Today, in the words of Dave Letterman, is the “Kegger Day at the White House”. This evening the President will engage in political super damage control with beers all around. It is to the issues that are responsible for and preceded this historic meeting that these observations are directed. However a warning to White people, the following discussion is written by an African American from an African American viewpoint. It is my opinion that here in America, among many White Americans RACE SUPERCEDES CLASS, and I shall present my arguments for the validity of this observation below. But first on to Kegger day…..
At this point just about everybody has heard of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates. The news coverage of his arrest has even pushed the gossip surrounding the death of Michael Jackson into the background. Suddenly very ordinary people are being hounded by microphones and blinded by the glare of TV lights, and yet the fascination continues. This endless coverage is being driven by the nagging question, the Black professor and the White police Sergeant? How could a mild mannered internationally celebrated Harvard professor and widely acclaimed PBS Television host and producer wind up in handcuffs in his own home on a sunny afternoon in of all places Cambridge Massachusetts? Further, with some charging racial profiling, why are certain groups across the nation, including major network outlets rushing to cover the police Sergeant in laurels of righteousness? The crux of the question comes down to whose word is truthful concerning events directly leading to the arrest of Professor Gates. So the national fascination lies in another question, who do you believe?
One the one hand we have a Harvard professor, internationally acclaimed for his remarkable accomplishments and a serious educator of the public on many key social issues, but he is black. Then we have the police Sergeant who has performed his duties properly and responsibly and unremarkably like thousands of other police Sergeants in towns and cities all across this nation, but he is White. Other than RACE, the difference between the two men is CLASS. You cannot equate on any scale of logic the remarkable with the unremarkable or average achievers with over achievers. In a nation that thrives on competition normally CLASS triumphs except when it comes to CLASS verses RACE. As demonstrated by recent events in Cambridge and across the nation RACE triumphs CLASS, on all levels including the Presidency. Q.E.D.
Moving on in the discussion, I should like to point out several important factors. First, the President, as a former member of academia himself knows well that even a cursory investigation of the subject of “Racism in America” would require at least a college semester to adequately address all of the necessary discussion properly. Therefore, his use of the phrase “teachable moment” was definitely made as a “tongue in cheek” estimate at best. Second, to even provide a single sentence for each of all known and documented manifestations of American’s unique form of abject racism would require a publication approaching the size of Webster’s Dictionary. This remainder of this discussion will therefore not include chronicles of, or specific mention of publicly documented acts of discrimination, bias, prejudice, bigotry, or outrageous policing acts. This discussion will confine itself to the task of attempting to define the heretofore “indefinable”, Racism in America”. In the American mainstream media racism is always defined as a specific act or event. Unfortunately, each event as reported always includes individual unique characters whose actions occurred in specific places thereby depriving most members of the general public of any frame of reference whatsoever as they receive the news. If a violent act is included as part of a racist attack and the perpetrator is a burly tall tattooed male member of a Skin Head gang, urban gentle passive closet American racists would see no commonality between themselves and such a person, and thereby resolutely conclude with certainty that “I’m not a racist”!
What the average White American citizen does not know is that disrespecting black people is behavior grounded in the hellish years of early American slavery. On March 6, 1857 the United States Supreme Court announced their verdict in the famous case of Dred Scott V F.A. Sanford, traditionally known as the Dred Scott decision. Judge Roger B. Taney in his remarks at the announcement offered these famous words, “A Negro has no rights which a white man need RESPECT”. Judge Taney simply had encapsulated a cogent summary of thousands of reams of Negro control law documents that had been accumulating in the courthouses across the country for over 178 years.
(Many of these laws were in existence long before the first shots were fired by the British Red Coats on Bunker Hill in Boston.) Though the word RESPECT was used, Judge Taney’s statement at the time was welcomed by many white Americans as vindication by the highest court in the nation of their own homespun conviction that no Negro can claim ownership of anything, including his or her person. Even prior to Taney’s famous observation White men used it a pretext for the right to seize anything possessed by a Negro that was percieved to have value. This forced Black folks from colonial times into the post Civil War era to habitually hide anything (even of the most insignificant value) that they might acquire; for fear that they would lose it to some White person.
This legalized denial of RESPECT as a hangover from slavery days, is a lesson that thousands of Black people still encounter and endure on the streets of America every day. However, even though White people no longer can exercise the right to seize possessions of Black Americans, they still find personal enjoyment in denying Black people RESPECT whenever the opportunity arises. White people often ask. “Why do Negro Americans become so angered by the daily snubs and discriminatory affronts that they receive from White people in the process of going about their lives? Because each discriminatory act screams an unspoken invective that carries the following meaning:
(a) You are a worthless as a person, along with your family and all of your ancestors.
