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What black parents are still telling their children
Troy Daily News ^ | August 19, 2009 | Nat Hentoff

Posted on 08/24/2009 9:51:55 AM PDT by IbJensen

After the Obama-Gates-Crowley "beer summit" at the White House ended, Ronald Walter, a black longtime professor of politics at the University of Maryland, said: "Black parents are using this as a case in point of what they have been saying all along" to their children, "Racism hasn't gone away." Children, and especially black males, "are likely to confront it" from police. (Washington Post, July 30).

And on CNN, Colin Powell chimed in with his advice to black children: "When you're faced with an officer who is trying to do his job and get to the bottom of something, this is not the time to get in an argument with him. I was taught that as a child."

Moreover, when President Obama insisted that the situation surrounding the arrest of the Harvard professor was a "teachable moment," former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani said: "He's actually right. It is teachable." And Giuliani, customarily brusque, told people, including professor Gates, across the land: "Here's the lesson ... shut up when a cop is asking you questions!" (Fox News, July 31).

Clearly, Mr. Giuliani remains unteachable on this subject. As I reported during his dramatic mayoral career, none of his predecessors since 1958 (when I began covering City Hall) had so alienated black New Yorkers by urging his police to engage in large-scale stop-and-frisks of predominately black residents without charging them with a crime. For a time, he also refused to meet with black leaders.

As for blacks' encounters with police nationally, in 1995, Henry Louis Gates Jr. (before he became a household name) wrote in the Oct. 23 New Yorker magazine: "It's a commonplace that white folks trust the police and black folks don't. Whites recognize this in the abstract, but they're continually surprised at the depth of black wariness. They shouldn't be."

Apparently, Cambridge, Mass., police sergeant James Crowley missed that issue of The New Yorker.

In the same article, Gates added that "blacks - in particular black men - swap their experiences of police encounters like war stories." Almost as soon I got to know and hang out with black jazz musicians decades ago, I heard a lot of those war stories.

I hope, but am skeptical, that a lasting result of Gates' manacling will be the gradual decline in the number of these war stories. In all the continued coverage across the nation of the Gates bust, the one story that gave some substance to my hope appeared in the July 26 issue of the Long Island newspaper, Newsday: "Nassau, Suffolk cite training against racial profiling."

Reporters Zachary Dowdy and Rocco Parascandola told of how the "Nassau and Suffolk police departments said they aggressively work to avoid racial profiling through a medley of training programs and updates for officers."

In Nassau, along with 30 hours of training on cultural diversity in the police academy, a much more enduring practice is "data collection program that requires officers to note the race and ethnicity of motorists they stop on the road."

Detective Lt. Kevin Smith adds that this data is periodically studied to determine if the police department engages in racial profiling.

Furthermore - and I hope other police departments will take notice - Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy told Newsday: "Last year, for the first time, we completed a pilot program where we collected statistics to help identify a baseline for traffic stops and to red-flag officers who differed significantly from peers when making these stops."

What then? "We shared," said Levy, "these data with individuals who were above the norm, sought an explanation, and then possibly referred those individuals for additional training."

This postgraduate education for police officers, if extended nationally and to police on the streets as well, could eventually lead to fewer war stories among black males about the humiliation, and worse, of "Driving While Black."


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: beersummit; bho44; blackfamily; cheeseandwhine; childabuse; gatesgate; obama; playtheracecard; racebaiting; racecard; racism
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And Giuliani, customarily brusque, told people, including professor Gates, across the land: "Here's the lesson ... shut up when a cop is asking you questions!" (Fox News, July 31).

Surprisingly sound advice coming from Rudy.

1 posted on 08/24/2009 9:51:55 AM PDT by IbJensen
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To: IbJensen
"Black parents are using this as a case in point of what they have been saying all along" to their children, "Racism hasn't gone away."

The black parents who say this to their children KEEP racism alive by abusing their children verbally. They tell them that no white man will ever like them or see them as an individual or a black person.

2 posted on 08/24/2009 9:53:30 AM PDT by a fool in paradise (Barry Falsewitness is proud of his "healthy skepticism" of organized religion. He's a deceiver.)
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To: a fool in paradise

Interesting, considering it was WHITE PEOPLE who put Oblama in the White House.


3 posted on 08/24/2009 9:54:54 AM PDT by Levante
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To: IbJensen
Chris Rock has some good advice, too.
4 posted on 08/24/2009 9:56:04 AM PDT by Disambiguator
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To: IbJensen
If white males made up 6% of the population and committed 40% of the crime, would the police be profiling if more than 6% of their stops were white males?
5 posted on 08/24/2009 9:57:06 AM PDT by Vigilanteman (Are there any men left in Washington? Or, are there only cowards? Ahmad Shah Massoud)
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To: IbJensen

data collection program that requires officers to note the race and ethnicity of motorists they stop on the road.”

So...They are requiring police to profile?


6 posted on 08/24/2009 9:57:11 AM PDT by Paisan
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To: IbJensen

Those of us who want to see racism on its way out need to realize that others benefit greatly from crying racism. They benefit politically, financially, and socially.

Obama has been allied with such people for decades.

Anyone who can believe that Obama did not understand what the racist rants of Jeremiah Wright meant can believe anything.

Thomas Sowell —


7 posted on 08/24/2009 9:57:32 AM PDT by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: IbJensen
Gov. David Paterson

All Wee-Wee'd up over having been born Black!

