as you probably know, henry louis gates jr. was arrested at his cambridge, massachussetts home last week because a white passerby phoned the police, thinking that he was breaking into his own house. gates is a literary critic and professor at harvard, one of this country's most prominent public intellectuals, and a leading scholar in african-american studies; he was a pioneer of semiotics in cultural studies, and, more recently, edited the bondwoman's narrative. charges have, of course, been dropped.
the story was (finally) picked up yesterday. here is the the boston globe's story. as usual, the reader's comments are horrifying, perhaps as horrifying as the story itself. the first three comments:
Here we go. Let's blow this out of all proportion. Let's not wait until we hear the full story....bring on the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton circus.
Posted by johnpaul July 20, 09 02:07 PM
sure. EVERY minority who has to deal w/ the police, merited or not, is the victim of...what was that again? racial profiling? oooh that sounds bad, the cops r badd peeple!
Posted by FJ July 20, 09 02:09 PM
As outrageous as this sounds, I'd refer him to Alex Beam's recent article, wherein the police in his community stopped him for merely looking disheveled while getting his mail.
I suspect it has more to do with the tenor of the times and our creeping loss of liberties than it does with race, but granted, that's easy for me to say.
Posted by Harrybosch July 20, 09 02:10 PM
that last one, he knows he should know better. but he can't help participating in this country's culture of racism-denial. because the white people of this country have had enough. enough. racism doesn't exist. it fucking doesn't. [hands over years, eyes closed, yelling.]
here's a particularly bad comment:
Enough of throwing down the race card ... we have a Black President now, so that tired old ship has sailed. The guy got indignant like any self-important Harvard professor does, pulled the old "Do you know who I am?" routine, and got arrested as a result.
Posted by Dave C. July 20, 09 02:13 PM
i love post-obama, post-racial america. no white man can ever be accused of racism again. woo.
this country was built on two things: african-american slave labour and the lie that class-relations do not exist in america. thomas paine, the rights of man, the new world, declaration of independence, and all that late 18th century revolutionary furor justified the creation of this country by distinguishing it from europe, as a radical break from the past and, especially, as distinct from the codified class relations that constitute english society. so, in opposition to marx's famous claim that "the history of society is the history of class struggle," you get something like daniel bell's hysterical neo-con apologia the end of ideology. you get complete nonsense like: “What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too.” (okay, the person who said this was likely being facetious and articulated it in the most wilfully naïve way possible, but it had been and continues in a way to be a widely-held belief in this country that american consumer culture somehow obviates, or at least is recompense for, the class relations of industrial capitalism.)
and somewhere along the way, the denial of class relations in american culture took up the denial of racism. and so, we have the end of ideology, pt. 2: the equally hysterical presumption of a "post-racial america." personally, i see this as a belated reaction to the civil rights movement, taking hold at some point around the institutionalization of affirmative action, the forwarding of "political correctness" as a cultural imperative, and the unfortunate succession in the mass media of rodney king by o.j. simpson.
the o.j. trial, in which white america saw a wealthy african-american man get away with murder, propped the belief that racism is no longer an impediment to african-americans in the united states, in effect erasing the despicable and riots-inducing memory of two of the officers who assaulted rodney king getting slaps on the wrist and the other two getting off completely. the aftermath of the o.j. trial fueled the fire of american racism-denial's other red herring, the myth of reverse-racism in which affirmative action turns white americans into a persecuted race.
this makes me think, as i often do, of race in american sports, particularly in basketball, which is comprised of a predominantly white audience watching predominantly african-american players perform. i recently read an interesting but ultimately misguided article called "racial paternalism and college sports," which observes that less than 1/40th of major league baseball players have college degrees and alleges that the college years required of their players by the NFL and NBA (predominantly african-american leagues, as opposed to the whiter MLB) is a kind of racial paternalism. the author writes: "we [meaning white american society] don't trust a comparatively small pool of young black kids to make decisions about their professional sports futures, but we don't even blink when thousands of white kids head pro in sports without the slightest bit of education."
the first article's two comments:
6-29-2009 @ 9:38PM
cjgdnight said...
It is not race, it is money... what is the tv market for college basketball and football versus the market for college hockey and baseball? I'll help you mister sports writer... it is a lot more dollars in FB and BB (predominantly black sports you write of)... race has nothing to do with it... the only color being counted is green... by the ncaa. Without the great players, the ncaa fb and bb is ruined.. so atheletes must go to college in order that the ncaa gets money... the fact they are one color over the other is not important.
Honestly you are a shameless ass and one could argue a racist yourself for writing this article, but hey race wars always get blogs... all about somebody keeping somebody else down. Please stop.
6-29-2009 @ 10:21PM
wf96 said...
Well stated Cjg. Not only is it about the money, but another thing to take into account is that when you get drafted by the NFL or NBA teams you go right into the NBA or NFL. When you get drafted by a MLB team you go to A ball. You get drafted by an NHL team, you go to the minor leagues. You play golf or tennis you play in the junior circuits before you can play at the professional level. This writer is nothing more than a pot stirrer who is way uninformed on what he speaks of. Not every f'in thing that is done is racially based, and the people who make it out to be like that are racists themselves.
and the requisite, out-of-control and hysterical caps-locking idiot:
6-29-2009 @ 10:32PM
gsan201 said...
Pretty much everything this jackbag writes about is race this and race that.YES CLAY is a RACIST,HE justt happenes to be Protected by(Political Correctness)because he HATES on White Anything...IF he can blame a White Person for something,anything HE WILL DO IT.Racistt biggtto is what he is and always will be.He is just nother KEVIN BLACKSTONE. He can't write or come up with a good article so he always wants to stir the pot and Scream RACE WAR,RACE WAR...lol If it wasn't so sad and serious this EVIL GAME that he and his buddies like him PLAY,YOU would think you were watching a SOUTH PARK episode and just think it is low brow humor.
now, the first two posters are not wrong, per se. money is obviously a big factor, and it is in the NBA and NFL's interest to keep the NCAA, which develops the majority of their players at no cost to them, financially profitable. but the antagonism towards the writer, the contention that this must only be a function of money and cannot have anything to do with race points to the vehemence of the culture of racism-denial in this country. (and i have always observed this to be heightened in relation to sports, which i suspect a lot of people see as a respite to the real world, a safe-zone of sorts that is autonomous and separate from political concerns.)
so yes, the author of the article is ultimately wrong: it is a question of money. but he is wrong because he has overplayed his hand by assuming a causal relationship between "racial paternalism" and the NBA and NFL's rules regarding their players' education. there is no causal relation, as the cause for the rules is a complex relationship between the financial interests of the leagues and those of the NCAA. but the self-serving and implicitly racist rhetoric that justifies tying young, predominantly african-american athletes to college teams that severely undercompensate them for the revenue they bring in by presuming that these young men don't know well enough for themselves and must have decisions made for them is undeniably real. it's just not the cause. [tirade against the institution of college basketball not averted, only post-poned until a later date —ed.]
but back to the topic at hand: the denial of racism. it's an interesting phenomenon, one that has often been leveled, even by the most liberal and left-leaning of people, at me (who apparently finds everything racist). but i've tried very hard here to resist making the comparison to holocaust denial and you may be glad to see that i've succeeded in that respect...
