Communist
31st July 2009, 04:41
received this perspective via email from Portside
==============================================
=============================
Beer and Sympathy Beneath the Radar
By Gary Younge
The Nation.
July 29, 2009
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/younge
Taxi drivers provide a perverse service to the racial
conversation when they refuse to pick up black people.
Clearly it would be better if they stopped, so that we
wouldn't be left hailing the night air like fools or
relying on white friends to sneak one past the censor
like supplicants.
But if anyone is going to experience racial hardship,
let it be the cab riders. For if you can afford to take
a cab, then it is probably not a bad thing to be
reminded that racism brooks no exceptions--up to and
including the ability to pay. Racism discriminates
against people on the grounds of race. Just like it
says on the packet. It can be as arbitrary in its
choice of victim as it is systemic in its execution.
And while it never works alone (but rather in cahoots
with class, gender and a host of other rogue
characters), it has political license to operate
independently.
It's a basic lesson at relatively low cost. And yet the
arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at
his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, suggests we are
doomed to keep repeating the lesson. Barack Obama was
right when he referred to the arrest as a "teachable
moment," but given the brouhaha that has followed, it
seems that even a moment involving the nation's most
prominent black intellectual teaches us nothing.
This lesson should come in two parts.
First, all such tales attempt to stage racism as a
crude morality play, with individuals as absolute
victims and absolute villains, rather than as a system
of oppression that works primarily through
institutions. The victim must have no priors and no
drugs. And unless the perpetrator is photographed with
a billy club in hand and uses racial slurs that are
recorded on tape, we are supposed to give him the
benefit of the doubt.
For an individual, that is fair. For a system, it is
farcical. While it may be intriguing to speculate about
what two people may or may not have been thinking,
feeling and intending at any given moment, the proof of
racism is in the odds. Black people in America fall
foul of not just the law of the land but the law of
probabilities as well. They are more likely to be
stopped, searched, arrested, convicted and executed. A
ridiculous black man and a ridiculous white man do not
stand the same chances when put before a man with a
badge, gun or gavel. The figures bear this out, and at
the end of the day, nooses and burning crosses
shouldn't be necessary to demonstrate racism's reach.
Second, the fact that racism might affect a Harvard
professor is amazing only if one buys into the idea
that black people who have reached a certain status
should be exempt from racism. If you believe that, then
the problem with Gates's arrest is not racism. It's
that he was treated like a regular black person. The
issue moves from "If it happened to him it really can
happen to anybody" to "It shouldn't have happened to
him because he is a somebody."
Which brings us back to Obama, who first said the
Cambridge police acted "stupidly," only to then
"recalibrate" his remarks before inviting the arresting
officer, James Crowley, and Gates to the White House
for beers and reconciliation. This was primarily
remarkable because, for reasons both pragmatic and
strategic, Obama's interventions in matters of race are
so very rare.
So it is curious that he would use the considerable
influence he has in this area to defend a tenured
Harvard professor who was detained for a few hours.
Indeed, the only other public pronouncement Obama has
made about race since his election was delivered just a
week before Gates's arrest, at the NAACP conference. On
the organization's centenary he paid homage to the
civil rights movement and, recognizing the inequalities
bequeathed by segregation, he started talking about
parenting.
"We've got to say to our children, Yes, if you're
African-American, the odds of growing up amid crime and
gangs are higher," Obama said. "Yes, if you live in a
poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that
somebody in a wealthy suburb does not have to face. But
that's not a reason to get bad grades. That's not a
reason to cut class.... No one has written your destiny
for you.... That's what we have to teach all of our
children. No excuses. No excuses."
These two interventions feel like the Talented Tenth
circling the wagons. There are a huge number of
explanations for black underachievement in this
country, none of which are merely "excuses." But
Gates's experience also gave the lie to Obama's
exhortations. Gates got good grades, probably never cut
school and does not live amid crime and gangs. If he
had, the incident might have ended up in anything from
a police record to his death while never even making
the local paper. Not that Gates didn't have a
legitimate grievance. But he probably could have
handled the matter without the help of the commander in
chief.
The same cannot be said for, say, Troy Davis, who sits
on death row in Georgia for the murder of an off-duty
police officer, which he insists he did not commit.
Seven of the nine witnesses who identified Davis have
recanted or contradicted their original testimony,
which they claim was made under police coercion. One of
the remaining two is also a suspect in the crime.
Desmond Tutu, the pope and Jimmy Carter (all
conspicuously silent on the Gates saga) have called for
a new trial or evidentiary hearing. This is a matter
where Obama's involvement could tip the balance between
life and death.
As I write, the beers are in the presidential fridge.
After their drink, Gates will go back to Harvard,
Crowley will return to the force, Obama will stay in
the White House. Nothing about law or race, not even
the national conversation, will have changed. And Troy
Davis will remain on death row. For now the only beer
he can expect will be with his last meal. And he will
be drinking alone.
Gary Younge, the Alfred Knobler Journalism Fellow at
The Nation Institute, is the New York correspondent for
the Guardian and the author of No Place Like Home: A
Black Briton's Journey Through the Deep South
(Mississippi) and Stranger in a Strange Land: Travels
in the Disunited States (New Press). He is also a
contributor to The Nation. more...
