The president seems to be incapable of admitting error. Just another of his endearing narcissistic traits. Fortunately, as Tom points out, he has the New York Times to cover for him.
[Update a few minutes later]
Like the commenter over at Patterico’s place, this incident has reinforced my prejudices about race-baiting Harvard law professors.
[Afternoon update]
Obama seems to be one of those “liberals” who is capable of apologizing for anything and everything except his own actions. So since he’s always quick to apologize for me, I’ll do it for him. I’m sorry, Sergeant Crowley, that our president is a racialist, classless ass. I bear no responsibility, not having voted for him, but I’ll apologize anyway, just as he is happy to apologize for things that others have done for which he bears no responsibility, even when the apologees’ crimes are far more egregious.
this incident has reinforced my prejudices about race-baiting Harvard law professors.
And mine against academics who live in enclaves like Berkeley, Cambridge or Hyde Park. (Decades ago I lived in Hyde Park for 4 years, so I have some experience with what I don’t like.)
this incident has reinforced my prejudices about race-baiting Harvard law professors.
So, you’re tired, jet lagged, had a crappy return home and then you get a cop firstly question if you own the house and then, come into your home, uninvited and without a warrant?
Race or not, that is not acceptable police behavior. And the arrest was stupid for many values of stupid.
That’s not to say Gates wasn’t, but seriously, aren’t you a libertarian?
Race or not, that is not acceptable police behavior.
He didn’t want to go into the home. He asked Gates to come out. He refused. Crowley was responding to a call about a potential burglary. Gates was acting more like a burglar than a home owner (and it wasn’t about whether or not he “owned” the home — it was about whether or not he lived there). And then he pulled the race card.
If it had been me, even if I was tired from a trip, I would have said, “Certainly officer, please come in. Here is my ID, and proof of residence. Thank you for your concern.” And that would have been the end of it, regardless of what my skin tone was. It looks very much like Gates was hiding something, or someone.
I have no idea what this has to do with libertarianism. A policeman doesn’t need a warrant if he has probable cause. He did.
Gates was acting more like a burglar than a home owner
In what way? Was it his cane that signaled “burglar”? Or his gray hairs? Or the fact that he was dropped off by a taxi?
And then he pulled the race card.
Seeing as how black men are on the losing end of police misconduct and profiling more often than any other group, Gates’ assumption that his race was an important factor does not seem like any sort of stretch.
If it had been me, even if I was tired from a trip, I would have said, “Certainly officer, please come in.
How impressive. And no doubt you’d respond that way even if you’d been discriminated against by police your entire life because of your race. You are without question a superior human being.
Here is my ID, and proof of residence
Which Gates provided as well. And then he was arrested.
A policeman doesn’t need a warrant if he has probable cause. He did.
Probable cause of what? Once he had Gates’ id, and knew he lived there, he had no cause to arrest Gates, other than his wounded sense of authority.
I have no idea what this has to do with libertarianism.
A libertarian should object to someone being put in handcuffs, dragged from his home, fingerprinted and photographed, and spending four hours in a cell, all for expressing his opinion (valid or not) that the cop is being a racist jerk.
A thought experiment for Rand and others: How often do you complain about someone claiming racial discrimination? And how often do you complain about actual discrimination against blacks? Which of these two things do you think has been a bigger problem in the U.S. in the past? Which do you think is a bigger problem today?
I see that Jim didn’t read the police report, either.
I see that Jim didn’t read the police report, either.
I’ve read the report.
Oh, so you’re a mindless race baiter, too?
Oh, so you’re a mindless race baiter, too?
How so?
Because it’s impossible to read the report and write the things that you did without being one.
Feel free to show me one thing I wrote that is “mindless” in light of the report.
Note that the report offers no support for your description of Gates as “acting more like a burglar than a home owner” (Crowley does not claim to have ever suspected Gates of being a burglar). Or of your description of Crowley as entering the house with probable cause (Crowley does not make this claim).
Oh, dear.
Hey Jim, give one example of his mistreatment by the police before this alleged mistreatment. Life sure has treated him poorly, a “Havud” professor.
