Confused by the Health Care Debate?
August 5, 2009
So you know how there’s all this chatter about the health care debate and you have no idea what anyone is talking about?
Curious which proposal will actually cover the 50 milllion uninsured? Which one will give White Republican men heart attacks by raising taxes? Which one might actually improve the health care you already got?
Right. Me too.
Well the Kaiser Family Foundation has created a new tool on its website that allows you to compare what the various health care proposals would actually do.
Word of warning – it’s still written in slight jargon.
Enjoy!
Apology accepted, Officer Barrett. Now, turn in your resignation.
A Boston police officer who sent a mass e-mail — in which he referred to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. as a “banana-eating jungle monkey” — has apologized, saying he’s not a racist.
Officer Justin Barrett told a local television station on Wednesday night that he was sorry for the e-mail.
“I regret that I used such words,” Barrett told CNN affiliate WCVB. “I have so many friends of every type of culture and race you can name. I am not a racist.
I missed the memo. Since when is referring to a black man as a “banana-eating jungle monkey” not good enough to qualify you as a racist? Who do you have to lynch around here?
And for the millionth time, having black friends is not a defense against charges of racism. Many whites in the Pre-Civil War South had black friends, some even had black lovers. *pause* Who they owned as slaves. So, no, the fact that some of your best friends are black does not automatically exclude you from being a racist. I wonder how many of Officer Barrett’s black friends he forwarded that e-mail to.
But as weak as Barrett’s defense is, somehow his lawyer manages to top him. Keep in mind, this is someone who presumably went through years of schooling to learn how to defend people:
Barrett’s comments were taken out of context, said his lawyer, Peter Marano.
*record scratches, music stops*
I’m sorry, what?
Barrett’s comments were taken out of context, said his lawyer, Peter Marano.
[Here are Barrett's comments in full, rambling context. Decide for yourself.]“Officer Barrett did not call professor Gates a jungle monkey or malign him racially,” Marano said. “He said his behavior was like that of one. It was a characterization of the actions of that man.”
I’m not saying you’re a jungle monkey. I’m saying you’re acting like a jungle monkey. I’m not maligning you racially, I’m simply characterizing your actions. So please stop taking my words out of context to make me look like a racist. That’s something a jungle monkey would do.
Wow, typing that out, I just realized that my parody of his defense is his actual defense. Please find a new lawyer, Officer Barrett. This one is too ridiculous for satire.
[The full text of the e-mail is below.]
Yesterday, the Boston Police Department suspended Officer Justin Barrett for a racist e-mail he sent to colleagues regarding the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Gates– an arrest Officer Barrett was not involved in. In the e-mail, which appears to be a response to this editorial in The Boston Globe, Barrett writes that Gates should not assume “he has rights when considered a suspect. He is a suspect and will always be a suspect.” Barrett then says, “If I was the officer [Gates] verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC deserving of his belligerent non-compliance.”
Amazingly, Barrett qualifies his e-mail with this: “I am not a racist, but I am prejudice towards people who are stupid and pretend to stand up and preach for something they claim is freedom…” I’d venture to guess there are more than a few “not racists” serving in police departments across America.
Though it’s true that Barrett’s views do not represent the Boston Police Department or law enforcement in general, it has to be acknowledged that there are indeed people like him walking our streets, carrying weapons, determining and arresting suspects. There are indeed people like Officer Justin Barrett who are, as we speak, writing the very police reports and testimonies that will be used to put people in jail or to death. The very police reports that will overwhelmingly be given the benefit of the doubt in a court of law.
Police officers are not superheroes. They are human beings who, in the line of duty, are occasionally heroic. But they can also in the line of duty be occasionally wrong, or occasionally prejudiced, or occasionally corrupt, or occasionally all those things or none of them on any given day. The only thing separating Justin Barrett and many officers around the nation is that he decided, foolishly, to type his views and send them out into cyberspace. Others are no doubt smart enough to keep their views to themselves.
