wal-mart . I've seen white people dress like trailer trash. I don't get it. They want respect from people in the store but they can't even respect themselves enough to look good no matter if you're just leaving your house for 2 minutes. Respect doesn't start with someone else...it starts with YOU.
As for racial profiling ...ok let me give you an example then I'll give my opinion on this part.
Pretend (for those that are not) you're a black male or female and you're walking down the street. You see a group of five white males with sheets over their heads and they're heading right for you. The only thing you can see are their arms (so you know they are white) and their eyes through the holes. They are carrying sticks or long rods, too far to tell. What do you do? If you decide to turn or go any direction but the direction you're headed (which is straight towards them) you've just racial profiled. You assumed they're out to get you based on skin color and what they're dressed like.
I forgot to tell you it's Halloween and they're teenagers who decided to wear sheets to be ghost since they're far too cheap to buy costumes and the sticks...we're just baseball bats they had from playing ball down at the park.
Black people racial profile cops. They do the same thing they hate being done to them.
I think that it's wrong to stop people by race . I also think it's wrong to hate people or teach children to hate...whether it's someone's race or profession. The problem is on both sides, but I mainly think the problem is (by a 70%-30% count) on the black community. I don't feel sorry for them when they continue to bring it upon themselves via their own negative attitudes. I am not blaming them for what any cop has done or will do, but this attitude of being watched in stores or wherever comes from within, not from out.
I'm half Asian. I have been stared at in places but I don't care. I continue on with what I'm doing. They are not going to dictate to me how I'm going to act. But I'm not a victim no matter how many Japanese were stuck in interment camps during WWII and not even if I feel it's the American government 's fault that my grandparents disliked their own heritage so much they didn't teach it to their own kids .
Victims might be created by situation, but they are only sustained by one's own attitude.
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
What I mean is I agree that there is some racial profiling within the law enforcement. BUT what Mr. Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. needs to realize that the cop had NO idea who lived in the house. Therefore he had to detain anyone he found in the house FOR his SAFETY. Not because oh he's black he's the one to arrest . No he should and would have detained anyone he found until he could find out who the true criminal is.