Racism is an equal opportunity employer

His Illustriousness B Obama spoke out against the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. This came at the tail end of Obama's speech about healthcare (more like advertisement for it) when a Chicago Sun Times correspondent asked Obama's opinion on the matter and what it said about race relations in the US. This means we got to hear Obama's opinion more or less unfiltered by speech writers and his advisers (AKA they didn't have time to make sure everything he said offended absolutely no one).



So what came out of O!'s mouth was that the police had "acted stupidly". While disregarding the fact that Obama knows little to nothing about the incident, I must say that two black men breaking into the home in a predominately white neighborhood should, without a doubt, create a stir. And the fact of the matter is that a citizen called the complaint in! It isn't like the police just saw two black men randomly sitting on the front porch of this house, they were responding to a call from a concerned citizen (funny no one is saying that citizen is racist here..... they aren't at all, I'm just making a point that people rush to demonize police). If the police hadn't acted on the tip and it turned out to actually be two thieves and the police let the home get broken into, the community would be livid!





So here is what it looked like from the police side of the story (and you can't tell me you wouldn't have acted the same way):


-Call comes in from a neighbor saying that two men were breaking into a home
-Police respond to that residence
-Police question the man (Gates but not yet identified to police) inside the house
-Man refuses to provide proof of who he is
-Man verbally abuses officers
-Officers ask man to come outside
-Man continues to yell
-Police arrest man for disorderly conduct
-Police verify his identity after arresting him
-Police release him




That, right there, is text book police work. You see something fishy going on, you err on the side of caution and make sure everything is copacetic (because *gasp* sometimes criminals lie about who they are). Had they not followed procedure and it turned out the house was actually being broken in to, there would have been hell to pay (for one, I'd rather be in jail for an hour for breaking into my own house than let someone who claimed to be me steal all my stuff).



So now, let's turn to Gates. He is crying racism over the entire incident. You know what that says to me? The first thing to come into his mind is "I'm being arrested for being black", not "I'm being arrested for breaking into a home". Doesn't this show who the racist really is?



And let's look at the officer in question here, Sgt. James Crowley. Here is a guy that taught classes in how to avoid racial profiling to other officers (BTW a black police commissioner picked him for that job). Don't you think he might know a thing or two about how to avoid racial profiling? And I also have a feeling that if Crowley were black, we wouldn't be hearing a peep about racism but the event would have gone down the EXACT same way.


So now Obama answers a few questions about this incident at his health care press conference and ends up saying that the officers 'acted stupidly'. There are a few problems here: (1) Obama has no first hand knowledge of what went on, (2) he doesn't defer to the judgment of law enforcement who were actually there, (3) he actually questions the law enforcement process of public safety by saying that officers following procedure were acting stupidly, (4) he implied that race had a role in this at all because it was a black man being arrested.




Now I hate to jump to conclusions here (who am I kidding, I LOVE jumping to conclusions!), but in any situation like this I say "would this be an issue if both people were white, black, yellow, green, etc?" The answer is HELL NO, there would have been no shout from Gates about this being a race issue, Jesse and Al wouldn't be back up on their respective soap boxes, and Obama wouldn't be questioning the integrity of a highly respected law enforcement officer.





So Gates, Al, Jesse, and Obama, to save yourself from appearing racist (even though anyone with an ounce of intelligence knows you are), just shut up.

Update: Obama and Gates were friends before the incident (SHOCKING!), more about Crowley is coming out about him being an upstanding citizen and family man.

Read about it here: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j4S-r9G0m8HEq4JAFUw7_epFRb9QD99KQSJ80

Another update: Obama calls Crowley to semi-apologize (still not good enough!)

Here: http://www.wtop.com/?nid=116&sid=1723683