A Familiar Story

In the aftermath of the Professor Henry Louis Gates’ racial profiling incident there was a lot of talk about President Barrack Obama’s remarks last Wednesday about his friends arrest by Cambridge police.

On Wednesday night while the President was giving an address about Health Care Reform a reporter asked him about the incident. He stated he had some bias because he knows Gates personally and anyone (of any color) would be upset to have police officers accuse them of breaking in their own home even more show after presenting ID that proves they live there. The president also stated that he wasn’t there but from what heard the police acted “Stupidly”.

The president caught flack from a lot of conservative radio (wow what a surprise) and 24 hour TV news pundits who felt that he shouldn’t have said anything. He even caught flack from everyone’s favorite TV dad Bill Cosby who said he needed to “Shut up”.

They all seemed to have a problem with Barrack using the word “Stupidly”, even I think that were a few others words he could have used in its place that would worked just fine. Illogically, irrationally, and hastily come to mind. Those are softer more diplomatic words I might have used to describe how the police acted.

There was something else though; something that I noticed about some of the conversations got on my nerves. There were number of people who said the same thing over and over again. Barrack wasn’t he doesn’t know happened so how can he speak about something he didn’t’ see?
Well there were only two black people on the scene at the time of the arrest; Henry Louis Gates and one the three police officers.


Obama wasn’t there, I wasn’t there, and any black person reading this blog wasn’t there but we’ve all been there. What happened to Gates was hot news but it wasn’t new. A lot of black and brown people have heard this story because a lot of them have a story with the same main theme. The theme is racial profiling; it’s when law enforcement of any kind from police to mall security treat people like suspects before they committed a crime based solely on their skin color or ethnic background. Here is a video that I think illustates this point.





Now I wasn’t in that park playing ball with those kids either but I know exactly how it feels to be playing ball with other kids and have the cops harass us because they think were up to something because its similar to something me and my friends experienced in our neighborhood one time. A lady called the cops on us because she thought were ganging up on somebody when the truth was were picking teams for a half court pick up game. Two police officers showed up and one of them had nasty attitude. When they realized nothing bad was going down he and his partner let us be but by then we were so mad we didn’t want to play ball anymore. It's something a lot of young black men experience and apparently some older black people too.
It is an angry feeling to be treated in negative way becasue you're percieved as being a criminal.

Normally I try not to write as if I’m speaking for all of black America because I don’t want to contribute to the stereotype that we all think alike because we don’t. I will make in exception in this case because I know that every black person I know, don’t know, related to, and not related to have a story about a negative encounter with the police where in which they felt they were being treated unfairly based on the color of their skin. These stories are infused into the collective DNA of every black person in this country much like the stories of slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow. I haven’t experienced those things either but these stories and memories have been passed down to me by my family.

Side note; I have a theory as to why movies like Rosewood and Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored don’t do as well as say movies like Friday and Madea’s Family Reunion. It’s because we as black people have heard about all the pain and suffering from our kinfolk all our lives. We’ve heard about violence, hatred, and the overall struggle so much that when movies about this particular subject matter are made we don’t want to go see it because we can easily turn to those same kinfolk and they will a happily share their history with us. I’m not saying it's right but I can understand why we as a people won’t pay for a movie ticket for something we can get for free.

Anyway to my fellow white Americans who may not understand this; when it comes to racial profiling even if it’s only a perception I’m in that story, president Barrack Obama before he became president is in that story, every black and Latino male is in that story whatever that story maybe. We’re all in that story because it can happen to anyone of us regardless of class, or level of education. Our skin color only tells one part of our collective story and while a lot of people including police officers know there is more to that story there some who only see the cover and act on what they think the rest of the story is because they too have a history infused in their DNA. A story that tells them that certain people should be treated a certain way according to color, ethnicity, or how low their jeans are hanging (pull ‘em up guys) and that story needs to be changed.

No I wasn’t there but it’s a story that’s sounds awfully damn familiar.


( I read over my blogs several time before I post them but I'm only human please excuse my errors)