I don’t know if Sergeant James Crowley, the officer who arrested Professor Gates, holds any of these types of views, or a milder version of them, privately. No one knows. But the possibility does exist, which is why we shouldn’t take his word, or the word of any police officer, as unadulterated truth for no reason other than a badge. Especially in light of the strange discrepancies between his police report, witness Lucia Whalen’s account, and the inarguable facts recorded on the 911 call.
Which brings us back to Officer Barrett, who believed that Professor Gates, in his own home, had no rights “when considered a suspect.” Had Officer Barrett been the responding officer, he would not only have arrested Gates but “would have sprayed him in the face with OC deserving of his belligerent non-compliance.” I hope that most police officers see themselves as public servants, but it’s clear that far too many see themselves as our masters.
Earlier this week, at a popular right-leaning blog called The Corner, a police officer in the Los Angeles Police Department who blogs there anonymously under the pseudonym Jack Dunphy had this advice for every law-abiding citizen in dealing with the police:
You may be as pure as the driven snow itself, but you have no idea what horrible crime that police officer might suspect you of committing. You may be tooling along on a Sunday drive in your 1932 Hupmobile when, quite unknown to you, someone else in a 1932 Hupmobile knocks off the nearby Piggly Wiggly. A passing police officer sees you and, asking himself how many 1932 Hupmobiles can there be around here, pulls you over. At that moment I can assure you the officer is not all that concerned with trying not to offend you. He is instead concerned with protecting his mortal hide from having holes placed in it where God did not intend. And you, if in asserting your constitutional right to be free from unlawful search and seizure fail to do as the officer asks, run the risk of having such holes placed in your own.
That last sentence bears repeating. If you assert your constitutional rights to a police officer and fail to do as instructed, you run the risk of being shot. If there’s still anyone who thinks that Professor Gates overreacted, if there’s still anyone who can’t understand the dysfunctional relationship between black men and the police, consider this fact: Yesterday, Officer Justin Barrett had a badge and a gun. Today, “Jack Dunphy” still does.
Here, courtesy of My Fox Boston, is the full verbatim text of Barrett’s e-mail– spelling errors, lack of paragraph breaks and all. Read it and think about the fact that if it was ever your word versus Officer Barrett’s in a court of law, this is who would get the benefit of the doubt:
Article writer, That was, by far, the worst article I’ve ever read. I am a former English teacher, writer, current police officer, father, husband and military veteran. You need to be corrected and I certainly hope others have attempted, for your written messages and material is so 4th grade level, I am embarrassed I paid the 1.50 for the paper [rest assured, it is my aim to tell as many readers The Boston Globe and your biased reporting is both sub standard and strictly one sided]. For you are not professional and basically, your writing is ridiculous. A reader may assume, per your article, that criminals are never well-dressed with a tucked in polo [2nd paragraph]. Your defense [4th paragraph] of Gates while he is on the phone while being confronted [INDEED] with a police officer is assuming he has rights when considered a suspect. He is a suspect and will always be a suspect. His first priority of effort should be to get off the phone and comply with police, for if I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC deserving of his belligerent non-compliance. Further [5th paragraph], a reader may assume that crimes only happen in back alleys at 0300?! You’re kidding me, right? Are you still in the 5th grade, Catholic School? That paragraph was as pathetic as jungle monkey gibberish – I might as well ax you the question, “Is this your first test at reporting?” You do not understand roles, tactics and dangers police officers face, as apparently you think no one wearing a polo might possess a firearm or knife on his/her person. Might you fathom a woman could be a criminal? Or are criminals all hairy, dirty, stinky, mean looking ugly men? You are a hot little bird with minimal experiences in a harsh field. You are a fool. An infidel. You have no business writing for a US newspaper nevermind detailing and analyzing half truths. You should serve me coffee and donuts on Sunday morning. My last point counters your final 2 paragraphs, in which you state Gates is “this immensely famous expert on race” – you really have to be kidding me? Famous for what? Expert why and says who? What has he done for me and my family? What has he done for the law enforcement community or military veterans or to secure freedoms and our borders in this country? What has he done to help limit and reduce