Ralph Bailey: Lessons blacks and whites could stand to learn
| Friday, Jul 31 2009 02:17 PM
Last Updated Friday, Jul 31 2009 02:29 PM
After vowing to heal old racial wounds, the Obama administration called Americans "cowards," disparaged a Cambridge, Mass., law enforcement officer and all but poured salt in sores that continue to plague a young nation. Now the president thinks beer will douse a fiery situation he helped create.
Your take on "Gates-Gate" most likely depends on your political bent. However, most reasonable folks agree both Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Sgt. James Crowley shared the blame for Gates' arrest and subsequent maelstrom that captured the nation's attention. We can argue over who should claim the lion's share of the tab but clearly either man could have easily walked away. Yet both seem driven by two very old, male, American axioms: "I am the king and this is my castle" and "Don't talk about my momma, man!"
The "Liberal Left" complains officers racially profiled the 59-year-old Harvard professor, which is nonsense. Crowley responded to a call from a good neighbor, who we now know never mentioned race or anything about men carrying "backpacks" as was wrongly reported. Meantime, the "Republican Right" insists Gates obstructed justice, which is equally as goofy. Regardless of how boorish Gates acted, there is no law against being a loud mouth jerk. (Thank, God!)
Yet, the greater dilemma festers not in the behavior of these two men; but how we, as Americans, refuse to admit any role in the ongoing struggle. How we refuse to accept that life experience with law enforcement may be different depending on your color and socioeconomic background, which does not make cops racist it merely makes them human.
For there to be any positive move in race relations black folks must examine facts more carefully before playing the race card like the Big Joker in a "Spades" hand. History shows we have blindly ignored the facts and circled the wagons around blacks with no connection to the community, as was the case with O.J. Simpson.
Alternatively, we somehow support sinister criminals, ones who turned a gun on three of his own children and another who created a criminal graveyard for tens of thousands of young black boys all over Southern California, Vincent Brothers and "Crip" Founder Stanley "Tookie" Williams.
We rush to their side simply because we perceive we share a common "enemy" ... white America. Local blacks derided me for months for simply identifying all three men as wanton, ruthless killers who, in the end, got exactly what they deserved and who were in no way racial victims.
At the same time, whites must stretch their own bounds of reality and accept the fact that most black males, including yours truly, experienced racial profiling at some time in our lives. In a six-month period, I was stopped three times in a tony, South Pasadena neighborhood in 1988 by the same officer who made me, clad in my best "Carlton Banks" outfit (white button down, yellow sweater, khakis and penny loafers), sit on a curb while he ran my driver's license ... ALL THREE TIMES.
I am not whining because police stopped me so many times in such a short period ... by the same cop. I get it! My 1984 Chevy Chevette stuck out like a white farm worker or black water skier. But sitting me on the ground like a gang banger?
Finally, we don't need some phony-baloney beer party at the White House. We need honest, human concessions and not from Gates, Crowley, or even the president but revelations from citizens in the fray. We need black America to admit that perhaps we do overplay the race card. We need white America to give up the delusional idea minorities and whites are treated the same by law enforcement.
You can never convince me that had I been white in Pasadena in 1988 the cop would have sat me on a curb three different times. Moreover, had Big Mouth Gates been an elderly, infirm, WHITE Harvard professor, he never would have never seen the inside of a Cambridge jail.
Ralph Bailey hosts The Ralph Bailey Show on 1560 KNZR. These are his opinions, not necessarily The Californian's. He is one of four conservative community columnists whose work appears here every Saturday. Next week: Heather Ijames