‘A libertarian should object to someone being put in handcuffs, dragged from his home…”
He wasn’t arrested in his home, he followed the officer outside yelling and was arrested for disorderly conduct. All he had to do was shut up. There’s your mindless example.
Don’t forget this officer was selected by a black commissioner to teach about racial profiling. So we have a liberal “Black Studies” professor and a veteran police officer who teaches how to not engage in profiling. I’m going with the officer.
Here’s another reason for being asked to step outside.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/07/024124.php
]The officer’s mike was open also so when the tapes are made available, we’ll see.
So refusing to come out of your OWN home is a problem? God help us all in your world.
Oh and I have read the police report too. I understand that the Rodney King report made perfect sense.
So tell me. You’re a career cop. You’ve just arrested a noted person for a charge you know won’t stick. You lost your temper and showed this upity middle class academic dweeb whose boss but now you jave to cover your arse.
What are you going to do?
My father, a cop, taught me at an early age what cops do to cover themselves and why to be careful around them.
You’ve just arrested a noted person for a charge you know won’t stick. You lost your temper and showed this upity middle class academic dweeb whose boss but now you jave to cover your arse.
What a fascinating fantasy. Another person who is unable to read English for comprehension.
Not that it’s anything new in the case of this person.
Hey Jim, give one example of his mistreatment by the police before this alleged mistreatment. Life sure has treated him poorly, a “Havud” professor.
Gates was born in 1950, in West Virginia. He spent the first part of his life as a second class citizen. It would be hard to find a black man of his age who hasn’t been mistreated by police. He walks with a cane because a white doctor diagnosed a high school football injury as the pychosomatic imaginings of an uppity Negro, leaving one leg 2 inches shorter than the other. Your sneering at the history of racial oppression in this country is disgusting.
He wasn’t arrested in his home, he followed the officer outside yelling and was arrested for disorderly conduct.
He was arrested on his porch, and dragged from that porch in handcuffs, for yelling at a cop. His crime was expression, not conduct.
All he had to do was shut up.
Is that the libertarian take on the First Amendment? All the cop had to do was leave.
So your defense of Gates is … a stereotype.
How enlightened.
So your defense of Gates is … a stereotype.
Somewhere along the line the noble goal of opposition to white supremacy became transformed (by those who were never really into that goal) into opposition to drawing distinctions based on race, or of making generalizations of any sort at all where race is involved. By this way of looking at things it isn’t a problem that black men are disproportionately hassled by police; even acknowledging that fact can be dismissed as trafficking in stereotypes. If we pretend there’s no such thing as race, racial oppression can go on its merry way.
Gates went out of his way to pick a fight (note that he was asked to tone it down twice before an arrest was made…this wasn’t just a hot-headed cop) with a cop who was responding to a 911 regarding a possible break-in.
Be clear about this, when you are a cop, and you arrive at a house you have been told is being robbed, you just don’t take the word of the people you find there (who might be being held hostage, for all you know), you get them to come into the light and give you some confirmation and identification. More to the point, you don’t just walk inside (where you might be ambushed), you get those inside to come out and identify themselves. This is simple police procedure 101, and if any of these procedures hadn’t been followed Crowley would be (correctly) condemned for providing an inferior brand of law enforcement (i.e. protection of life and property) to a black man.
By keying his microphone open, Crowley was protecting himself against Gates (those tapes are a powerful counter to any of choice by Gates to complain or sue), and his account of the situation (a police report is a public document, remember) is supported by the other (non-white) officer on the scene.
As for rationalizing Gates’ behavior as a legacy of America’s racism, just where does that stop Jim? If Gates had a gun and shot at Crowley, would we defend it as a preemptive response to a lynching? If we want to end discrimination, we must fight it when we encounter it NO MATTER WHO IS DOING IT (in this case a race-baiting black professor and his black enabler in the White House), not suggest that it is acceptable when an approved victim class (and just who gets to certify who gets a pass on this sort of thing?) engages in this loathsome behavior.