my income tax? He has proven to work to get himself attention and become a wealthy lecturer. He lectures students on the subject of racial ethics and profiling. Jee whiz. I must attend that lecture lest I lose my identity and right to free speech and the right to celebrate God and beliefs as I see fit. I am not a racist, but I am prejudice towards people who are stupid and pretend to stand up and preach for something they claim is freedom when it is merely attention because you do not receive enough of it in your little fear-dwelling circle of on-the-bandwagon followers. You mention Gates’ charges were dropped but that it was too late to stop the damage? Damage? Still kidding? You need to serve a day with the infantry and get swarmed by black gnats while manning your sector. Or you just need to get slapped, look in the mirror and admit, “Wow, I am a failure. I am a follower. Who am I kidding?” Again, I like a warm cruller and hot Panamanian, black. No sugar. Your final statement reads, “Gates, whose great success has allowed him to transcend the racial divide-“ to which I ask, when did he transcend? He indeed has transcended back to a bumbling jungle monkey, thus he forever tremains amid this nation’s great social/racial divide that makes it a free and great nation mixed with crazy and awkward differences. Go ahead, ax me what I think? Gates is a goddamned fool and you the article writer simply a poor follower and maybe worse, a poor writer. Your article title should read CONDUCT UNBECOMING A JUNGLE MONKEY-BACK TO ONE’S ROOTS. JB
By far, one of the most entertaining aspects of Barack Obama becoming the first black president is the way certain white folks are losing their minds:
This morning on Fox and Friends, Fox host Glenn Beck accused President Obama of being “a racist.”
The group was discussing the recent Gates controversy, and Beck exclaimed that Obama has “over and over again” exposed himself as “a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture. I don’t know what it is…”
When Fox’s Brian Kilmeadeon pointed out that many people in Obama’s administration are white, so “you can’t say he doesn’t like white people,” Beck pressed on. “I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people, I’m saying he has a problem,” Beck said. “This guy is, I believe, a racist.”
What’s hilarious about this argument is that, black president or not, white people still overwhelmingly hold the balance of power in America. To illustrate this point, here’s a picture of the cast of this summer’s hit show The Bachelorette.
The fact that there are no black, Latino, Asian or Native American men appearing in your picture, and that ABC’s most popular reality franchise has a strict no miscegenation policy straight out of the 1940s isn’t what’s important. What’s important is that this could be a picture of pretty much anything in America– the 30 richest CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, 30 members of Congress selected at random, 30 owners of NFL teams. So tell us, Barack Obama, why aren’t you giving white men the same benefits and privileges and preferential treatment that they’ve received in this country for over 230 years?
For the sake of argument, let’s say we replaced one of the men in the picture above with a black man in order to add some diversity. Glenn Beck’s worldview ignores the fact that 29 of the 30 cast members are still white men, but is instead outraged at the one white man who lost his place on the show to the equally qualified black guy. Suddenly, a show that is 29/30ths white is racist against white people. Apply the same philosophy to everything else in America– like, say, the Supreme Court– and suddenly the most pressing issue our country faces is racism. Against white people.
To be fair, most white folks are chill about the New Colored World Order. In fact, they helped usher it in. But it’s the few who are losing their minds at the American presidency becoming 1/44th black, the few who think the definition of racism is “the absence of special treatment,” the few like Glenn Beck who drive an Escalade to their eight-figure jobs where they complain that white men just can’t catch a break in this country that are making television worth watching these days.
Obama and Gates: Black men in big houses
July 27, 2009
Over the weekend, Stanley Fish, a former colleague of Professor Gates blogging for the New York Times, wrote the best explanation I’ve seen for the recent actions of Gates and Obama– two black men who live in big houses:
As the story unfolded in the press and on the Internet, I flashed back 20 years or so to the time when Gates arrived in Durham, N.C., to take up the position I had offered him in my capacity as chairman of the English department of Duke University. One of the first things Gates did was buy the grandest house in town (owned previously by a movie director) and renovate it. During the renovation workers would often take Gates for a servant and ask to be pointed to the house’s owner. The drivers of delivery trucks made the same mistake.