(b) You are a member of the most despicable group on earth and you and your kind are repugnant to all forms of life around you.
(c) You and your kind deserve nothing less than total destruction.
Let’s continue by digging down into the real nitty gritty.
Conflict between Black and White individuals generally begin as pair of strangers meets face to face in what I call an Interracial Encounter which involves a curious form of “street etiquette”. Let’s examine exactly how these Interracial Encounters can become transformed from a casual encounter into a Racial Conflict with all of the ongoing potential for dangerous explosive violence.
Initially at the first meeting in any encounter White folks start by unconsciously immediately exhibiting a strained attitude of painful tolerance. This attitude may be generally exhibited through various facial expressions or by body language. Black folks instantly detect this attitude and instantly react. They have seen it many times before and it causes an immediate painful feeling of extreme discomfort. However if the attitude of the White person does not moderate, this pain quickly turns to anger. This in turn causes the Black person to quickly modify his or her attitude. In this instant and under these conditions as soon as the first words are exchanged the racial encounter quickly descends into racial confrontation, with the battle over RESPECT center stage. The unspoken question each individual is directing towards the other is, “Are you going to modify your attitude and show me the RESPECT that I deserve?” However, the battle lines are drawn and from this point onward as more verbal exchanges start to occur, the situation rapidly spirals out of control.
The argument from the perspective of Black folks is that, “You as a White person know nothing about me and suddenly when we come face to face you exhibit this attitude, the mannerisms of which WE KNOW is RACIST!” How do Black people know that the attitudes and mannerisms of a White person are racist? Because Black people have been going through endless unsolicited tutorials where they are treated to offensively painful observations of the attitudes and mannerisms of racist White people who evidently enjoy the prospect of “putting us in our place”. Black children in America are raised on a steady diet of these brief but painful episodes. This is how they know a White racist attitude when they see one. It is also why NO OTHER maltreated group in America can lay claim to experiencing discrimination similar to the acts of discrimination inflicted on Black people in America for centuries.
American racist treatment of Negroes was engendered, created, and forged in the damned cauldron of brutal American slavery; the widespread practices of which, in this country, are older than the nation itself going back to the days of colonial America. This fact in itself is another strong reason as to why Negro Americans are experts on recognizing when White racist attitudes are on display. Conversely, Negro Americans are also expert in recognizing the absence of White racism during any encounter between the races. This is what W.E. Dubois meant when he stated that, “racism is the White man’s problem.”
In summary, interracial encounters between African Americans and White Americans generally degenerate into a racial charged confrontation when initially triggered by exhibition a racist attitude and or racist mannerisms by the White person. Racial disrespect is a active byproduct of ignorance. Sadly in order to purge racist disrespect from the American population, the gross ignorance and insensitivity that feeds it must necessarily also be eliminated, obviously a daunting and challenging task.
Obviously, my observation of racist behavior of White people does not include all White people. Without millions upon millions of kind and caring sensitive and sincere White people in America, America would not have made the amount of progress in race relations that it currently enjoys. Needless to say thousands of White Americans toiled unceasingly in the Anti-Slavery movement which contributed mightily to the eventual freeing of the slaves in America. So all White Americans are not painted with the same broad racist brush, and Black Americans are well aware of this. The problem is that Black Americans don’t know where the next racist encounter will be coming from. From the time they leave their house until the time they return and sometimes before they leave home and in the case of Professor Gates it was the time after they get home.
As a Cantabrigian myself, I have observed how the African American community in Cambridge emerged over the years to rise positions of power in the City government. Over the years Cambridge has had a virtual succession of African American (AA) mayors, two AA Chiefs of Police, an AA Police Commissioner, and many AA elected to the City Council and to the School Board and an AA Superintendent of Schools. Cambridge was the first City in America to make diversity programs in its workplace mandatory. So with a national reputation for being the most liberal city in America, why this sudden and most public racial incident, and why now? As the song lyrics go, “nothing stays the same”. Time goes on, people retire, some leave, some die and as new comers assume positions in City administration sentiments and attitudes are bound to change. Unfortunately, the old reputation supposedly continues the tradition of defining the popular sentiment until an incident like this recent one involving Professor Gates explodes on the national scene.
Regardless of the daily spin belching out of the Cambridge Police Department, the final shape, purpose and resolution of this ugly incident is in the very creative and scholarly hands of Professor Henry Louis Gates. Sergeant James Crowley may be the media darling among the patrolmen’s union and police departments around the nation for the moment. Ah, but the pen in the hand of a learned internationally revered scholar is a highly formidable weapon indeed, and over time I sincerely believe it will prove far mightier than the sword, or the handcuffs or the jail cell in this case.
