Someone said….and it’s all a blur now…that they couldn’t wait to vote for Senator McCain…I must be missing a few things, like an election a few months back.  Also, I think the point that someone was trying to make by inviting a black conservative to Detroit was to have that black, conservative American  surrounded by very unconservative blacks.

The arguments are really so tiresome. Each of our lives are formed by our experiences. It’s not unreasonable to think that many blacks feel uncomfortable when in a sea of white faces or even in a sea of gun toteing polcemen. I know a few white guys who are also way uncomfortable when surrounded by gun toteing policemen. Merely because your personal experiences in life don’t include racism doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. What the young college students should be doing is expanding their social knowledge by meeting more people unlike themselves. Hence the reason nfor diversity on college campuses. But alas, like middle school, like groups and races seem to congregate and associate with one another out of a sense of security. And that is really sad!

 Interesting perspective….

A Colleague’s Concerns

Published On Thursday, July 30, 2009 9:58 PM

By RUTH R. WISSE

Dear Skip,

My first thought on hearing of your arrest was for your welfare, so I was relieved to learn that the case against you had been dropped and you were off to join your family on Martha’s Vineyard. From what I can piece together, you must have been exhausted after a long flight, exasperated to have your front door jammed, and then dumbfounded to find yourself suspected of breaking and entering your own home. To that point, you have my sympathy.

But thereafter your case becomes disturbing, and while the president’s unwise comments turned a local episode into a national referendum, it’s the local issue that troubles me. Like you, I live in Cambridge, commonly known as the "People’s Republic of Cambridge" for its left-leaning political correctness. Our congressional district has not sent a Republican to Washington since 1955. Not surprisingly, the officers who came to your door-a rainbow of black, Hispanic, and white-were led by a man hand-picked to provide training on the avoidance of bias in policing. To accuse the Cambridge police of racial profiling, as you did, is about as credible as charging Barack Obama with favoring Republicans.

What puzzles me most in the report of your actions-or reactions-on July 16 is why you would have chosen, as I’ve heard you put it elsewhere, to "talk Black" to Officer Crowley instead of "talking White" as you so eloquently and regularly do? These are distinctions I’ve heard you expound-how educated African Americans switch their register of speech depending on what part of themselves they want to get across. Many of us do something similar inside and outside our particular communities, but you make it sound like a sport that is also for African Americans a tool of survival. So why didn’t you address the policemen as fellow Cantabrigians? What was that "yo’ mama" talk instead of saying simply, in the same register your interlocutor was using, "Look, officer, I’m sorry for your trouble. Thanks for checking on my house when you thought I was being burgled, but this is my home, and if you give me a minute, I’ll find the piece of mail or license that proves it to you." It seems it wasn’t the policeman doing the profiling, it was you. You played him for a racist cop and treated him disrespectfully. Had you truly feared bias, you would surely have behaved in a more controlled, rather than a less controlled, way.

Do you really think anyone in this country has reached adulthood without having undergone the humiliation of self-justification to police? As it happens, a few days prior to your arrest, I was pulled over on the highway near Saranac Lake, New York. My husband and I had driven into town for dinner and were on our way back to our camp in the Adirondacks. When I saw that I was being stopped, I said, "I don’t get it. I’m going under 55 mph." Nonetheless, when the officer approached the car, I quickly rolled down the window, reached for my driver’s license as my husband got the registration out of the glove compartment, and said to the officer as gently as I could, "Excuse me officer, have I done anything wrong?" (I had not noticed that one of our headlights was out: We were told to repair it at the next gas station.) It would not have occurred to this gray-haired Caucasian female to count on a policeman’s sympathy; the last time I tried joking with a policeman, some 40 years ago, my quip cost me an extra $15 on my fine.

