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Give Obama a Break
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Yale Professor Stephen L. Carter says that the furor over President Obama’s comments conveniently ignores the history of relations between black men and police in this country.
It’s time to give President Obama a break. The press has been all over him for criticizing the Cambridge police after the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., on his own property—the media theory evidently being that the president should have waited until he had more facts before commenting.
Well, maybe.
On the other hand, my reaction was the same as the president’s. I, too, am a friend of Professor Gates, and I experienced the same outrage, and expressed it freely to reporters. Was my first reaction too hasty? Possibly. But friends stand up for friends.
And let us not forget: The history of interactions between black men and the police is sufficiently tense that one must be realistic. None of us can be sure how the officers would have reacted had the man they found in the house been white. We can say with assurance, however, that few black people are likely to believe that the response would have been the same.
Professor Gates will be fine, of course. I worry about the many black men who suffer similar indignities, but whose names few of us ever learn. According to the Department of Justice, black men are nearly six times as likely as white men to spend time in prison at some point in their lives. Some blame the criminal-justice system for these figures. But even if we concede, for the sake of argument, the fairness of the system, and thus decide that black men are also six times as likely as white men to commit serious crimes at some point in their lives, America faces an enormous challenge in turning these numbers around.
There was a time, not long ago, when the nation defined itself by its efforts to overcome the scar of race. Nowadays, trendier issues have moved to the fore, but the scar remains, unhealed. We should not allow arguments over what the president should or should not have said to distract us from the moral imperative of healing.
Stephen L. Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale, where he has taught since 1982. His seven nonfiction books include God’s Name in Vain: The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics and Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy. His first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), was a New York Times bestseller. His fourth novel, Jericho’s Fall, was released this month.
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Stephen L. Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale, where he has taught since 1982. His seven non-fiction books include God’s Name in Vain: The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics and Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy. His first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), spent eleven weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. His fourth novel, Jericho’s Fall, will be published in July.
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Stephen L. Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale, where he has taught since 1982. His seven non-fiction books include God’s Name in Vain: The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics and Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy. His first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), spent eleven weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. His fourth novel, Jericho’s Fall, will be published in July.
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Stephen L. Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale, where he has taught since 1982. His seven non-fiction books include God’s Name in Vain: The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics and Civility: Manners, Morals, and the Etiquette of Democracy. His first novel, The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), spent eleven weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. His fourth novel, Jericho’s Fall, will be published in July.
As a professor of law, why do you ignore the refusal of the Cambridge DA to indict?
Game over.
It was a "stupid" arrest.
The weak-kneed DA in Middlesex dropped the charges joining the spineless politicians who run the one-party state of Kennedy-chusetts. The politicians remains silent about 19 homicides by FBI informants in Boston and an FBI frame-up of four white men. Two died in prison, two were released after 30 years. Obama and the MA politicians show their racial bias and their lack of standards. Moreover it is not about the rue of law, but the rule of men which was what Watergate was all about.
An illegal arrest is still illegal. Breathing While Black is not a crime.
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A DA's decision to not prosecute an arrest does not denote that the arrest was not valid. as a law enforcement officer in NYC, I have had some of my arrests DP'd (Decline to Prosecute) by the DA. Not many, but some. It is up to the DA's discretion as to whether or not to prosecute a case for several reasons. In this case, this appears to be political and not technicalities with the law.
As for the President weighing in (admittedly) before having all the facts diminishes him in my eyes. Mr. Gates is playing the race card and so is the President. It is beneath him.
Living in a city where law enforcement too often act on the persons color before anything else (I'm a white woman so it doesn't happen to me) it doesn't diminish him in my eyes at all. There have been too many young men who see these things happen and have a hard time keeping up hope, they try to work for a better life and have to worry about driving into their own drive way at night. (A boy got shot in Houston for this because the police decided he had stolen his own car). So, police are the ones who need to bring up their worth in many places.
Statistically, black men commit more crime (usually against other blacks) than other races. In 2005, the black homicide rate was over seven times higher than that of whites and Hispanics combined, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. From 1976 to 2005, blacks committed over 52 percent of all murders in America.
Furthermore, a community that has a "don't snitch" policy and allows criminals to be found not guilty because they don't believe the police in court will reap what it sows. I stood next to black officers who cheered when OJ was found not guilty. I've watched black men come out of a Housing Project where they live and urinate on the side of the building.
Are they followed more in urban areas? Hopefully. Do they disproportionately commit more crime thatn other groups? Yes. I actually liked Obama up until he weighed in on the side of his friend and played the race card before knowing all the facts. He is starting to sound like jesse Jackson and that disappoints me tremendously.