The message was unmistakable: What was a black man doing living in a place like this?
My initial impression of the incident was that Gates had overreacted to the presence of Sgt. Crowley. But seen from this perspective, his reaction is understandable. He’s sitting in his house, minding his business, just home from a long trip, and suddenly there’s a police officer at the door telling him that some white lady on the street didn’t think he belonged there. If Gates overreacted, it wasn’t by much.
Fish then took a shot at why the story may have struck a nerve with Obama, ‘causing him to go– in most people’s estimation– wildly off script during his press conference on health care:
TV commentators, laboring to explain the unusual candor and vigor of Obama’s initial comments on the Gates incident, speculated that he had probably been the victim of racial profiling himself. Speculation was unnecessary, for they didn’t have to look any further than the story they were reporting in another segment, the story of the “birthers” — the “wing-nuts,” in Chris Matthews’s phrase — who insist that Obama was born in Kenya and cite as “proof” his failure to come up with an authenticated birth certificate.
…
It isn’t the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate that’s the problem for the birthers. The problem is again the legitimacy of a black man living in a big house, especially when it’s the White House. Just as some in Durham and Cambridge couldn’t believe that Gates belonged in the neighborhood, so does a vocal minority find it hard to believe that an African-American could possibly be the real president of the United States.
I think that analysis of the birthers is 100% correct. They don’t really care about the birth certificate. They’re simply frustrated racists who have spent the last two years trying desperately to convince the rest of the country that Obama is not one of “us.” If you did a survey of the birthers, I guarantee the vast majority of them are the same people who were arguing two years ago that Obama was a Muslim. And then when that didn’t work, a black supremacist. Then, last fall, a terrorist. Now he’s a Kenyan.
I don’t think it’s the birthers who set Obama off Wednesday night though. I doubt he gives them much thought, if any. But he has given a lot of thought to what it means to be a black man occupying a space people don’t think you belong in. For Obama and Gates and black men across America, the question is the same: “What is a black man doing living in a place like this? Show us proof you really belong here.” It doesn’t have to be the White House, just a big house.
At the White House press briefing this morning, Obama made a surprise appearance to tamp down the controversy regarding the arrest of Professor Gates and to announce that he had invited both Gates and Crowley to the White House for a beer. So apparently the lesson is: arrest a hobbled elderly man in his own home on trumped up charges of disorderly conduct and get invited to the White House for a beer with the president. Awesome.
A few days ago, I wrote that if you have a serious conversation about race and you walk away feeling good about it, something got sugarcoated. Beers at the White House is presumably Obama’s way of getting everyone– the police, the media, the African-American community, the talk radio circuit– to walk away feeling good about this situation.
From a political standpoint, it’s a brilliant move. Obama needs us all to shift our attention away from the firestorm he went out of his way to throw gasoline on and back to health care reform. What better way to do that than a photo-op at the White House showing a power-abusing white cop and an angry black man drinking out of the same pitcher of beer with our biracial, post-racial president?
I don’t know, maybe I’m being too cynical. Maybe Obama, Crowley, and Gates will sit down not for a photo-op but for a serious discussion about what occurred and what next steps we can take to curb police abuse of power, whether race is a factor or not. But my sense is that the deference and benefit of the doubt that Obama is giving to Sgt. Crowley shows that he either doesn’t get it or is choosing not to get it for political reasons.
