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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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To: IbJensen

It’s true...racism hasn’t gone away...its stronger than ever... except this time its coming from them....


61 posted on 08/24/2009 11:13:29 AM PDT by Awestruck (Now if we can only get the rest of the "republican" leaders to stand up to the liberals.)
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To: Deb

>>>What do you mean “Surprisingly”? Giuliani is the most pro-police, anti-crime mayor New York ever had. Just because he’s been labeled “not conservative enough” here, doesn’t mean it’s true.<<<

Rudy is also pro-abortion, pro-homosexualism and anti-gun rights. He was about as conservative a mayor as conservatives could hope for in liberal dominated NYC, but he is certainly not conservative enough for conservatives to support of POTUS.


62 posted on 08/24/2009 11:15:13 AM PDT by Above My Pay Grade
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To: Above My Pay Grade

Blah, blah, blah... the usual garbage. He is none of those things, but the Rudy haters (like the Mitt haters), delight in their stink.


63 posted on 08/24/2009 11:23:50 AM PDT by Deb (Beat him, strip him and bring him to my tent!)
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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? "

It's even worse than that. Black males don't commit too many crimes until they reach age 14 and that tapers off dramatically before age 34. That's less than 3% of the population.

I find it amazing that if Black males were isolated for 20 years when they turn 14, that ALL US crime could be reduced by 40+%.

Because we don't profile ought to be the big news.

64 posted on 08/24/2009 11:28:10 AM PDT by blam
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To: IbJensen
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."

Colin Powell acted stupidly.

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.

Hardly universal. I'm white & I despise cops.

65 posted on 08/24/2009 11:31:39 AM PDT by Sloth (Irony: Freepers who call Ron Paul a "nut" but swallow all the birth certificate conspiracy crap.)
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To: Deb
If you think that a pro-abortion, pro-homosexualist, anti-gun rights candidate is “conservative” enough, perhaps you should reconsider whether you are a true conservative.

I can excuse Mitt-bots because at least Mitt pretends to have changed all his beliefs to conservative ones. If Mitt were what he claims to be, he would be great conservative, but clearly he is not.

I actually have much more respect for Rudy than Mitt. I disagree vehemently with Rudy on abortion, homosexualism and guns, but at least he had the integrity not to pretend to change his views. Also, Rudy, despite his liberal leanings on certain issues, strongly and effectively supports and campaigns for true conservatives. Mitt, on the other hand, undercuts his rivals and hurts the party.

66 posted on 08/24/2009 11:38:37 AM PDT by Above My Pay Grade
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To: IbJensen

Hentoff writes for Hustler. Therefore, anything he says has no value whatsoever.


67 posted on 08/24/2009 11:40:45 AM PDT by ozzymandus
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To: Night Hides Not
That is cool.
I plan on taking my 9-yr old to the Defending America summit in Arlington, VA in October. I just want him to sit in a session long enough to see how the people look and hear some of what they say. He won't totally understand but I just want him exposed.

There are certainly tainted parts of history for our nation but anti-Americans of any color just don't understand our history.

68 posted on 08/24/2009 11:43:57 AM PDT by trialbyfire (Black conservatives are people too.)
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To: wardaddy
In the 1992 election returns that someone sliced and diced statistically, the votes didn't show that.

Middle- and upper-income (educated) blacks gave Mr. Bush a much better split (a larger minority) of their votes than the low-income blacks, who voted 96% for the Rapist.

Middle-class blacks showed their strong preference for Clinton at the polls, but at least they showed signs of having weighed the issues and candidates on their merits, however preponderantly they finally broke for the Dims.

69 posted on 08/24/2009 11:45:56 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: Above My Pay Grade

Anyone who thinks Rudy is pro-abortion, pro-homo and anti-guns is a fool. Be sure to always listen to the voices who say someone is not conservative enough so you’ll never have to think for yourself.


70 posted on 08/24/2009 11:48:38 AM PDT by Deb (Beat him, strip him and bring him to my tent!)
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To: Dudoight
Isn’t Nat Hentoff a PBS liberal?

Forty years ago, Hentoff was an editor of the bomb-throwing lefty magazine Ramparts, a stable-mate of David Horowitz.

Both of them migrated to the right over the years and could be called "neo-cons" now. Some of the original social liberalism shows through now and again, but they're about done being hustled by the old hard-line Reds and their KGB Active Measures talking-points memos.

71 posted on 08/24/2009 11:49:24 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: IbJensen

What moron wrote this story, Reverend Wright?