If you are a friend, you have no business reporting on or or writing about it. Your judgement is biased as was Obamas. He should not have commented on it. This quote here "that few black people are likely to believe that the response would have been the same." Basically says that most blacks have a stereotypical view of whites. Therefore, you are basically saying that black are racist.
When im walking down the street and see a black person coming, I dont jump to the conclusion that im going to get mugged. But when a black person looks at the Gates arrest and is asked if Gates were white, what would have happened, you are telling me that most blacks think the outcome would have been different. Nice. Way to try to improbe race relations.
Besides, Gates himself jumped all over the race card by yelling the black man in America rant. Clearly, by this example, and your words, it looks like the black community has further to go to mend relationships than the white community.
Obozo's anger at white America shows again, as far as skippy gates: the Harvard prof showed his true primal jungle heritage with his actions & mouth - - yo momma - - all that education and skippy still acts like a babboon in heat -- sign me 'whitey' -- aint that right skippy??!!
I am shocked that more are not offended by the verbal abuse and slander of an extremely well-respected officer of the law, by a Harvard professor who apparently felt it was an affront to be asked to identify himself. That is the first things cops do in every single situation - they ask for ID. Big Deal! Has anyone paid attention to the absurd things that Gates shouted at the man send to ensure the safety of his home? Can any of you truly imagine even considering responding to a cop that way? The only person who brought race into this conversation was Gates. And then Obama escalated it. It's Gates who owes the apology. But, I am not a friend or family member of Gates (like most of the writers on this issue on this site) so perhaps my opinion isn't relevant.
Poor black men are abused by police. How many multi millionaire black Harvard (or Yale) professors are? This was Gates' first arrest at 58 years old for disorderly. Was he a victim of racist police for 58 years? How many elitist upper class blacks exploit the abuses of poor blacks and poor whites? This is one more self serving exploitation. When Palin spoke out about a state trooper threatening her family the mindless journalists attacked her. But when the black multi millionaire Harvard lawyer President, the black Harvard lawyer Governor, and the proud black lesbian single mother Mayor of Cambridge abuse their offices for personal and for political purposes there is silence from the conformist journalists. The President violated the Hatch Act.
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Oh please, Mr. Carter, you tell us that you grew up in a snooty area of Martha's Vinyard and expect us to think you are a poor black man?
I don't think it matters much if you are rich or poor in this country. Skin color is what matters to a great many people...look at the republican senators (from the south) trying their best to destroy the man they hate seeing in the White House. Professor Gates had the misfortune to be elderly, tired, and just plain fed up. If I had been confronted as he was -- in my own home -- I would have come unglued at the injustice of it all. And when ordered to step outside my home? Oh, no way.
Of course, this is all theoretical, since I am elderly, female -- and white. No doubt the officer would apologize for the misunderstanding and LEAVE ME ALONE.
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I've heard lots of people use the argument : " this would never have happened if he were white". Correction, we would never be talking about this if he were white, because it's not news worthy. In fact,this does happen to white people, and don't even try to tell me it does'nt. It's like the "don't taze me bro" situation, everybody laughed it off. They even made bumper stickers. I wonder what would happen if he were black.
Regarding the dismissal, the complaint can be reinstated. If the charge had gone to trial after a jury was impaneled or the judge began hearing evidence and then it was dismissed then Gates would be free from any prosecution. But as it stands it was dismissed before the trial and it can be reinstated. I've done that once when I prosecuted a landlord in a state court. The principle holds true in US courts too.
Obama may be half white, but he has lived his life as a man who looks black. He is no stranger to the mistrust of black Americans for the law, and with good reason. It's a looooong sorry history---slavery, Jim Crow Laws, and yes, the ubiquitous abuse of black people at the hands of the police that lives on.
We found out today that Crowley lied in his police report. Some will say these were small inconsequential "mistakes" not lies. Too few realize the law doesn't have the room to keep making "mistakes" like this and further racial understanding.
(Not to mention that the cops made an illegal arrest that would not stand up in a court of law in Cambridge. And that's a fact that cannot be argued with.)
I can't tell you how many very liberal white people I've spoken with regarding this issue, who are not bigots, but who are desperate to believe that's all behind us now. They told me it happens to anyone who questions a cop's authority, it's not a race issue, we have to get over playing this race card willy nilly.
I fear too much of white America expects the incredible depth and breadth of this country's racial sins to go poof! in a blast of political correctness. There seems to be a woeful forgetfulness about the decades of abuse that have built the mistrust many black people feel towards the law.
I see in white America, a naive impatience with just how long atonement can take.
Thank you.
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