8 posted on 08/24/2009 9:58:38 AM PDT by TexasCajun
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To: IbJensen
Furthermore - and I hope other police departments will take notice - Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy told Newsday: "Last year, for the first time, we completed a pilot program where we collected statistics to help identify a baseline for traffic stops and to red-flag officers who differed significantly from peers when making these stops."

Wow... just... wow. So is it their policy to have LEOs specifically ignore black motorists and focus on white ones to prevent getting red flagged? What the Hell is going on in this country?

9 posted on 08/24/2009 9:59:06 AM PDT by rarestia ("One man with a gun can control 100 without one." - Lenin / MOLWN LABE!)
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To: IbJensen

There are few things more difficult to overcome than a person who thinks he is a victim - and doesn’t mind boasting about it.

That angle is used as a cultural hammer by those who think it is their duty to perpetuate their home grown righteousness.

That kind of thinking is contrary to leading a good and decent life.

It’s bull durham.


10 posted on 08/24/2009 9:59:58 AM PDT by RexBeach
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To: Levante

That’s only because they were afraid of being called a racist if they didn’t.

I voted for Alan Keyes in the primary. I didn’t have that worry.

The dirty secret is that Socialists see nothing wrong with Socialism despite a hundred years’ worth of examples. They believe conservativism as practiced under our Constitutional system to be “wrong”.


11 posted on 08/24/2009 10:01:06 AM PDT by a fool in paradise (Barry Falsewitness is proud of his "healthy skepticism" of organized religion. He's a deceiver.)
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To: IbJensen

Uh, forgot the “Barf Alert” for this one.


12 posted on 08/24/2009 10:02:02 AM PDT by SoldierDad (Proud Dad of a U.S. Army Infantry Soldier whose wife is expecting twins.)
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To: IbJensen

I hope they really are not saying stupid stuff about the police - they are just setting their children up for failure later in life.

Grow up and move along ...

All great change in America begins at the dinner table. - Ronald Reagan


13 posted on 08/24/2009 10:03:12 AM PDT by Patrsup (To stubborn to change now)
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To: Vigilanteman
If white males made up 6% of the population and committed 40% of the crime, would the police be profiling if more than 6% of their stops were white males?

Of course not, that would just be common sense and smart policing.

14 posted on 08/24/2009 10:03:59 AM PDT by freespirited (The only thing growing faster than the deficit is Chris Matthews' man crush on Obama -- Tim Pawlenty)
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To: TexasCajun

That guy looks whiter than me!


15 posted on 08/24/2009 10:04:39 AM PDT by Disambiguator
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To: IbJensen

Why don’t we just re segregate? Really. Blacks are never going to think anything other than we are racists no matter what we do. I am finished. I have never treated a person of any color any different than any one else. This is bull and I just as soon let them go back to being their own community and let me be in mine if that is how they want it.


16 posted on 08/24/2009 10:05:14 AM PDT by wombtotomb (Equal opportunity does NOT mean equal outcome!!)
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To: IbJensen
And on CNN, Colin Powell chimed in with his advice to black children: "When you're faced with an officer who is trying to do his job and get to the bottom of something, this is not the time to get in an argument with him. I was taught that as a child."

As a white child, I too, was taught this Mr. Powell. Any idiot who ever has watched "Cops" on TV also knows this to be true. It's called respect for the law.

Sage advice to "black" children which could have been given in a non-racial context.

Only problem is that, like our President, you feel that any and every injustice that life has imposed on you is racially motivated.

As a white adult, whenever I have faced life's injustices, I haven't had the luxury of slamming the race card on the table.

17 posted on 08/24/2009 10:06:55 AM PDT by sonofagun
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To: Disambiguator

I have been posting that in discussions like this for years...partly because it is hilarious, and partly because it is dead-on true in many respects.

I am no fan of Chris Rock, but if you take out the advice about driving with a white friend, there isn’t much to argue about. (I would leave the “Don’t drive with a Mad Woman” in there...if you listen closely, she appears to shout “HE GOT WEED! HE GOT WEED! HE GOT IT UP HIS A$$!”)


18 posted on 08/24/2009 10:06:55 AM PDT by rlmorel ("The Road to Serfdom" by F.A.Hayek - Read it...today.)
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To: IbJensen

Contrary to the myth we were fed for decades.

Middle class blacks are more liberal than poor ones.

Money didn’t fix squat. Education probably hurt...it does everyone now.

(ok...a few exceptions like maybe 2-3%)


19 posted on 08/24/2009 10:08:22 AM PDT by wardaddy (Ya'll don't get too cocky about Bro's malaise...Toon came back too)
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To: IbJensen
And on CNN, Colin Powell chimed in with his advice to black children: "When you're faced with an officer who is trying to do his job and get to the bottom of something, this is not the time to get in an argument with him. I was taught that as a child."

That is the case if you are black, white or any shade in between. If you have a problem with "da man" wait until the immediate incident is past, and then take it to the next level. Never get into a one-on-one with someone who has more authority than you have at that moment. Senator Foghorn doesn't have more authority than the newby patrolman when Senator F has been stopped for an infraction, real or imagined.

20 posted on 08/24/2009 10:08:45 AM PDT by RobinOfKingston (Democrats, the party of evil. Republicans, the party of stupid.)
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