Trump's dinner with Nick Fuentes, Holocaust denier

 It's been confirmed by Axios that Trump had dinner with both Fuentes and Kanye this week.

Former President Trump dined and conversed with white nationalist Nick Fuentes and rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Tuesday night, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Why it matters: Trump's direct engagement with a man labeled a "white supremacist" by the Justice Department, one week after declaring his 2024 candidacy, is likely to draw renewed outrage over the former president's embrace of extremists.

• Fuentes, who frequently promotes racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, had been spotted with Ye at Mar-a-Lago, but reports erroneously suggested he did not have dinner with the former president.

What they're saying: "Kanye West very much wanted to visit Mar-a-Lago. Our dinner meeting was intended to be Kanye and me only, but he arrived with a guest whom I had never met and knew nothing about," Trump said in a statement.

• A Trump spokesman did not provide comment on additional reporting about the dinner. Fuentes did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Behind the scenes: A source familiar with the dinner conversation told Axios that Trump "seemed very taken" with Fuentes, impressed that the 24-year-old was able to rattle off statistics and recall speeches dating back to his 2016 campaign.

• Paraphrasing the conversation, the source said Fuentes told the president he preferred him to be "authentic," and that Trump seemed scripted and unlike himself during his recent 2024 campaign announcement speech.
• Trump responded, “You like it better when I just speak off the cuff," the source said. Fuentes replied that he did, calling Trump an "amazing" president when he was unrestrained. "There was a lot of fawning back and forth," the source added.

Fuentes told Trump that he represented a side of Trump's base that was disappointed with his newly cautious approach, especially with what some far-right activists view as a lack of support for those charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

• Trump didn't disagree with Fuentes, but said he has advisers who want him to read off teleprompters and be more "presidential." Notably, Trump referred to himself as a politician, which he has been loathe to do in the past.
• Fuentes also told Trump that he would crush potential 2024 Republican rivals in a primary, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Trump asked for Fuentes' opinion on other candidates as well.

Trump at one point turned to Ye and said, "I really like this guy. He gets me," according to the source.

• "To be honest, I don't believe the president knew who the hell [Fuentes] was," the source added.

See also the New York Times article on the dinner: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/25/us/politics/trump-nick-fuentes-dinner.html

Racists and antisemites once banned by Twitter will be coming back

Elon Musk has decided that accounts once banned from Twitter because of their racism and antisemitism will once again be allowed on the site. A thread from Michael Edison Hayden, Senior Investigative Reporter and Spokesperson for the SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) about people likely to reappear: David Duke, Mike Peinovich, and Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer. 

Link to start of the thread: Michael Edison Hayden on racists returning to Twitter 

 

KKK, "League of the South," "Council of Conservative Citizens" all active in South Carolina

And for those who will, inevitably, claim the murderer of nine Black people yesterday was "mentally ill" and "not a terrorist," some reality about hate groups in South Carolina:

South Carolina is home to at least 19 known hate groups

South Carolina, where the Confederate flag still flies on statehouse grounds, is a hotbed for racist hate groups....

Authorities have not so far named any hate groups in connection. But according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are at least 19 known hate groups in the state, including two factions of the Ku Klux Klan and four white nationalist groups, NBC News reports. More than a dozen of the groups are based in racial hatred specifically.

Of the state’s six neo-Confederate groups, South Carolina is home to two branches of League of the South. They believe the South should secede and be run by whites, according to the SPLC’s website. 

The white separatist group Council of Conservative Citizens, opposed to racial integration, also operates in South Carolina, NBC News reports. Kyle Rogers, leader of that group, was quoted by the Post Courier in 2012 as saying that American blacks “are the most privileged members of their race” that “benefit greatly from the generosity of American whites, as they always have.” 

Last July, residents in the South Carolina city of Seneca awoke to find bags of candy containing notes asking them to join the KKK, according to the Associated Press. 

Violence from “far right” extremists is one of the top threats singled out by law enforcement agencies polled by the New York Times last year. Pointing that out was so politically fraught that Daryl Johnson, an expert in right wing terrorist groups left the Department of Homeland Security in 2010 after it dissolved his team, Wired reports.
“There’ve been no hearings about the rising white supremacist threat, but there’s been a long list of attacks over the last few years,” he told Wired. “But they still hold hearings about Muslim extremism. It’s out of balance.”

As I have repeatedly said about terrorism committed by jihadis - we need to look at the ideology that motivates people like this murderer to act. Whether or not he was "mentally ill," why did he choose to go to this particular church to kill people? This was not a random killing. It was targeted to hurt and kill African Americans.

#Charleston Massacre

I am so tired of waking up in the morning to the awful news that another evil man has committed mass murder in the United States. I am so tired of waking up to hear that another white person has murdered black people or other people of color in the United States. These are the names of the nine African-American people who were murdered last night at the Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, because they were African-American.

• Cynthia Hurd, 54, a library branch manager
• Susie Jackson, 87
• Ethel Lance, 70
• The Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49
• The Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41, the church’s pastor and a state senator
• Tywanza Sanders, 26
• The Rev. Daniel Simmons, 74, who died at the hospital after the shooting
• The Rev. Sharonda Singleton, 45
• Myra Thompson, 59

More on some of the victims:

Sen. Pinckney and Sanders were both alumni of Allen University. The university was founded soon after the American Civil War on the basis of the AME church. 