Crowley didn’t just decide to harass Gates out of the blue (i.e. he wasn’t just passing through the neighborhood), he was responding to a 911 call placed by Gates’ neighbor, and Gates fit the description of the alleged perpetrator. Was Crowley supposed to just ignore this?
Fact is Gates came out of the house to openly harass a cop doing his job. The cop showed considerable restraint, warned Gates twice, and then (when confronted with an individual openly making appeals to a crowd…almost a perfect exacmple of what disorderly conduct laws were meant to cope with) arrested him.
when confronted with an individual openly making appeals to a crowd…almost a perfect exacmple of what disorderly conduct laws were meant to cope with
Really? By that standard the “I Have a Dream” speech was disorderly conduct.
He was standing on his porch, yelling at a cop. His yelling did not create any threat to Sgt. Crowley’s person, or to the “morals, health, or safety of a community” (to cite one definition of disorderly conduct); the only threat was to Crowley’s attitude of authority.
If we want to end discrimination, we must fight it when we encounter it NO MATTER WHO IS DOING IT
My interest is not in ending discrimination, it’s in ending white supremacy. It matters a great deal “who is doing it”, and why.
The civil rights movement made a tactical decision to frame their argument in terms of racial discrimination; they could not succeed without white support, and whites were (and are) more likely to support an abstract ideal of racial non-discrimination in which they have equal claim to potential victimhood. But the only reason we needed a civil rights movement, and still do, is to counter the evils of white supremacy. Racial discrimination against a majority group that dominates the halls of economic and political power is a curiosity; white supremacy is the great stain on our country’s history.
I have read that the police officer’s (not the derogatory “cop”) partner, a black man, stated that officer Crowley had acted appropriately. Does that matter?
And does anyone besides Jim have a problem with me using the phrase “black man”, even though I am a mere Celt / Acadian hyrbrid? Would the inappropriate “African American” be better? How about “Colored Person”, since NAACP uses that phrase in its name?
Fact is Gates came out of the house to openly harass a cop doing his job.
According to the police report, Gates came out of the house after Crowley asked Gates to come out because “the acoustics of the kitchen and foyer were making it difficult for me to transmit pertinent information to ECC or other responding units”. That’s the natural thing to do when you’re trying to talk into a mic while someone is yelling at you, of course: ask the yelling person to come closer. It was just a remarkable coincidence that, as soon as Gates stepped onto his front porch, continuing to yell resembled an arrestable offense.
So Jim says he’s not against discrimination, he’s against whites? I’m white (actually nobody is white except perhaps albinos, I’m very light brown.) I’m not rich. I have no power. But being white it’s ok to discriminate against me in Jim’s view. So the content of my character doesn’t count… because I’m white?
You are a disturbed and dangerous man, Jim.
Ken, you are not being fair to Jim…he is neither disturbed nor dangerous…he merely is not very bright.
A police officer facing an angry demagogue making clearly derogatory statements and inciting violence against the police is in fact entirely within reason to arrest this individual on charges of disorderly conduct. The whole notion of ‘fighting words’ is well enshrined in our existing legal framework. As long as you wish to use the Civil Rights movement as an example, I should point out that Rev MLH’s speeches were treated very, very differently than those of Malcolm X’s, though (often to our discredit as a people) both were sometimes arrested for their words. To pretend that there is no difference between MLH and an angry HLGates is to completely ignore what the men were saying and the context in which they were saying it.
Gates was not simply standing on a porch, he had come out of the house to engage in a confrontation with an officer who (in the course of investigating a crime report) repeated asked him to tone down his comments. I suspect if a black cop had taken similar action dealing with some KKK-wannabe in say, Mississippi, you wouldn’t be arguing that this represents any kind of civil rights violation. Or does the First Ammendment only apply to those that you agree with?
If Gates truly believes that he has been wronged (and I suspect that he does…I was a student at Harvard, and the profs there believe that ANYONE who inconveniences them has committed some sort of crime), then he has any number of means to take action against Crowley. I would wager he chooses not to, largely because Crowley (acting with a cool head that I wish I could emulate) took the precaution of recording the affair. I rather doubt that Gates (or Obama, who is no doubt regreting the day he planted this question) has any particular desire to have those tapes see the light of day.
