Posted on 08/06/2009 11:31:58 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
I was lying in my hospital bed in Boston when I got an e-mail from someone making an oblique reference to the arrest of Skip Gates. I thought the writer was mistaken and wrote back saying, “But Skip is in China.” I couldn’t believe there was anything under the sun that would lead to Skip getting arrested—unless it was in China. And even then, what could he have done? Asked an official a tough question about human rights or something?
So I did what I always do when I need to reach Skip, who, like me, lives on his BlackBerry.
“Where are you?” I asked in the subject line. Within a few minutes he answered, “Just back from China.” I breathed a sigh of relief. Then Skip briefly mentioned his trip and followed with a one-liner about “a horrendous experience with the Cambridge police.” Skip then said he would tell me about it when he saw me and ended with, “You are not going to believe what I have to tell you.”
Maybe it was the drugs I was taking, but for a while, I thought he was talking about some fabulous experience he had in China. Skip has an infectious joy and excitement about his work, and he knows how I enjoy sharing it. The last sentence caused me not to focus on “horrendous experience” because, after all, he was talking about being back from China and talking to me soon. How bad could it have been?
Well, within no time, I knew. Friends began e-mailing details of the “horrendous experience” gathered from media reports. They knew that even in my hospital bed, I would have my trusty computer by my side.
Fresh in my mind, because of research I had been doing for a book on the civil rights movement, were the “horrendous” experiences of civil rights workers in the 1960s who were trying to rid the South of racist laws and vicious practices designed to keep blacks “in their place”—as second-class citizens. With their words and their works, the young activists were all committed to non-violence—a tactic that was sorely tested by the violence inflicted on them, often for something as simple as not saying “sir” to a white policeman standing over them with a billy club. Ask Congressman John Lewis, who may have suffered more blows to his head than any person during that period. It also happened to Charles Sherrod, who was a leader in the sit-in movement in then-totally segregated Albany, Ga. in 1961. Sherrod was slapped around by a white policeman for not saying “sir” and then thrown in jail.
Or take the many times when Bob Moses was arrested after being followed by a policeman on a lonely back road in rural Amite County, Alab., a county where black people often disappeared without a trace. During a voter registration drive, the black church in Amite County would be bombed by white supremacists, and Moses’ driver was murdered. Such was the nature of white racist resistance at the time. When the policeman finally pulled over the car in which Moses was riding, he got out and asked the officer what was the trouble. That simple question got Moses arrested for resisting arrest.
As disciples of non-violence and the moral authority that came with it, neither Sherrod nor Moses nor the thousands of young freedom fighters fought back in a physical way. Even their verbal responses were polite. As a result, they were often thrown into cold, crowded jail cells and treated like the animals the white racists believed black people to be.
It was painful to recall those days as I made my way through the research. But it is even more painful (if not infuriating) to know that almost a half century later, after the victories of those non-violent heroes Down South —up North can still be called Up South in cases like Skip's.
I decry the horrible racism among the Northern Liberal Democrats. No doubt they were egged on by Joseph “I love Hitler” Kennedy’s youngest son.
Hmmm . . . does the same logic apply to Obamacare and Hitler’s plan for “useless eaters?”
We’re only talking 14 years earlier that the Nazis fell, and the analogy may be even closer.
In 1959 Barry Soetoro would have been called a mulatto, out in the open, and he would not have had a prayer in hades of running for Prez.
Since 1959 or before, the U.S.A. has also footed the bill for entirely too many generation after generation welfare cases.
During that period of time Skip Gates a silver-spoon kid romanticized about his plight --> had he been a poor Black person to the point that he now believes he's part of the downtrodden. His family even owned a place on Martha's Vineyard.
So, my reply to Skippy and the author --> Get off the cross. Somebody needs the wood.
Um, the Gates arrest had NOTHING to do with civil rights.
It had everything to do with the arrogant elitist entitlement mentality of one Professor Skip "Do you know who I am!" Gates.
O’ Lawd, poor “Skip”- Will the circle be unbroken in the bye and bye
anyone seen a barf alert around here? ‘cause this needs one
Wasn’t this Hunter-Gault lady from The Root the same lady fearful of racial wars if Obama became elected because of the implaccable anti-black hatred whites? These race hustlers live in their own world.
You and "Skip" both.
How many times have liberals had to explain their actions with this sentence?
BS! I don't buy this crap for one second. All the evidence shows that the officer acted in a professional manner. Trying to paint him as some sort of 1959 Southern racist is offensive, irresponsible and such a huge cop-out on so many levels. Calling someone a name doesn't make up for the fact that Gates acted very badly and is solely responsible for what happened. The author of this piece joins Gates in needing not only to apologize but to reflect on what he believes and grow in his thinking.
uh...I live in Alab. There is no Amite County in Alab. Totally bogus story.
America did the right thing getting rid of those horrible customs, but you would never know it listening to these race baiters. A rich black man who makes his living teaching race hustling, has an incident with police in which he gets arrested because he behaves like an elitist spoiled brat, and this woman says it's 1959 Mississippi.
Hyphenated Gault is an establishment fawned princess also, and wouldn't know those days and times if they bit her on the butt.
I get so sick of this crap. And we've had this nonsense thrown in our faces for forty five years, usually by people who never suffered any of it.
She already had the story written, but was waiting for an event to make it about. Unfortunately, Skip was not the droid she was looking for.
1) Gates is a racist fool.
2) Obama is a racist fool.
I think the white cop comes out looking professional, gentlemanly, and unbiased.
The US today does have a race problem -- but until Blacks admit to that problem, they won't begin to heal themselves.
Oh, I remember those days. Believe me, a black tenured Harvard professor being defended reflexively and wrongly by his black Mayor and a black President of the United States is just about as far from 1959 as you could possibly imagine. It may be just as racist but I don’t think that’s what the author was suggesting.
What has really changed is NOW the minorities are the
racist and the white folks is(sic) the victim!!!!!!!!!!
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