Racism Can Be a Two-Way Street

I can tell you one thing straight from the shoulder with no detours: the days of intimidation by black organizations or persons by shouting “RACISM” or “Racial Profiling” are growing shorter and scarcer. Today most people, including many of the more sophisticated and enlightened black people themselves, just ain’t buying into i

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Racism and racial profiling as a means of subordinating or putting down people of color many years ago was a trump card for the black communities to get the attention they needed to correct many unjustified attempts to ignore their presence by uncaring and unthinking people of other racial backgrounds. But hey, this definitely is not the 1960’s or beyond; that sort of behavior to a very large extent has decreased greatly in each succeeding year since. Why? Quite simply, the blacks themselves have upgraded their lifestyles and will no longer accept automatic placement in ghetto-like community conditions. The knowledge and value of more schooling and going on to advanced schooling has become more common in the black communities and in point of fact, black communities themselves have begun to shrink in size due to the willingness of more black families not only wishing to, but actually moving into, I won’t say ‘all white’ but rather ‘well mixed’ communities of all nationalities and racial groups. The fear or phobia, whatever, of black, white, oriental or other ethnicities living in close proximity with each other no longer is as foreboding as it once was, and also in point of fact, is working out very well in many such venues. But as with everything, it still has its detractors and strangely, or maybe not, most of those in opposition to this integrating are of the black or newly minted designation of African-American, even if not all have African roots. And, in a lot of cases, some of the more highly educated blacks are still overly sensitive to any perceived slight as being racially motivated. I guess you know by now that I am getting around to the recent July 16th incident in Cambridge, Massachusetts where a what should have been routine police investigation turned into a major political conflagration involving not only the Congress of the United States but the President of the country as well. Talk about a Tempest in a Teapot, this little incident has become a flash fire that could undo some 30 to 40 years of community relationship improvements in just a few short minutes. The unnecessary and probably totally invalid interjection of the president into such a minor community flare-up when he just days ago refused to comment on major and horribly damaging rioting in a peoples’ uprising in Iran has unquestionably exacerbated the entire scenario. The facts in the matter are that on the report of a woman resident in Cambridge to the police that a person was attempting to break into a neighboring house, the police did appear on the scene. After conversing with and identifying the victimized house pointed out by the reporting woman, a police officer approached the house and seeing a person inside called out for that person to come outside. I’m sure you know all the tiny details, but the upshot was that the suspected intruder, who turned out to be the actual occupant of the dwelling refused to go outside and in the process berated the officer who was only trying to do the duty he is paid taxpayer dollars to perform and the home-owner was arrested on a related charge. When the president was queried in a news conference on Wednesday, July 22nd about the incident at the home of what is now known to be a very close friend of said president, made the unfortunate and questionable of judgment comment that the police had acted “stupidly”. Instead of using common sense and statesmanship by saying that he was not aware of all of the facts and would give no comment, he blurted out the highly inappropriate remark that the police officer’s conduct was in fact stupid. Well, when the top man makes a comment of that nature, the lemmings under him then feel obligated to press the matter further into the dung heap and make a little garbage talk themselves. So according to a CNSNews.com report, a spokesman for the Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill) a full week later said, “What the president said is so accurate…” What the president also said at the news conference, according to CNSNews.com was, “what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact.” This to me was a highly incendiary racial profiling type statement almost guaranteed to create some highly incendiary responses. Is this what we should expect from a man who campaigned on the theme of uniting the country? To me it smacks of reverse racism at its highest. The president took no consideration in his remark that statistically, African-Americans and Latinos are guilty of disproportionately higher numbers of breaking our laws causing such stoppages by law enforcement officers. That is where his racism and racial profiling entered the picture. The instant Obama found that a personal friend of his was the person involved in doing the house-breaking, unknown by the officer or the person reporting the supposed crime, he should have given no comment. It was the presidential and probably providential thing to do.

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