Simply put, this isn’t a matter of white supremacy, it is a matter of a self-defining victim group (lets be serious, how does HLGates, a professor at one of the most prestigous universities in the world, the head of a foundation with world-wide contacts, and an acclaimed public intellectual, qualify as a victim in any way, shape or form?) which chooses to identify any attempt to hold them to any standards of civilized behavior as an affront to their dignity.
Once again…Jim, is this really the best you can do?
So Jim says he’s not against discrimination, he’s against whites?
No, I said that it’s more important to be against white supremacy (or whitism, if you prefer) than to be against racial discrimination in a general sense. The only sort of racial discrimination that has caused serious problems in our history is that practiced on behalf of whites and white supremacy.
But instead of facing that reality, we act as if all sorts of discrimination are equally pernicious. We witness the spectacle of a Latina judge’s comments being scrutinized for possible racism by a white supremacist Senator, or demonize a black nationalist preacher while paying scant attention to a white Protestant supremacist.
it is a matter of a self-defining victim group (lets be serious, how does HLGates, a professor at one of the most prestigous universities in the world, the head of a foundation with world-wide contacts, and an acclaimed public intellectual, qualify as a victim in any way, shape or form?)
By the fact that he has been and continues to be treated more harshly than a white man would be in the same circumstances. How can anyone in their right mind think that a black man who spent the years 1950-2009 in the United States is not a victim of racial oppression? I suggest you read Gates’ memoir — or any decent history of those years from a black perspective — before commenting further on his victimhood.
A police officer facing an angry demagogue making clearly derogatory statements and inciting violence against the police is in fact entirely within reason to arrest this individual on charges of disorderly conduct.
So an angry black man yelling and swearing and being derogatory is automatically inciting violence against the police? Funny that Crowley does not make that claim.
Hey, Jim –
Please go read this and tell us what you think about it.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWU3NWRmYzY5MmZjOTZjN2NiYTMwOGI3ZTBiZDA5ZjM=
Especially this part (1st paragraph): “The president of the United States may be reluctant to condemn Ayatollah Khamenei or Hugo Chávez or that guy in Honduras without examining all the nuances and footnotes, but sometimes there are outrages so heinous that even the famously nuanced must step up to the plate and speak truth to power. And thank God the leader of the free world had the guts to stand up and speak truth to municipal police sergeant James Crowley.”
Didn’t President Obama slam-dunk a reporter in his first or second press conference by saying something like he wants to know all the facts and think about things before responding to questions? This time he answered after ADMITTING he did not know all the facts! Yet another “promise” broken and we’re only 6 months in! Not even his idol, Mayor Daley of Chicago, supports him on this one!
gtex
The only sort of racial discrimination that has caused serious problems in our history is that practiced on behalf of whites and white supremacy
We had slavery in this country. Your solution is to continue the practice with a different set of slaves. Pitiful.
The way to address evil is to quit… not to continue it under new management.
This officer tried to maintain the peace and this professor was having none of it…”Do you know who I am” says better than anything else the professor considers himself to be part of that new management.
I stand by my disturbed and dangerous comment.
What is my sin Jim?
Jim,
Who suggested (certainly not I) that HLGates was ‘yelling and swearing’, or that even if here were that this is automatically inciting violence against the police? Apparently you have been worshiping at the temple of Obama (PBUH) for so long you have adopted his habit of making things up to fit your own rhetorical needs.
Lets be clear, if Gates believes that Crowley’s behavior was beyond the pale, he can file charges, sue him, or at the very least, call for the public release of the tapes. The fact that he has not done so (and Gates is hardly a shrinking violet), suggests that he is quite well aware of how those tapes will make him look. My guess (and since neither you nor I nor anyone else has heard those tapes, it is only a guess) is that Gates has attempted to walk back his comments precisely because he is aware of just how bad he will look should those tapes be released.