Rather than taking offense at being racially profiled, weren’t you instead insulted that someone as prominent as you was being subjected to a regular police routine? A Harvard professor and public figure-should you have to be treated like an ordinary citizen? But that’s the greatness of this country: Enforcers of the law are expected to treat all alike, to protect the house of a black man no less carefully than that of white neighbors. You and I entrust our protection to these police, and we also entrust to them the protection of Harvard students. These are the police who were called in on May 18 to deal with the shooting of Justin Cosby, 21, inside one of the Harvard dorms by suspects who, like him, were African Americans. Has any case ever been dealt with more discreetly-likely at least in part because it involved African Americans? Should we not be encouraging all students to live within the law and to consider ourselves on the side of the law unless clearly and manifestly demonstrated otherwise? Is it not for faculty to set an example of politeness, civility, responsibility, and cool temper?

The ironies of progress can hardly be lost on you. When I came to Harvard in 1993, you had just published in the New York Times an op-ed urging black intellectuals to face up to their own racist attitudes. Invoking the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr., you wrote, "While anti-Semitism is generally on the wane in this country, it has been on the rise among black Americans. A recent survey finds not only that blacks are twice as likely as whites to hold anti-Semitic views but-significantly-that it is among younger and more educated blacks that anti-Semitism is most pronounced." You argued then that owning up to such internal racism was the key to self-respect. Now that America has a black president, Massachusetts a black governor, and Cambridge a black mayor, you appear to have adopted the posture of racial victim. Are you trying to keep alive the politically potent appeal to liberal guilt?

I’m concerned for you, but would not like to see the authority of our police diminished, their effectiveness reduced, or their reputation unfairly tarnished. Since, inadvertently I assume, you have made the work of our police force more difficult than it already is, I wish that you would help set the record straight. You are the man to do it.


Ruth R. Wisse is the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature, and Professor of Comparative Literature, at Harvard.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=528630

I always make a point of reading Mr. wOw’s postings, bright, funny, insightful, a nice touch of self deprecation, this post no exception.

Also, I was curious because my daughter is black or, as we, her and I, Canadians, say ‘African Canadian.’ 

Anyhow.  With the Gates thing, I suspect that mistakes were made all ‘round, including the President, who then followed up with a sweet gesture and had ‘the guys’ over for a beer.  No, no one expects life to continue with a cruise on The Good Ship Lollipop.  But, it’s the little things, the little gestures, that add up.

Writing to the Obama race thing and as a Canadian posting on this so very American site, it’s my take that not a few Republicans are perhaps not racist, this not the bamboo shoots under the nails, as it were; rather, not a few Republicans are really, really, (…really) P’D off, near a year later, that they lost the election.  Obama could be a white man from the midwest and a certain segment of the Republican party would still be throwing punches.  As someone working the hospitality industry, I have learned NOT to talk politics with Americans … ‘cause there’s alot of angry Americans out there.

Ending with a funny little story.  Involving my dear girl and myself.  Yes, we talk race … how could we not … and so … recently, a friend set her up on a blind date … ‘oh, how nice,’ I say to my Miss Wonderful, and hear, ‘yeah, mom, he’s a white plumber.’  Laughing as I write these words.  This life. 

I guess I’m just sorry to see more conservative hatred and Democratic presidential bashing brought into another discussion about something else entirely. Isn’t it time to stop frantically blaming anyone and anything with the voters late, but better late than never realization of the disaster conservatism brought this country to? We have a black president. Get over it!

I too have many black friends and have had for over fifty years. They are people so they share many of our race’s bad traits among their own race as well as our good ones. You could say the same about many nationalities. We’re people and its a human condition going back to that first stranger outside the cave. So what else is new?

I felt that way at a birthday party where I was the only white among blacks and again in a meeting among Indians and Eskimos. I was not treated differently either but I also got an alien feeling. The difference is I talked to one of my friends about it and at the next cards night, all the black guests teased me about it until it was again forgotten in favor of the canapes.

Guess you can never believe the hype.

Get Over It People!!!!

this is 2009—-we are closer now to becoming one than ever before

.No one NOW can blame any one group for their past history—long gone.

Sure there will always be fanatics! And I mean on all sides…..

I live in Massachusetts in a city where I as a white woman am the minority.

I love the diversity of culture etc…..education-thats what it is all about.

We all want the same things in life…..