* Copyright © 2009 The Nation
_____________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.
==============================================
=============================
Beer and Sympathy Beneath the Radar
By Gary Younge
The Nation.
July 29, 2009
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090817/younge
Taxi drivers provide a perverse service to the racial
conversation when they refuse to pick up black people.
Clearly it would be better if they stopped, so that we
wouldn't be left hailing the night air like fools or
relying on white friends to sneak one past the censor
like supplicants.
But if anyone is going to experience racial hardship,
let it be the cab riders. For if you can afford to take
a cab, then it is probably not a bad thing to be
reminded that racism brooks no exceptions--up to and
including the ability to pay. Racism discriminates
against people on the grounds of race. Just like it
says on the packet. It can be as arbitrary in its
choice of victim as it is systemic in its execution.
And while it never works alone (but rather in cahoots
with class, gender and a host of other rogue
characters), it has political license to operate
independently.
It's a basic lesson at relatively low cost. And yet the
arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at
his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, suggests we are
doomed to keep repeating the lesson. Barack Obama was
right when he referred to the arrest as a "teachable
moment," but given the brouhaha that has followed, it
seems that even a moment involving the nation's most
prominent black intellectual teaches us nothing.
This lesson should come in two parts.
First, all such tales attempt to stage racism as a
crude morality play, with individuals as absolute
victims and absolute villains, rather than as a system
of oppression that works primarily through
institutions. The victim must have no priors and no
drugs. And unless the perpetrator is photographed with
a billy club in hand and uses racial slurs that are
recorded on tape, we are supposed to give him the
benefit of the doubt.
For an individual, that is fair. For a system, it is
farcical. While it may be intriguing to speculate about
what two people may or may not have been thinking,
feeling and intending at any given moment, the proof of
racism is in the odds. Black people in America fall
foul of not just the law of the land but the law of
probabilities as well. They are more likely to be
stopped, searched, arrested, convicted and executed. A
ridiculous black man and a ridiculous white man do not
stand the same chances when put before a man with a
badge, gun or gavel. The figures bear this out, and at
the end of the day, nooses and burning crosses
shouldn't be necessary to demonstrate racism's reach.
Second, the fact that racism might affect a Harvard
professor is amazing only if one buys into the idea
that black people who have reached a certain status
should be exempt from racism. If you believe that, then
the problem with Gates's arrest is not racism. It's
that he was treated like a regular black person. The
issue moves from "If it happened to him it really can
happen to anybody" to "It shouldn't have happened to
him because he is a somebody."
Which brings us back to Obama, who first said the
Cambridge police acted "stupidly," only to then
"recalibrate" his remarks before inviting the arresting
officer, James Crowley, and Gates to the White House
for beers and reconciliation. This was primarily
remarkable because, for reasons both pragmatic and
strategic, Obama's interventions in matters of race are
so very rare.
So it is curious that he would use the considerable
influence he has in this area to defend a tenured
Harvard professor who was detained for a few hours.
Indeed, the only other public pronouncement Obama has
made about race since his election was delivered just a
week before Gates's arrest, at the NAACP conference. On
the organization's centenary he paid homage to the
civil rights movement and, recognizing the inequalities
bequeathed by segregation, he started talking about
parenting.
"We've got to say to our children, Yes, if you're
African-American, the odds of growing up amid crime and
gangs are higher," Obama said. "Yes, if you live in a
poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that
somebody in a wealthy suburb does not have to face. But
that's not a reason to get bad grades. That's not a
reason to cut class.... No one has written your destiny
for you.... That's what we have to teach all of our
children. No excuses. No excuses."
These two interventions feel like the Talented Tenth
circling the wagons. There are a huge number of
explanations for black underachievement in this
country, none of which are merely "excuses." But
Gates's experience also gave the lie to Obama's
exhortations. Gates got good grades, probably never cut
school and does not live amid crime and gangs. If he
had, the incident might have ended up in anything from
a police record to his death while never even making
the local paper. Not that Gates didn't have a
legitimate grievance. But he probably could have
handled the matter without the help of the commander in
chief.
The same cannot be said for, say, Troy Davis, who sits
on death row in Georgia for the murder of an off-duty
police officer, which he insists he did not commit.
Seven of the nine witnesses who identified Davis have
recanted or contradicted their original testimony,
which they claim was made under police coercion. One of
the remaining two is also a suspect in the crime.
Desmond Tutu, the pope and Jimmy Carter (all
conspicuously silent on the Gates saga) have called for
a new trial or evidentiary hearing. This is a matter
where Obama's involvement could tip the balance between
life and death.
As I write, the beers are in the presidential fridge.
After their drink, Gates will go back to Harvard,
Crowley will return to the force, Obama will stay in
the White House. Nothing about law or race, not even
the national conversation, will have changed. And Troy
Davis will remain on death row. For now the only beer
he can expect will be with his last meal. And he will
be drinking alone.
Gary Younge, the Alfred Knobler Journalism Fellow at
The Nation Institute, is the New York correspondent for
the Guardian and the author of No Place Like Home: A
Black Briton's Journey Through the Deep South
(Mississippi) and Stranger in a Strange Land: Travels
in the Disunited States (New Press). He is also a
contributor to The Nation. more...
* Copyright © 2009 The Nation
_____________________________________________
Portside aims to provide material of interest
to people on the left that will help them to
interpret the world and to change it.