As for racism, I oppose it…from ALL quarters. White supremacists are loathesome, but no worse than Rev Wright and his ilk, and if I am to condemn the rantings of the KKK, I will also condemn Sotomayer’s “wise latina” remark as the bigoted nonsense that it is. The ultimate truth of equality is that nobody gets a free pass, and certainly not by dint of previous discrimination against them. One might suggest that the victims of racism should be the MOST strongly opposed to rationalizing its use against others, but since most of the left in this country seems more obsessed with revenge than anything else, I suppose I shouldn’t be suprised that this is not the case.
Unlike you, I have read most (if not all) of Gate’s published works (long story), and find him vaguely silly. Like most in the academic ghetto of AA Studies, he is shielded from serious criticism by guilty liberals who feel that somehow the history of racism in this country entitles him to freedom from the standards that apply to everyone else. A useful example was Sean Wilentz’s evisceration of Gate’s work on Lincoln (I don’t have the link handy, but the New Republic has it in its archives online), but this is hardly the only example.
I repeat Jim, is this the best that you can come up with? I won’t deny that I haven’t been too impressed with you in the past, but at least I might have hoped for an intellectually coherent argument or some small shred of credible analysis. Ah well…
This time he answered after ADMITTING he did not know all the facts!
And later thought better of it. But if you don’t get why Obama would have a visceral reaction to the Gates incident, I suggest learning a bit more about what it’s like to be a black man in the U.S.
We had slavery in this country. Your solution is to continue the practice with a different set of slaves.
So being cognizant of centuries of white supremacy is the same thing as putting white people in slavery? The white capacity for hysterical self-pity is amazing.
The way to address evil is to quit… not to continue it under new management.
The way to address evil starts with diagnosing it accurately. The evil of slavery and Jim Crow was not a failure to eradicate racial discrimination — it was the brutal oppression of blacks in the service of white supremacy. Saying that the problem is racial discrimination is like saying that the problem with the Nazis was their lack of concern for religious freedom.
”Do you know who I am” says better than anything else the professor considers himself to be part of that new management.
No, it says: no matter what I achieve in this world, you still insist on seeing me as a criminal suspect, because of the color of my skin. Gates clearly could not believe what was happening (which I suppose is some sort of progress; in decades past he probably would have expected it). He thought he was past this sort of nonsense.
A friend of Gates’ who lives in the same neighborhood wrote that when he moved into his house he made a joke to his wife about keeping a copy of the mortgage papers by the front door to show to suspicious police officers. It isn’t a joke now.
I stand by my disturbed and dangerous comment.
Dangerous how, and to whom?
Who suggested (certainly not I) that HLGates was ‘yelling and swearing’
Crowley’s report.
or that even if here were that this is automatically inciting violence against the police?
You wrote:
I took that to be a reference to Gates.
The fact that he has not done so (and Gates is hardly a shrinking violet), suggests that he is quite well aware of how those tapes will make him look.
It certainly wasn’t a flattering episode for him, and he must realize the political trouble it would make for Obama. Reminding white America how far they have yet to go where race is concerned is nobody’s idea of a political winner.
White supremacists are loathesome, but no worse than Rev Wright and his ilk,
Perhaps such a case can be made, as a matter of pure morality, but I’ll let God sort that out. I’m more interested in how we mortals should respond to these people. One of them, the white supremacist, is the inheritor of centuries of tradition of violence and oppression in the service of his cause. The race he champions controls the boardrooms, pulpits, and government offices of the land. He’s like a neo-Nazi in Munich, a Khmer Rouge booster in Phnom Penh, or a Hutu Power activist in Kilgali.
The other, Wright, is the victim of decades of legal and illegal oppression. His race is on the short end of every socio-economic statistic, disproportionately fills the country’s jails, and has never had the experience of dominating, much less oppressing, another race in this country. He might as well be a white supremacist in Tibet.
Assuming that their racism is equally strong, which of these two men should cause us greater concern?
