Although I completely disagree with her assesment in the very first paragraph, what she talks about in the rest of her piece is exactly what I have been saying for a very long time. Actually, I also think she’s wrong about the Gates confrontation.
I can tell you from experience that most of the racists I have come across in my life were/are Democrat/Liberal/Progressives. Miss Irene Monroe backs up my observations (read below). On the other hand I have found that hardly any Conservatives hold racist feelings. If they are to be true to their God, they love all… no matter the color.
Gio-
Irene Monroe
Posted: July 22, 2009 10:45 AMNone of us African-American residents of Cambridge are surprised or shocked by the humiliation and harassment Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 58, of Harvard University encountered at the hands of Cambridge police.
My partner, Dr.Thea James, an Emergency Room physician who would drive from home to work was stopped all the time for “driving while black.” And when the Cambridge cops realized she’s a woman, and a lesbian one at that, their unbridled homophobia surfaces. Thea now takes the bus.
My girlfriend’s kids and their friends hang out at the Cambridge’s Galleria Mall like kids do. The Cambridge police in the mall stop my girlfriend’s kids and their friends; one white and two Asians are not, because “shopping while black” is always mistaken as shoplifting.
These constant shakedowns of us have been deliberately on the down low to the public because Cambridge, proudly dubbed as “The People’s Republic of Cambridge,” is ranked as one of the most liberal cities in America. And with two of the country’s premier institutions of higher learning – Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology- that draw students and scholars from around the world, Cambridge’s showcase of diversity and multiculturalism rivals that of the U.N.
Cambridge is also proudly known for a lot of firsts in this country. For example, it was the first city in Massachusetts to issue a legal application for same-sex marriage. It’s the first major city in the country to elect an African American openly gay mayor -Ken Reeves. And Cambridge elected its first African American openly lesbian mayor in the country this year with E. Denise Simmons. Deval Patrick is the first African American governor of Massachusetts.
Cambridge is no doubt a progressive city. However, when you scratch below Cambridge’s surface there is also a liberal racism that is as pernicious, vile, and intolerant as Southern racism. But unlike Southern racism that sees race and tries to keep blacks in their place, liberal racism claims it does not. Ironically, however, Cambridge’s liberal ruling class maintains its racial boundaries not by designated “colored” water fountains, toilets or restaurants, but rather by its zip codes, major street intersections known as squares, like the renown Harvard Square; and residential border areas that are designated numbers, like the notorious Area 4, a predominately black poor and working-class enclave.
It did not matter that the call to police by a white woman, who doesn’t live on the block let alone the area, stating that two African-American men were breaking and entering into one of the expensive homes on a tree-lined street was not only false but was actually Gates’s home. The woman’s call was her civic duty in preserving the neighborhood’s integrity. Because after all, this was happening in the zip code area of 02138, which is Harvard Square.
And it did not matter that once Gates validated his residency to the cop with a legitimate Harvard I.D. that the whole incident should have, at that very moment, ended. But instead the arresting officer called the Harvard University police to once again verify Gates occupancy in his own home.
Also, it did not matter that the suspected robber is a Harvard professor, public intellectual and recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “genius” award. (Some say this incident serves as a cautionary tale to those who want to now define America as being post-racial with the election of Obama).
What was of great concern for both the white woman who called the police and the arresting officer who eventually had to handcuff Gates, was the shock and perhaps the outrage they experienced seeing this unknown black man in this well-known, high income, and professional area of Cambridge breaking and entering into someones home and not in the city’s known and expected troubled spot — Area 4?
Segregation in this city is not only along race lines but also class. And poor working-class whites and white immigrants do not experience the fullness their white skin privilege would abundantly afford them if they too were part of Cambridge’s professional and/or moneyed class.
Area 4 has been labeled a troubled area of Cambridge, an area plagued with all the problems of urban blight and very little resources to ameliorate them. As a densely populated area, its average household income was $34,306 according the 2005 city census. Harvard Square, on the other hand, in the same year its average household income was $79,533.
