Event in progress…we go LIVE  to Washington, D.C.

…reporting live on this historic occasion.  A crisis of epic proportions may have been averted…by an invitation from the White House to simply sit down …and have a beer.  This creatively innovative and charmingly elegant President has thrown the old book out and is writing his own.  It’s the audacity of hope and change we can believe in.  It’s a new deal and a new dawning of how business gets done today – over beers.  It has been hinted by White House sources that if today’s summit goes well, possibly other summits may be in the offing.  My source in the Administration said a possible Vodka Fest with Vladimir Putin, a Hookah Pipe Sit-Down with Ahmadinejad, and even a Sake/Mao-tai/RiceCake pow wow with Kim Jong-Il are being floated as of this broadcast with the State Department, Keith Olbermann and Oprah Winfrey.

And now, the President’s helicopter has landed.  The President’s contingent of roughly three thousand security personnel are assuming their perimeters, extension perimeters and contingency perimeters.

Sgt. Crowley and Professor Gates await the President beside the picnic table arranged for this seminal benchmark in race relations in America.

The beer is on ice – a large keg bearing the Presidential Seal. (more…)

Upon his return from an overseas trip Henry Louis Gates and his driver were attempting to open the front door, which was jammed shut. A passer-by noticed the men forcing the door open and phoned the police. By the time Sergeant James Crowley, the responding police officer, arrived Gates was inside his home. Crowley asked Gates to step out of his home and show some identification, which according to Crowley, the professor produced only after accusing the police of hassling him because he is a “Black man living in America” and saying something about Crowley’s mamma. The situation continued to escalate until finally Gates was arrested for creating a public disturbance.

Unfortunately, rather than using this incident as an opportunity to have an honest and substantive conversation about stereotypes and race, racialists of every stripe have high-jacked the discussion in order to continue a one-sided discussion focusing on Black victim-hood. One such racialist is our post-racial President Barack Obama.

During his Wednesday evening press conference the President claimed that Gates was the victim of racial profiling and that the Cambridge Police “acted stupidly” in arresting Gates for breaking into his own home. Alas, the president was tall on rhetoric, but short on facts, which was surprising (or perhaps not) given that the conference questions were pre-approved and he knew to expect it. Contrary to the President’s assertion- Gates was not profiled. The police were responding to a report of a possible break-in at Gates home. Nor was Gates arrested for breaking into his own home. He was arrested for disorderly conduct. (more…)

As racial theorists like to say, “it’s all about context.”  Well, here is some recent Harvard context which may be illuminating.  I will let readers debate and decide.

Two months ago, a young African American man was shot by (allegedly) another African American man in the basement of Kirkland House, a Harvard campus dorm.  Neither was a Harvard student.

Text messages sent by the victim, along with a pound of marijuana and approximately $1000 found with his body, suggest that he was a drug dealer.  The alleged shooter, up from New York, was (and possibly remains?) the long term boyfriend of a Harvard co-ed.  Meanwhile, a second female student, who was suspected to have given the shooter a Harvard access card and had past disciplinary problems, was banned from campus and denied graduation with her class.  All of which, of course, roiled the campus and inflamed racial tensions.

The second female student told the Boston Globe, “I do believe I am being singled out…  The honest answer to that is that I’m black and I’m poor and I’m from New York and I walk a certain way and I keep my clothes a certain way… It’s something that labels me as different from everyone else.” (more…)