The insistence on treating the two the same, in the face of our history of white supremacist oppression (and no Hispanic-supremacist or black-supremacist oppression worth mentioning), is a symptom of white America’s refusal to see itself as anything but the “good guys.” After centuries of taking every possible advantage we preach about equality, and squawk with outraged self pity at the slightest perceived intrusion into our world of privilege. We care far more about false allegations of white racism than we do about any of the real white racism that continues to pervade our society.
If you wanted real equality, you would wait for a few centuries of white slavery to pass before even suggesting that racism against whites deserved the same sort of consideration as white racism against others. But no, your self-serving opposition to any racism is too pure and strong, you are simply morally compelled to speak up for your disadvantaged white brothers.
[That said, if you really do consider white supremacists as loathsome as Wright, have you actually spoken out against Sessions and Hagee and Pat Buchanan as much as you have against Wright? I’d love to hear that you have.]
I have to say that I kinda agree with Obama on this one. I completely distance myself from the racial component of this whole ordeal. I totally think that Skippy Gates was in the wrong to just go into his racialist tirade. I also understand from a rational standpoint that one would want the police to practice due diligence with respect to a suspected burglary in progress, especially if it were in your neighborhood.
However, as someone who has gotten into verbal arguments with a number of police officers I think that Officer Crowley abused his power to arrest people in this situation. If someone is going to try and deprive me of my freedom or my hard earned money in any way, well I’m sorry, but they are going to get an earful from me and then some. A police office should know that a job prerequisite is to have a thick skin.
I just think it is dangerous to have the mentality that one should never talk back to the police. Particularly when an officer is trying to violate your rights or undermine your innocence. Police just should not have the ability to arrest somebody purely on the basis that they are arguing with them.
I should add though that I don’t think Obama should have said anything or expressed any opinion one way or the other about this during his presser. As we see time and again though, Obama just can’t help himself from forming an opinion over something from vague and generalized bits of information. Worse yet, when more information comes to light about a subject, he never changes his opinion or admits error. He just insists that he’s had the right opinion all along and it was everyone else that just misunderstood.
Ah, comment threads. You never cease to amaze me.
Gates goes from angry old man to dangerous demagogue, and the police officer is alternately a saintly human being and a racist monster. Hyperbole’s fun, sure, but when something as minor as this ends up compared to the I Have a Dream speech, your arguments have jumped the shark.
Lets start with your last point first… I don’t find Sessions to be a white supremacist (I don’t agree with everything that he says, but there is a huge gap between that and agreeing with your flawed characterization), but in the other cases, I have condemned Buchanan on this blog as a noisy whack and a bigot. That Wright or any of the other bigots who simply have a darker skin color than their compatriots deserve some sort of a pass is as noxious as it is silly…one does not earn the right to be a bigot by being the victim of bigotry. If anything, one acquires the responsibility not to repeat the error and yes, the evil of those who came before. 95% of my family were gassed and burned by the Nazis, I have no right to visit the same behavior upon innocent Germans, nor should any bigotry I display against Germans be excused on that basis. I repeat, you stop bigotry by stopping…not by finding some sort of cosmic ledger, balancing it (if that were ever possible), and only THEN deciding that everything is hunky dory. Your solution gives us nothing more than the tribal feuds of the third world for eternity. We in the civilized world are better (not perfect, merely better) than that..
You are embarassing yourself, and boring me.
Perhaps such a case can be made, as a matter of pure morality, but I’ll let God sort that out. I’m more interested in how we mortals should respond to these people. One of them, the white supremacist, is the inheritor of centuries of tradition of violence and oppression in the service of his cause. The race he champions controls the boardrooms, pulpits, and government offices of the land. He’s like a neo-Nazi in Munich, a Khmer Rouge booster in Phnom Penh, or a Hutu Power activist in Kilgali.
The other, Wright, is the victim of decades of legal and illegal oppression. His race is on the short end of every socio-economic statistic, disproportionately fills the country’s jails, and has never had the experience of dominating, much less oppressing, another race in this country. He might as well be a white supremacist in Tibet.