Area 4 use to house the city’s police station. And white Cambridge police officers assigned to this area unabashedly target and harassingly patrol neighborhood blocks and activities of black male residents — young and old. And their reasons for doing so can easily be attributed to the Cambridge Police Department’s lack of funds in its budget to do cultural sensitivity trainings. But their reason is just as much about this country’s horrific racial legacy between the two groups as it is also about Cambridge’s liberal ruling elite exploiting these tension by their claims to not see race, until of course, an unknown black man appears in their neighborhood
The tension escalated between Gates and Sgt. James Crowley when Gates flipped the script on him. As the person-in-question, Gates exercised his legal right to also question:
“Is this happening because you’re a white cop and I’m a black man? Is this why this interaction is still taking place? ”
The charges against Gates have been dropped. But many white Cantabrigians chiming in on this incident felt that Gates was being uppity, feeling entitled, and exploiting the race card.
And who would know better about this than them.
Aunt Zetuni got treated pretty well in Boston considering that she’s a black illegal alien.
Well one of my problem with this is this slander on the South (and no, I am not from the South). This notion of Southern whites out there “keeping blacks in their place” is just hogwash. I doubt that this person has ever been to the modern South. This is just a cartoonist bit of liberal propaganda this person picked up along the way.
A few think fall out of this:
1) Living black in Cambridge? Gates is living better far better than the vast majority of white American are, particularly when one considers that he contributes nothing of value and the fact his “work” is destructive to public culture and virtue. There is a rumor going around now that he is running some sort of charity scam out of his home. Unsubstantiated, but what if it is true? In any event, Gates has made a rather good life out of being a “victim”. It is the worse sort of hypocrisy.
2) Of course liberals are racist. They promote “diversity” merely to attack America, and in particular the American Middle Class. They never meant that they are their children were the equals of minorities, just those hicks out in middle America are their equals. People are just figuring this out now?
3) If she does not like it, stay out of Cambridge. But then she might actually have get a real job and face reality. There is much moral turpitude here on the part of minorities. They want to hitch a ride on the anti-american cant of the Left and live the good life, but they do not want to take any responsibility for the damage that this hideous set of beliefs brings to the nation.
But the real scandal is that a radical racist Marxist radical like Gates is allowed any where neear young minds or an institution of learning or scholarship.
Vile, the whole lot of them. Cambridge deserves him.
For someone who was the recipient of a MacArthur “genius” award (notoriously left-wing biased award) & a professor of English, Henry Louis Gates Jr. does not even know his Shakespeare. The following is from Mark Steyn’s column of July 24, 2009: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/gates-professor-black-2506786-racism-sgt
I’ve been wary of taking Henry Louis Gates at his word ever since, almost two decades back, the literary scholar compared the lyrics of the rap group 2 Live Crew to those of the Bard of Avon. “It’s like Shakespeare’s ‘My love is like a red, red rose,’” he declared, authoritatively, to a court in Fort Lauderdale.
As it happens, “My luv’s like a red, red rose” was written by Robbie Burns, a couple of centuries after Shakespeare. Oh, well. 16th century English playwright, 18th century Scottish poet: What’s the diff? Evidently being within the same quarter-millennium and right general patch of the North-East Atlantic is close enough for a professor of English and Afro-American Studies appearing as an expert witness in a court case.
Well I have come to the conclusion that while White America was ready for a Black man to be president, Black America was not ready for the responsibility of holding that Honor…. EVERYTHING said by a WHITE MAN or woman to a person of color has now turned into a RACIST comment…. It seems that behind closed doors blacks have held a grudge against the white person for crimes that most were too young to be involved with… While I was thinking of the person and not the skin color the black population has dwelt on this and have taught their children to continue the hate….
The only racism in this Country is from the people of color and not by white Americans…. NO THIS CARD HAS BEEN PLAYED OUT IN THE LAST 7 MONTHS AND I NO LONGER FALL FOR IT…..