I don’t know whether Sgt. Crowley is “racist” or not. Honestly, I don’t care. I do care that he believes it’s okay to arrest anyone at any time for any reason. I do care that the police report– the one Crowley himself wrote– reads as though Crowley baited Gates into stepping outside his home so that he could be arrested for causing a public disturbance. I do care that the Cambridge Police Department and the local police union are vigorously defending Crowley’s right to detain, fingerprint, mug shot, and humiliate someone for the charge of hurting a police officer’s feelings. I do care that so many people believe that because the job of a police officer is hard and dangerous and heroic (and it is all those things), that we should look the other way– or worse, invite them to the White House for beers– when they occasionally abuse their power.
I didn’t see Obama’s press conference today, but I did read the transcript. Without getting too deep in the weeds, let me take issue with one thing Obama said:
I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station. I also continue to believe, based on what I heard, that Professor Gates probably overreacted as well. My sense is you’ve got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve the incident in the way that it should have been resolved and the way they would have liked it to be resolved.
The problem with this statement is that it puts the two people involved on equal footing. They are not. One of the people in that situation has a badge and a gun and the power to detain and kill you with minimal or no legal consequence. The other has the power to raise his voice and hurt your feelings. I think it’s safe to say the guy with the gun has significantly more power and should be held to a significantly higher standard of not overreacting. This isn’t about two good people who weren’t able to resolve the incident. This is about a police officer who is trained and paid to resolve incidents not resolving the incident (i.e. apologizing and walking away the minute it was clear that no burglary was in progress and Gates was the homeowner).
The fact that Obama thinks this situation is about two people with a misunderstanding rather than one person with vastly more power than the other using that power to shut the other guy up and teach him a lesson about sassing the police gives me little hope for what will be accomplished at that White House beer.
Collective v. Individual; Where Does Racism Lie
July 23, 2009
I work for a progressive organization in Washington, D.C., with a wonderful group of human beings. We work side by side on any issue you can think of and, mostly, we get along while we do it.
Two days ago, four colleagues and I were talking about the degree to which race played in the Skip Gates arrest controversy. I and a fellow Black colleague were pretty confident, given what we know from news reports about how the incident went down, that race played a role.
My other colleagues, you can imagine, were skeptical. They argued, rightfully, that someone made a call and the cop had an obligation to follow through and secure the home. They asked “what are the standard procedures” in situations like this? Also, not surprisingly, they wanted to make it about the cop’s ego, an idea that is picking up traction online, as if it couldn’t then be about race as well.
Later that night, two other Black friends told me similar stories that they had with White colleagues. Everything they told me was the same as what went down in the conversation I had with my colleagues, almost down to the language.
White folks are quite comfortable with this notion that there is a pattern of racist behavior in America. They are reluctant, however, to say that any individual instance is about race. So what happened to Skip Gates wasn’t racist. Neither was what happened to Shem Walker. Or Sean Bell. Or Oscar Grant. Or Officer Omar Edwards.
Every individual instance must be rationalized, but then at the end of the year when the stats are compiled we rant and rave against a pattern of behavior, against institutional racism.
Institutional racism is nothing more than a pattern of individual behavior that has become institutionalized. Redlining is just a lot of White folks deciding where non-whites can live. Poll taxes were nothing but a lot of White folks making it really hard for Black folks to vote.
They say the personal is political. Well the individual is the collective.
The goal here isn’t to call the cop a “dirty racist” and write him off. What I said to my colleagues was that acknowledging that what the cop did to Skip Gates was racist, doesn’t make him a bad person. This isn’t “i hate niggers” racism, but it is still racism.
The goal is to let him (and other non-Black cops) know that this kind of behavior is a problem. We need to have processes for training police for how to deal with different types of people. And we need processes to handle situations after they happen. We simply do not have this anywhere to the degree we should.
Behavior like this can be involuntary; a lot of White folks have tremendous guilt that they lock their car doors when they drive through a “bad neighborhood” and clutch their purses when they find themselves alone in an elevator with a Black man. But rather than live in the guilt, we gotta acknowledge it and then do something about it.
Until we do, we are going to keep seeing these individual instances and keep being surprised that the year-end statistics haven’t changed.