In other words, everyone needs a turn at being an oppressor. My view is that past deeds are no excuse for current evil or unequal punishment. It doesn’t matter if white supremacists inherit a stale belief system that used to be entertained by the elites of some bygone era. They should not be treated any different from other racists.
I don’t find Sessions to be a white supremacist
Sessions called a white civil rights lawyer a “disgrace to his race” for litigating voting rights cases. He called the NAACP “un-American” and said that it “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” He referred to a black assistant U.S. attorney as “boy.” He thought the Ku Klux Klan was okay until he found out that some of them smoke pot.
If Sessions isn’t a white supremacist, who is?
It doesn’t matter if white supremacists inherit a stale belief system that used to be entertained by the elites of some bygone era. They should not be treated any different from other racists.
That would at least be a start — but instead we have ten times as much attention paid to the “wise Latina” remark than we have to Sessions’ “disgrace to his race” or “the Klan is OK”, which are much more clearly racist.
White America wants to forget the past and act like it doesn’t matter because everyone is equal now — but our actions show that we can’t even manage that.
Sessions called a white civil rights lawyer a “disgrace to his race” for litigating voting rights cases. He called the NAACP “un-American” and said that it “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” He referred to a black assistant U.S. attorney as “boy.” He thought the Ku Klux Klan was okay until he found out that some of them smoke pot.
If Sessions isn’t a white supremacist, who is?
Someone who espouses that the “White” race is superior to all other races. None of the examples you cite actually demonstrate that Sessions has this particular belief. It is easy to be blatantly racist yet not to be a supremacist of the appropriate sort.
That would at least be a start — but instead we have ten times as much attention paid to the “wise Latina” remark than we have to Sessions’ “disgrace to his race” or “the Klan is OK”, which are much more clearly racist.
Sessions is not being considered for the US Supreme Court.
White America wants to forget the past and act like it doesn’t matter because everyone is equal now — but our actions show that we can’t even manage that.
You have a legitimate example? Or should we just take your hysteria at face value?
Sometimes, like now, I find it hard to believe that you aren’t surreptitiously shilling for the Republican party. Bringing up racism with such blatantly flawed examples is a gift for the Republican party and I suppose for any racists of certain varieties out there. To summarize my points above, you fail to understand what a white supremacist is and you fail to understand that the racist or callous remarks by an elected Senator simply are not as news worthy as similar remarks from a nominee for the Supreme Court of the US. My view is that you should stop yammering about race until you acquire a basic grasp of ethnic politics in the US. Otherwise, you’ll lose to any competent opponent.
For example, a common shtick of white supremacists is playing up their persecution by others. People such as yourself, who are ignorant enough that they can’t tell the difference between a white supremacist and other white-biased racists, help enforce that view. Accusing entire ethnic groups of racism (as you did above with respect to so-called “White America”) just alienates a lot of people who might otherwise be sympathetic to your argument.
To summarize my views on this, I consider it a disease of human thought to rationalize current and future acts of harm based on what harm was done to the instigator in the past. I think it’s utterly stupid and hypocritical to worry only about the actions of some racists and not others. Similarly, I feel it’s foolish to fail to stereotype all racists as one kind of racist. Finally, while I recognize this isn’t a widely held view, my view is that racists are people too. It seems poor form to discriminate against someone simply because they discriminate.
I really don’t think the continued ostracism of some racists and not others is a productive way to end racism or other forms of bias.
The way to address evil starts with diagnosing it accurately.
Diagnose is exactly what’s wrong with your reasoning. It suggests that evil is something that can be fixed. Evil needs to be recognized and resisted; something you’ve repeatedly shown no ability to do.
Dangerous how
You’re dangerous because you perpetuate evil with your twisted reasoning. You give it cover to flourish.
to whom?
You’ll never figure that out. Instead of stamping it out you would expand evil and then claim no one is harmed or that it’s somehow right. You are extremely dangerous and people are harmed when you join the chorus defending evil acts. People are harmed. Nations are harmed. …and you are oblivious or worse, you are not.