Let's get it straight

Let's get it straight, now. Let's be real.

Skip Gates, Harvard professor, gentleman, was accosted inside his house by white Cambridge cops who demanded to see his identification. IN HIS HOUSE. He in turn asked for their badge numbers and protested when they arrested him. The DA dropped the charges and said both sides were wrong. I beg to differ and so does Skip Gates. The woman who called the police called them because she saw Skip and his Black friend dealing with the stuck front door. The cops came into the house and demanded identification because Skip is Black. They arrested him because he is Black. There was no other reason. The DA dropped the charges, I suspect, because, if he hadn't, there would be a lot of protest.

Racial profiling is really, really simple. People of color, especially Black men, will always be suspect, no matter what. If you are naive enough to think we live in a "post racial" world because President Obama is in the White House, look at all of the racially insensitive things the Right Wing is saying. And look out in the street and notice the Black boys walking by. Does your pulse quicken? Do you wonder what they are doing in your neighborhood? Are you afraid? Do you think about what that means? Of course we've all been conditioned to be fearful, but I've met more nasty white teenagers since I've been in Arlington than Black teenagers I've encountered in a lifetime.

Once, not so long ago a Hispanic security guard followed me around in Walgreens. I finally turned around and said, "Are you following me?" He blushed to the roots of his hair and mumbled something. I forgave him, though, because if he'd been out of uniform somebody would be following him.

I've had friends who say, "Oh, you're just paranoid," etc. etc. Of course these have been white friends. I know we all wish this shit were over but it's not and until it's not (not in our lifetimes), there will be a need for affirmative action, there will be a need for peaceful protest, and we're all going to have keep thinking about it and discussing it and worrying at it like the social hangnail that it is.

Think how mad you get when someone makes an assumption about you based on something you can't help. Think of the injustice of it. Now think of it happening every time you walk out in the street. I can't even discuss it fully, because the accident of my birth is that I'm biracial and light skinned. But I can tell you about the pain of it, the anger of it, the complete idiocy of being judged by an accident of genetics.

And think of this man, Skip Gates, an unbelievably distinguished man who's fought all his life for everyone to have a decent education, a very nice gentleman, a quite famous person, someone who's been taking on this bullshit all his life to be arrested in his own house because some ignay cop with a chip on his shoulder doesn't like some darkie asking for his badge number. We've got to keep on fighting.

P.S. President Obama said in his press conference tonight, "The Cambridge police acted stupidly."