72 posted on 08/24/2009 11:50:14 AM PDT by <1/1,000,000th%
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To: Disambiguator

His video actually makes good sense.

EXCEPT the “getting a white friend.”

While this is changing, white and blacks seldom mix socially -— except in the drug culture. So a mixed race group is an indication of drugs.


73 posted on 08/24/2009 11:55:09 AM PDT by TheThirdRuffian (Defend America from the Communist.)
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To: Deb

Rudy initiated the lawsuit (recently dismissed) against the gun manufacturers, seeking to hold them responsible for violence committed with guns they legally produced and sold. He also supported some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation in NYC. It is practically impossible to get a CCW permit in NYC and long guns require a license as well.

He makes it clear he support “abortion rights”, and continued to hold that position in the GOP primary, after briefly flirting with the idea of a flip-flop.

He has always been a big supporter of “gay rights”.

Check his record.


74 posted on 08/24/2009 11:55:26 AM PDT by Above My Pay Grade
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To: Disambiguator

Chris Rock gets it!!!


75 posted on 08/24/2009 12:01:42 PM PDT by CPT Clay (Pick up your weapon and follow me.)
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To: Gabz
Neither have I, but I do plan on starting to teach my blue-eyed blonde 11 year old daughter to start pulling that card, because she is being targeted for being a blue-eyed, blonde, very smart, white girl.

Some 15 years ago, I was attracted to the Friday night lights at a nearby school-district sports complex (field house, baseball field, three football fields, two of them big stadia plus one practice/pony-league "stadiumette"). I took pot luck on the games -- there were two going on simultaneously, one in the 10,000-seat concrete stadium on the right, and one in the 7000-seat stadium on the left. I went with the smaller crowd and found myself watching two all-black high schools (one of which had been white, 50 years ago). One older black guy squinted at me when I came in and asked me, "You lost?" I found a place to sit up on the top row and watched the game, but after a while I noticed the Kashmere High School band, sitting up in the east end-zone seats -- they were almost all black with a handful of Mexicans/Chicanos, except for this one kid. She was a Nordic blonde, a little heavy, built like a German farmer's wife, with extremely long, blonde hair down to her waist. She was playing one of the big horns -- tuba or French horn -- up near the back of the band, and she was pretty much by herself. Other band members seldom turned around and addressed her, she wasn't part of any group. She just sat up there with this little space of empty seats around her and played, and played, and played. I wondered what life was like for her.

76 posted on 08/24/2009 12:08:03 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: george76
[Your quote of Tom Sowell]
Anyone who can believe that Obama did not understand what the racist rants of Jeremiah Wright meant can believe anything.

And anyone who doesn't understand by now that Obama's policy on race is simply that, if you're white, you lose, just isn't paying attention.

Anybody play photo-bingo with his Medal of Freedom honorees? Only way for a white person to be awarded one of those by Obama was to be a) homosexual, b) sick or dying, c) female, d) some combination of the above.

There were zero straight, white, Christian men on his honoree list. Clue-by-four.

77 posted on 08/24/2009 12:16:15 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: wardaddy

I think the following might be the reason:

While a lot of poor blacks are on welfare, those who actually work usually have jobs in the private sector. On the other hand, a huge majority of middle class blacks work in the public sector. Here is one example. My home city of Houston is approximately 25% black. Yet, more than three-quarters of the city bus drivers are black. Affirmative action is most strongly applied towards government jobs. Back in 1997, there was a local affirmative action initiative on the ballot. The voting results in the Chronicle showed that Riverside, a middle to upper-middle class black neighborhood, had the highest support for the initiative.


78 posted on 08/24/2009 12:19:12 PM PDT by hout8475
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To: Disambiguator

Oh my gosh, we don’t get out much, but THAT is funny, LOL!
Gotta show that to the DH ; }

Thank you for the laugh,
Tatt


79 posted on 08/24/2009 12:35:17 PM PDT by thesearethetimes... ("Courage, is fear that has said its prayers." DorothyBernard)
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To: lentulusgracchus
"...She just sat up there with this little space of empty seats around her and played, and played, and played. I wondered what life was like for her..."

I would guess life for her is sad, empty, and lonely, with the alternative even more depressing and empty.

When I worked in schools I saw hundreds of these vignettes played out every day. It was truly depressing, and I swore that if I ever won the lottery I'd assist low SES youth by helping the ones who had academic promise by paying their tuition to a private school. To leave white kids in a minority-dominated school is almost a death sentence.

80 posted on 08/24/2009 12:36:48 PM PDT by I Buried My Guns
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