Obama's "Stupid" Comment

Obama ate his words yesterday after issuing an apology to Cambridge’s Sergeant Crowley. Previously, Obama had maligned Sergeant Crowley and the Cambridge police for their arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. by stating that they had acted “stupidly”. Unsurprisingly, Obama’s ill informed statements added fuel to the fire. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal stated:

Mr. Obama’s broadside against local cops sends the wrong message to Americans of every race about how to respond to misunderstandings with police. His comments may also do more to aggravate than alleviate tensions between police officers and the minority communities they serve.

Obama’s commentary was out of line. While some, such as Karl DeVries at Reality Checkpoints, attempt to minimize Obama’s statement, it is clear that Obama’s behavior was anything but minimal. His un-presidential behavior raises a couple of pertinent issues.

Firstly, Obama implicitly assumed that racial profiling occurred. Without knowing the facts and admitting a pro-Gates bias (they are friends), Obama slammed the police for an act they did not commit. As argued in the prior post and supported by Officer Crowley’s account of the arrest, there were no racially motivated behaviors on the part of the police. (In fact, Officer Crowley is responsible for teaching fellow police officers about racial profiling.) Gates was the one who brought race into the picture.

This unfair and heinous assumption is quite harmful. While not fair to declare it as a black militant worldview, as some might, it speaks volumes about our President’s perspective. Up until this point, Obama should have been rightfully commended. He handled the race issue with tact and poise. He refused to be sucked into petty racial quarrels or speak the langue of backwards leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Obama’s gaffe shows a first crack in his otherwise perfect veneer. While it is certainly laudable that he apologized (I always respect a man for admitting he is wrong), the slip-up has done damage to the post-racial worldview that Obama could have helped bring to America.

Secondly, this ties in with a much deeper issue; that of a titan struggle between those who accept and reject a post-racial America. Leaders such as Gates, Sharpton, and Jackson willingly or unwittingly need to maintain a worldview where American racism and oppression exist. Sharpton, for one, is adept at creating racial tensions where they didn’t exist before. On the other side stand the likes of Bill Cosby; leaders who recognize a history of racism, but also acknowledge times have changed and there are other factors that contribute to the plight of the black community.

While understanding the history of black oppression is essential and necessary, the past needs to be separated from the present. Gates falls into the common trap of seeing today’s events through a 1950s lens. While racial tensions certainly and unfortunately do still exist in America, they no longer predominate the interactions between whites and blacks. American leaders have a responsibility to ease these tensions and bridge the gap. However, Obama’s “stupid” comment only demonstrates another issue where the supposed uniting, bipartisan President has become a divider. His comment allied himself with the outmoded old guard of black leadership– a political mistake on one hand, but a historic mistake that will handicap his ability to change the racial dialogue in America.

Gates Plays the Race Card at Harvard

The race baiting prompted and promoted by Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a repugnant display of an outdated and backwards way of thinking. As has been continuously reported over the past few days, Professor Gates was arrested after cops responded to a break-in call. The most unfortunate aspect of the situation is that, lead by Gates himself, the matter has devolved into a race issue.

According to all parties, the police officer responded to a neighbor’s call regarding a break-in attempt at Gates’s house. As it turned out the purported burglars were Gates and his driver. Rather than thanking the officer for a speedy response and for potentially saving his property Gates, by his own admission, immediately blew up. He stated that his initial reaction was, “[that a]ll the hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and I realized that I was in danger. And I said to him no, out of instinct. I said, ‘No, I will not.” He immediately refused to cooperate and questioned the officer’s intent, stating “Why, because I'm a black man in America?”

This is the crux of the problem. Gates’s immediate, knee-jerk reaction was to assume that the officer’s behavior was racially motivated. Such a thought process most definitely comes from his intense intellectual focus on black issues. Gates has mired himself in a narrow-minded and outdated way of thinking, where the predominant argument revolves around supposed black oppression.

The logical and unbiased response to the situation would not have been to immediately assume racism. From the accounts given by both sides, it is easy to see how the neighbor could have perceived the situation as a burglary. The police, operating only on the fact that a witness allegedly saw a burglary in action, arrived to investigate the situation. The officer’s job is to investigate and ensure that the citizen’s property (and possibly life) is protected. Any citizen not preprogrammed to scream racism would recognize this on its face. A natural reaction would be to cooperate with the officer, immediately try to clear up the misunderstanding, and thank him for his service and desire to protect one’s property.

However, Gates was unable to do any of this. Instead Gates resorted to berating the officer, refusing to cooperate, and escalating the situation. He continually challenged the officer and pushed the race issue— well before he was arrested. As the police report indicates, the officer was merely doing his job and was surprised and confused by Gates’s aggressive racial charges. Only after Gates continued his verbal assault was he arrested for disorderly conduct. This was a direct result of his aggressive behavior— NOT the color of his skin.

Ultimately, this is a problem that occurs far too often in America. There is no indication in either side’s story that there was an issue of racism except in Gates’s head. It is unnecessary for every instance that involves a black citizen and white cop (although as pictures indicate there were black cops present as well) to devolve into calls of racism. The problem is not one of racist cops, but of a worldview that insists on viewing white America as racist and refuses to embrace a post-racial America. Gates admits his disdain for post-racialism in his interview with The Root. This obsession with fighting non-existent white racism only serves to concoct racial tensions where they did not exist before.

This is the real underlying problem. It needs to be corrected in order for America as a whole and the black community in particular to fully accept the successes of the Civil Rights movement and move on to tackle real issues. Gates should be ashamed of his tantrum and the harm he has done to quest to end racial issues in America.