Welcome to Google's post-racial America!

From my Google Reader:

Of the hundreds of thousands of people who read Crooked Timber, only three of them cheered when the Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research was arrested. 

Racism in America is truly dead. 

(Except for the insignificant bit of it that motivated the arrest in the first place.)

Comments

[happyfeet]

Everyone saw your cheap race-baity president in all his cheap race-baity glory, and there's no walking it back.

Deal.

[happyfeet]

Y'all are very mean-spirited people and you keep saying stuff to hurt my feelings and I don't understand why you would do that.

I think it's time for some very very fresh thinkings on race in our America and I volunteer to help.

I am a good person.

[happyfeet]

In less than four hours the Barack Obama will drink the beer of Racial Healing. Are you ready for the new era that is upon us?

I am.

[happyfeet]

Sergeant Crowley and I, through an accident of time and place, have been cast together, inextricably, as characters – as metaphors, really – in a thousand narratives about race over which he and I have absolutely no control. - that foppish Harvard guy what is BFFs with sitting president Barack Obama

ok if that doesn't scream pompous dillhole then I ask you, what does? The inextricably really sells it I think.

[happyfeet]

I can't remember where I read about this but someone pointed out that this is an interesting juxtaposition to make with the Gates incident.

In October 2002, [Charles Moose] was the primary official in charge of the efforts to apprehend those responsible for the Beltway sniper attacks.

Rank-and-file cops in Montgomery County have charged that Moose's racial blinders endangered patrol officers and investigators (from whom physical descriptions of the suspects were withheld) -- and probably cost lives. Moose preaches that "We must all be social engineers" and admits to having "complicated" feelings about beltway snipers Muhammad and Malvo because they are black.

That's from wikipedia. I remember President Bush didn't call Mr. Moose a big stupidhead, which I think was very circumspect. But people died cause of a for real racist cop's racial profilings hindered an investigation.

I wonder what Mr. Gates would make of Mr. Moose? We sure didn't have us a teachable moment back then.

It is incumbent upon Sergeant Crowley and me to utilize the great opportunity that fate has given us to foster greater sympathy among the American public for the daily perils of policing on the one hand, and for the genuine fears of racial profiling on the other hand.*

That's a false dichotomy. Being accused of racial profiling by some screechy pompous Harvard fop is one of the daily perils of policing. And Gates is working his foppish little heart out to make it all the more so.

All in all this was a very disappointing and condescending bit of theater I think what Barack Obama orchestrated. Not to mention awkward in a that's my worst nightmare kind of way that probably resonates with a lot of white guys. Right up there with a sexual harassment investigation as a shoot me now kind of moment in one's professional life I'd imagine.

I'm gonna make coffee and have a meeting with NG. Let's everybody have a great day.

[David R. Block]

So now I know what happyfeet has been up to when he's not at PW.

So let's see now, we have the 911 caller being called a racist, the arresting officer being called a racist, and the black officer on the scene being called an "Uncle Tom."

This post-racial Presidency isn't sounding very post-racial. It sounds very much like business as usual.

[Julian]

I think this video (which I saw first on EoTW) is an excellent explanation of a more productive way to talk about racism:

http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2008/08/02/i-dont-care-what-you-are-i-care-about-what-you-did/