Friday, July 24, 2009

OBAMA'S FRIEND HENRY LOUIS GATES: HERE WE GO AGAIN

"Skip Gates is a friend (of mine)," said Barack Obama on his July 22nd press conference. Then he said, "The police acted stupidly". In the middle somewhere, he said he didn't have all the facts and admitted to being biased due to his friendship with Gates.

As for the police acting stupidly, the official police report seems to pin the "stupid" button squarely on the chest of a Harvard professor who teaches African American Studies. If the police report is at all true, the default position of this professor, at least in this case, was to ASSUME racism before getting the facts, which seems to be what his friend Barack Obama did at the press conference, albeit less overtly.

Putting aside the argument about Gates being arrested justly or unjustly for a minute, the police report paints a picture of an angry and defensive black man with racism being an extremely sensitive issue. Doesn't it make one wonder about the tenets of the brand of African American studies he teaches? Does it share views common with Black Liberation Theology?

Jeremiah Wright was caught on tape saying derisive and racist things about America and Americans. His words were hateful and racist. Barack Obama sat in his church for 20 years. The words documented to have come from Gates' mouth as a white police officer approached his home seem to share a common resentment with those of Wright.

Now we have Obama admitting that Gates is a friend of his. Here we go Again. Whether officer Crowley followed the letter of the law may still be in question. What does NOT appear to be in question (based on eye witness accounts of the incident), the people Obama seems to befriend have race as a central focal point in their lives.

Moving on and getting past racism must involve a commitment to moving on and getting past it.

It was reported that Gates yelled to Officer Crowley, 'You have no idea who you're messing with and you haven't heard the last of this.' I wonder how Gates feels about practically everyone knowing him under these circumstances. If the report quoted him accurately, he may not know how right he was about hearing the last of it either.

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