Gates Gate

This whole Gates thing is making me mad. I'm raving pissed at Glenn Beck and other media prostitutes who are taking this chance to make ludicrous charges about Obama being racist. But I'm also pretty darn angry at Prof Gates.

At first I thought for sure this was profiling by the 911 caller, as well as the policeman. I thought this was the situation: An elderly, well dressed black man with a cane and a professional driver were fiddling with a key in their front door. Anyone who would call the police in that situation are racial profilers, little doubt of that.


Turns out that wasn’t the situation at all. Gates and his driver actually broke the screen door down to get inside. And when I heard the actual 911 call, I was downright embarrassed. Here’s a transcript of the call. and here’s the audio recording. (If this link doesn't work you can Google it. It's worth hearing). This lady is obviously calling out of concern. She acknowledges that the men might be residents, but says she thought she would call just in case. When asked by the 911 operator what the men’s races were, she didn’t even know. She thought one might have been Hispanic. How could she be profiling if she didn’t even know their races at all?

Of course, an critical point is that Crowley still made a mistake in arresting Gates. He had no grounds to do so, which is why the charges were dropped. He should have just walked away. However, I now see that it is extremely unlikely Crowley or the caller were racist. We later heard about how Crowley taught his coworkers about racial profiling. That doesn't exonerate him, but it does make it more unlikely that he would treat Gates differently. I find myself thinking the only one thinking about race in the whole issue was Gates. He acted very badly. I'm sure he was very tired from getting back from China and wasn't in the mood to be confronted, but that's no excuse. I think Crowley was offended at being called a racist and his ego was wounded and he made the wrong call by taking Gates in. But this was more of a cop power trip than racist. It's a "how dare you talk to ME like that" moment. Guess maybe there's a chance he wouldn't have taken him in if he were white, I just can't see a shred of evidence.

And I wish Obama would have kept his thoughts to himself on this one. In a press conference early this year on something I can’t remember, someone asked him why he hadn’t condemned some action earlier. He said “I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.” He should have taken his own advice on this one. Could be the first blunder Obama's made.

I'm angry at Gates because there's no doubt racial profiling is a significant problem in America. But now by "crying wolf" he's decreased the credibility of minorities that are profiled. Now these idiot rednecks in Colorado think every time someone shouts racial profiling, it's another Gates Gate. Plus he's given the right more fodder in their race bating antics. He owes the black community an apology for that. Anyway, I just hope this whole thing goes away now.