From xkcd
As one comedian observed, “Alcohol doesn’t resolve racial incidents, alcohol starts racial incidents.”
Shannon Love
The Privilege Card
I worked my way through college as a security guard for a company that specialized in security for the campus area of a major flagship university. The area was simply stuffed with the children of the wealthy and connected, most of whom belonged to sororities and fraternities. Most of the security and police work revolved around controlling the excesses of the frats. I got to see how the police had to deal with people quick to claim immunity because of their membership or parentage. I saw how irritated the police got every time they had to talk to one of those little snots.
So, when I read the police report on the Gates incident I understood immediately that Gates’s mistake wasn’t “being a black man in America,” it was this:
I then overheard Gates asking the person on the other end of his telephone call to “get the chief” and “what’s the chief’s name?” … Gates then turned to me and told me that I had no idea who I was “messing” with and I had not heard the last of it.
I can only imagine how many hundreds of times the Cambridge police have heard some arrogant little snot of a Harvard frat boy utter variants on that same claim to privilege. The Cambridge police also well know that frats only claim privilege when they know they’re in the wrong and they need to weasel out the consequences. When Gates played the privilege card like a frat snot, Officer Crowley immediately suspected that Gates was up to something and was trying to intimidate the officer into backing off and not investigating further.
What Defines a Man?
While reading this articlee [h/t Instapundit] a thought gelled that had been forming in my mind throughout the Gates affair.
It appears that for leftists in America today, Obama is still more defined by being black than he is by being the President of the United States. They seem to assume that we all should see him as a black man before we see him in any other role. What more can a person possibly accomplish before others see him as just an individual defined by his accomplishments? He has attained the highest office in the most powerful country the world has ever seen, yet they still see his skin color first and foremost.
Sadly, Obama seems to see himself that way too.
We still have a lot of work to do.
Our Continuing Sad Problem With Hate Crimes
Via Instapundit comes a story of a hate crime against a black family in Austin, Tx:
The brick, thrown through a 4-year-old boy’s bedroom window, read “Keep Westside White. Keep Westside Strong.”
The homeowner, Barbara Frische, who is black, said she has lived in the home for 10 years.
“It’s the first time anything like this has ever happened to me,” she said.
Police have not classified this incident as a hate crime, said Austin Police Sgt. Richard Stresing, because hate crimes target an individual specifically because of an identifying characteristic, like race. Police say the incident has been classified as criminal mischief and deadly conduct.
Honestly, every time I think we’ve made progress in Texas on race relations, something like this comes along to prove me wrong. How can the police not see this as a hate crime? You have a message advocating racial segregation tossed through the window of a black family who had the temerity to move into a historically all-white area of the city.
This is why African Americans have such a hard time believing that hate-crime laws will be fairly enforced and aren’t just some kind of legal fiction intended to single them out for punishment and to stigmatize them as a group. This is especially true when you consider that many people in the law and academia hold to the belief that racism and therefore hate crimes are attributes solely of African American culture. When you have such an intellectual framework, how can African Americans trust that hate-crime laws will be enforced fairly?
Clearly, America still has a lot of work to do.
[Update: It’s pointed out to me that I may have made a typo or two when I copied the quote from the original article. I’ll fix it later but in the meantime make sure to read the original before commenting.]
A Parable of Health Care “Reform”
Writing on the health care policy debate, Megan McArdle observes [h/t Instapundit]:
Still, I think you have to establish a sort of minimal cutoff below which it’s better to wait for a better opportunity than do something NOW!!!
By coincidence, this morning some anonymous coward using a remailer sent me the following rant:
Your latest post is vacuous and says nothing. In fact you misconstrue, as do so many, what the health plan on the table in Congress is all about. In fairness, at least be objective in what it says…Innuendo is but an Italian suppository, and the nay saying continues, endlessly. Say something positive for a change. Offer a program, an idea, a proposal rather than simply sniping like a kid in an elementary school playground. [emp added]
Leftists very commonly assert that that non-leftists have to offer a fully fleshed-out alternative to the status quo before they can offer criticisms of the current faddish idea of the Left. When you try to explain to them that the validity of an idea has nothing to do with the validity of any competing ideas, they stare at you blankly. Therefore, to try and explain matters to leftists, I offer the following parable.
Three friends, Bob, Lefty and Righty are standing on the edge of a dam’s overflow channel watching the swirling, churning water flowing out of the dam in the concrete channel 30ft below.