Why Obama can’t be the national spokesperson on race
July 23, 2009
Earlier this week, tigger500 wrote a post titled “What’s wrong with Obama’s speeches on race.“ Read it. And allow me to extend that discussion.
The problem with Obama’s speeches on race is that his job as a politician– more specifically, a politician with tenuous support and job security– necessitates that he makes people feel good. He needs to make people feel good or else he gets nothing done and he’s not the president. That position is fundamentally incompatible with having any kind of honest discussion on race, because an honest discussion isn’t going to make anyone feel good. If you don’t walk away from a serious discussion on race with your head in your hands, something got sugarcoated.
Obama lectures black audiences on personal responsibility despite the fact that he’s smart enough to know that personal responsibility and accountability aren’t even in the top ten problems facing the black community. He does it because he knows black audiences will feel good about themselves and motivated to do better, and white observers will feel good that someone is finally giving those irresponsible Negroes a good talking to. Everyone feels good, Obama wins, and black fathers continue to get incarcerated, undereducated, and unemployed at double and triple the rates of white fathers.
He doesn’t lecture white audiences on personal responsibility and accountability, despite knowing that they need the pep talk as much as we do, because the politics of doing that aren’t nearly as good. Likewise, he lectures black audiences in metropolitan Atlanta on homophobia because he knows they’re 90% behind him regardless, and he knows white folks will feel good that it’s the Negroes’ fault, not theirs. Lecturing white audiences in Utah or Alabama on the subject would have far greater impact, but again, the politics of doing that suck.
To Obama’s credit though, he’s a brilliant politician, and the game ain’t easy. Especially for– and you really cannot say this enough– a black man named Barack Hussein Obama. The line he has walked thus far on race has been flawed, but flawed in the way the Apollo 11 mission was flawed. Yeah, some things went wrong, but they put a man on the moon. On the moon, son.
Fact is, the best thing Obama can do regarding race in America is to work towards fixing the institutional inequities. Black fathers don’t abandon their families because they don’t feel like being dads, they do it because they get thrown in jail more often, lose their jobs more often, and don’t have generations of wealth built up to fall back on as a cushion. The playing field is badly tilted. It’s at a 45-degree angle or worse in some cases. You can lecture the players about working harder to get up that hill, or you can pressure the league to flatten the field. Both approaches are worthwhile, but which is more likely to turn your squad around?
What's Wrong with Obama's Speeches on Race
July 20, 2009
Well, first. There are so few.
No, seriously – let me start by saying that the fact that we have a president who talks about race seriously at all is a huge step in the right direction.
That said, I am frequently distressed by what the president actually says when he does speak about race. Because I think he is (perhaps unintentionally) intellectually dishonest about how race truly operates, what life is actually like as a Black person, and what it will take to really create equality of opportunity and an equitable division of resources (which are two very different things that require two separate, but specific, approaches).
Unlike most people, I thought the Philadelphia speech was terrible, a historical, and dangerous. I thought in his attempt to appeal to both White and Black, he made a crucial mistake that many people make when discussing race — equating Black and White feelings about, and experiences with, race symmetrically. Meaning White people’s resentment at Black progress was the same as Black frustration with being oppressed.
Simply – though both are legitimate, they are not equal.
To suggest, as he did, that they are, I think is dangerous. I think it contributes to a feeling of fatigue in America. Fatigue with remedies for past wrongs. Fatigue with talking about Black people when we can talk about White people. Fatigue fatigue fatigue.
This is perhaps unavoidable. He is a politician and there are many more White people than there are Black people. He must say what will allow him to stay in power and do what he wants to do to help everyone. I get that.
But because race operates the way it does, what any prominent Black person says carries enormous weight. In this case, what he’s saying is incredibly detrimental to a concerted, real fight to end racism (it’s great, if you’re goal is bettering race relations…but yea, that’s a different goal).
We’ve got to find language that talks honestly, directly, and passionately to the specific and unique experience of being Black in America without it being assumed that, by doing so, we ignore everyone else. Read the rest of this entry »
