Frankly I think there are few people on the sphere who bring greater gravitas to the entire matter about the Gates /Crowley affair than Sister Toldjah. Yesterday morning’s post on that point reinforces that perception. [1]
— President Obama expressed [2] “regret” yesterday – but did not apologize [3] – for the choice of words he initially used to describe the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.:
President Obama said Friday that he “could have calibrated” his words more carefully in the controversy over the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. but added that he believed there was an “overreaction” by both sides in a case that has inflamed racial tensions across the country.
Mr. Obama said he hoped the case became “a teachable moment” to be used to improve relations between minorities and police officers.
Oh yes – it’s certainly been a “teachable moment” – at least of terms of how we know our President will use issues [4] like this to his advantage, anyway.
— Related to Obama’s “change in tone,” he has also expressed [5] an interest in having both Crowley, who he called Friday [6], and Gates visit the WH to “have a beer” with him, in an apparent gesture meant to bridge the racial divide. Gates has responded [7] by saying he would be interested as well … as a way of “using” his “racial profiling experience” as a way to improve the justice system for black people in the future:
“It was very kind of the President to phone me today [8]. Vernon Jordan [9] is absolutely correct: my unfortunate experience will only have a larger meaning if we can all use this to diminish racial profiling and to enhance fairness and equity in the criminal justice system for poor people and for people of color.
And to that end, I look forward to studying the history of racial profiling in a new documentary for PBS. I told the President that my principal regret was that all of the attention paid to his deeply supportive remarks during his press conference had distracted attention from his health care initiative. I am pleased that he, too, is eager to use my experience as a teaching moment, and if meeting Sgt. [James] Crowley for a beer with the President will further that end, then I would be happy to oblige.
After all, I first proposed that Sgt. Crowley and I meet as early as last Monday. If my experience leads to the lessening of the occurrence of racial profiling, then I would find that enormously gratifying. Because, in the end, this is not about me at all; it is about the creation of a society in which ‘equal justice before law’ is a lived reality.”
Translation: I’m going to milk my “victimhood” status for all it is worth.
There’s far more in a way of commentary on her site this morning about this nonsense. She has it right, of course, that Gates’s milking the victimhood status, and frankly that Obama is, as well. And the thing is, it’s not like this whole thing wasn’t predictable. It was bound to come up eventually.
The one thing about all of this I’ve not seen anybody make note of yet is that this is just one more example of how far out of touch with mainstream America this White House really is. Obama’s insistence on playing the race card , his knee-jerk tendency to play the victimhood card, may play well among certain segments of black America. But it is certainly not playing out well with the majority of us. And so we continue to watch the Obama polling numbers drop precipitously by the day.
So much, then, for the post racial society that we were promised. Apparently, we are to accept that in the same light that we accept the promises of the stimulus keeping the unemployment rate in the single digits. We are to accept these statements in the same light that we accept the promise of a pony in every garage, if we would but accept that government is the one to be running health care. And so on.
And why not? According to the polling numbers and the vast majority of black America does. Given that bit of intellectual dishonesty we see coming from the 90 percent of black America who still supports Obama, I can’t help but wonder if this presidency hasn’t damaged our progress toward the post racial America that we were promised. It certainly hasn’t advanced it. The presidency, if nothing else, is a trust. Given the massive failures of this presidency, even just six months into it, it’s a struggle to envision the American people trusting someone so prone to racial identity with the office again.