What a few beers won't fix.

By Tara Wall on July 29, 2009 into Tara's Two Cents

OPINION/ANALYSIS:

The race toward a post-racial society just lost a few runners. Among them is none other than its torch-bearer, President Barack Obama. What he offered to the masses in his impromptu news conference response to a question about the arrest of his buddy Henry Louis Gates by Cambridge Sgt. James Crowley was more than a notion. It was a hurdle of epic proportions causing Obama to stumble in a way he won't easily recover from (notwithstanding the “beer diplomacy” distraction.) The question – aside from what kind of beer the three men intend to drink tomorrow – is what will be accomplished in the long run? A question both right and left leaning media have yet to hone in on, as they're too preoccupied with things like the picnic table the men will sit on. Embarrassing.

This hastily planned sideshow to sidestep Obama's verbal gaffe, is no laughing matter. It is not even mildly comedic in my view (and I'm quite sure Sgt. Crowley finds no amusement in being characterized as a racist.) As much as we all “talk” about repairing racial wounds, having “real conversations” about race and illuminating the “very real” issue of racial profiling – news anchors, TV hosts and the president still seem to trivialize a moment that can actually turn the page on how we view race relations in America. If only the parties preaching unity were held to account – starting with the leader of the pack. With the facts glaringly on the side of Sgt. Crowley, here are a few recommended questions the White House press corps might consider asking our leader:

• Will President Obama acknowledge that Sgt. Crowley was racially profiled by Professor Gates? (Much the same way Gates assumed he was being racially profiled, he profiled the white officer as a racist.)
• Will President Obama actually apologize (as in “I'm sorry) to Sgt. Crowley for calling him stupid in front of a national television audience?
• Will Obama acknowledge and thank Sgt. Crowley for the extensive work he has committed to in training officers against racial profiling? (Training which no doubt came about as a result of the first ever federal racial profiling ban for all law enforcement submitted and signed by President Bush in 2003.)
• Will Prof. Gates admit he overreacted?
• And what the hell is a “teachable moment “anyway? Who will be taught what? And who's going to be schooling whom?
• Where will they go afterward? Will there be a consensus as to what (actions, words, et al) the government considers racist (as opposed to prejudice or discrimination)?
• Can blacks, not just whites be racist? Is one more justified than the other?
• What laws, beyond what is on the books will address this “issue of racial profiling” that the president is up in arms about?
• Does he still consider the incident a racial profiling incident (as he still seems to allude to)?

Some of these are very real, hard tough questions that of course no one person in one setting can answer but if the conversation on race is to ever gain any traction or go beyond what the president at one time said we spend far too much time simply “talking about,” it should begin with addressing the substantive concerns coming from both sides of the rainbow. Knee jerk reactions and throw away terms that go virtually unchallenged by the press won't cut it.

The whole ordeal not only sucked up all the air from the president's planned topic at hand but shone a spotlight on “race relations” in a way even Obama didn't want exposed – his own racial hypocrisy. If he's sorry for anything, it's that he exposed himself. Nothing else. And Gates, no doubt, is sorry for nothing. Neither is Crowley – and of the three he shouldn't be. It appears he is the only one who acted the most professionally and responsibly.

Beers and banter aside, time will tell whether the meeting proves more than a mere a photo-op or results in substantive discussion and policy initiatives that propel the debate forward.

In no way do I want to diminish the fact that profiling and discrimination and racism exists on many levels in America and when the law is broken action should be taken – but in contrast – none of the aforementioned seems to have kept people like Gates from aspiring to the elite academic position that provides for his lavish Massachusetts lifestyle and affords him friends in high places.

-Tara Wall is a news anchor and political analyst at The Washington Times and editor of TheConservatives.com.

Comment

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Latimer

Affirmative action is racial profiling at its zenith and its most obscene and it has done enormous damage to this nation. The race relations industry feeds upon such blatant hypocrisy.

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berlet98

“My Mother Hated White People” and Other Revelations about Professor Skippy Gates It’s said that the nut doesn’t fall far from the tree, meaning the obvious that lots of walnuts and pecans end up on the ground, and sometimes meaning the less obvious about people. In a 1994 interview about his book, Colored People, Professor Henry Louis Gates freely conceded that “My mother hated white people.” That’s not to suggest, necessarily, that she passed down those feelings to her sons. Then, again, he was devoted to his mom, who also was a big fan of Black supremicist/White-hater, Malcolm X: http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1220. Gates also mentions in that interview that his nickname was Skip, that he and his family just loved the old Amos and Andy television series despite its Black stereotypes, and that his first wife was a white girl, Sharon Lynn Adams, which relationship all but brought about WWIII in the Gates’ household. Now, what conclusions can we reasonably draw from those tidbits about Prof. Gates as they relate to his contretemps 15 years later with Sgt. James Crowley? We can draw absolutely no conclusions, or we can conclude quite a number of things depending on our capacity for tidbit interpretation. If Prof. Gates has learned anything in his nearly 59 years, from his mammy or from reality, it has been to keep his mouth shut when to open it would display his true, bigoted racial attitudes. Some have termed such attitudes, “blackitude,” referring to the ‘tude shown when blacks are feeling most repressed. Prof. Gates vividly demonstrated his blackitude when a protective but white, Cambridge cop tried to do his duty after a report of possible burglary at Gates’ home. His charges of racism and racial profiling were both unfounded and reactionary, very possibly a reaction based on his mom’s detestation of all things white. None of this is new news among dedicated and professionally “repressed” minorities in America. What those professionals will think of the now-confirmed Obama scheme to turn down the volume of the racial uproar he pumped up with his infamous “stupidly” remark by staging a White House Obama-Gates-Crowley beer detente is unknown. Another unknown is their reaction to the most recent revelation that Crowley and Gates are “cousins.” Yep, it’s true, according to Gates. He discovered his personal Kunta Kinte of Roots fame in, of all places, the wee country, the Olde Sod, Ireland: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=8195564&page=1. If true, since he doesn’t look very Irish, it’s apropos that the erudite, nutty professor found his roots in the Land of Saints and Scholars. Now he and Sgt. Crowley, who does look Irish, will have something to gab about over that beer with their fellow part-Irishman, Barack Obama. Gates’ late mom must be rolling over in her grave . . . (Read the rest at http://genelalor.com)

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What a few beers won't fix.

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