Sanders was a 2014 graduate of the Division of Business Administration. 

Rev. Sharonda Singleton was a speech therapist and track coach at Goose Creek High School in South Carolina. 

Hurd was a 31-year employee of the Charleston County Public Library. 

Thompson was a longtime member of the church and was teaching Bible study when she was killed. Her husband, Rev. Anthony Thompson, is one of the bishop's clergy members. 

Witnesses say the gunman stood up and declared he was there "to shoot black people." Another survivor told Sylvia Johnson, a cousin of Pinckney, that the shooter said, "I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go."

I'm not interested in knowing about the murderer. We spend too much talking about the perpetrators. Let's talk about the victims - the people we all lost today. Photos and some information about four of the victims of the #CharlestonMassacre.

Cynthia Hurd worked for Charleston libraries for 30 years. She was killed in the #CharlestonMassacre. #SayTheirNames pic.twitter.com/OKtW3oSRck

— Colorlines.com (@Colorlines) June 18, 2015

Tywanza Sanders has been identified as a victim in #CharlestonMassacre. He recently graduated from Allen University. pic.twitter.com/ifneDy5S5e

— Colorlines.com (@Colorlines) June 18, 2015

Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, pictured with son, was shot dead in #CharlestonMassacre. She coached a girls track team. pic.twitter.com/SUwl3jl4qL

— Colorlines.com (@Colorlines) June 18, 2015

Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton killed in #CharlestonMassacre (w/family) #CharlestonShooting http://t.co/kk7LbTkPEP pic.twitter.com/ieAToURFfY

— #SayHerName (@POPSspotSports) June 18, 2015

Rev. Clementa Pinckney is confirmed as one of the 9 victims killed in the #CharlestonMassacre. He was also a Senator. pic.twitter.com/RcjdjBAK5V

— Colorlines.com (@Colorlines) June 18, 2015

The pastor killed in the #CharlestonShooting #CharlestonMassacre #ClementaPinckney is a member of #AlphaPhiAlpha pic.twitter.com/HslQcWCDHJ

— Marc (@marclaw69) June 18, 2015

Keep in mind, all of these victims were in church. #CharlestonMassacre

— Colorlines.com (@Colorlines) June 18, 2015

On the church where they were killed: http://www.thenation.com/blog/210313/charlestons-mother-emanuel-church-has-stared-down-racist-violence-200-years

Mother Emanuel Church

Charles Blow on the massacre:

The devil will sit down in the middle of your prayer meeting then stand and destroy you... #CharlestonMassacre

— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) June 18, 2015

When you shoot and kill anyone it's awful, but when you shoot and kill a 87 year old woman there is no redemption for you...#Charleston

— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) June 18, 2015

Just let me get this straight: This coward killed 3 Revs, a state senator, & women who were 26, 54, 59, 70 & 87 years old...in church! #Evil

— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) June 18, 2015

You have to #StayWoke. The devil is bold! He will walk straight through the front doors of the church... #CharlestonMassacre

— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) June 18, 2015

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Reparations are due because black people have been injured

Another great article by Ta-Nehisi Coates, this time arguing with a writer for the National Review who believes that there is actually such a thing as "race":

Reparations are not due because black people are black, but because black people have been injured. And the Anglo-American tradition has never been a system of "racial apportionment," but of racist apportionment. Like most writers and public intellectuals (liberal and conservative) Williamson's reply is rooted in the idea of "race" as constant—i.e. there is a "black race" that can be traced back to Africa, and a "white race" that can be traced back to Europe. There certainly is such a thing as African and European ancestry, and that ancestry is not entirely irrelevant to our world. But ancestry is tangential, and sometimes wholly unrelated, to racism, injury, and reparations.

We know this because there is no constant idea of "black" or "white" across time or space. We know this because Charlie Patton fathered the blues, and Alessandro de Medici ruled in Venice. Black in America is not black in Brazil, and black in modern America is not even black in 18th-century Louisiana. Nor are people we consider "white" today any sort of constant. Throughout American history it has been common to speak of an "Italian race," an "Irish race," a "Frankish race," a "Jewish race" even a "Southern race." One might take a hard look at Williamson's agreeable portrait, for instance, and note the problem of assigning anyone to a race. "Race," writes the imminent historian Nell Irvin Painter, "is an idea, not a fact."

In this country, at this moment, "African-Americans" are an ethnic group comprised of individuals of varying degrees of direct African ancestry. Nothing about this fact necessitated plunder or injury, and it is the injury—through red-lining, black codes, slaves codes, lynching, ghettoization, fraud, rape, and murder—with which reparations concerns itself. The point is not "racial apportionment," which is to say giving people things because they are black. It is injury apportionment, which is to say restoring things to people who have been plundered.

President of Vassar condemns the "racist, anti-Semitic graphic" posted by Vassar SJP

As reported by William Jacobson of the Legal Insurrection blog, the President of Vassar College, Catherine Hill, has just sent out an email to the Vassar community about the Vassar SJP:

Subject: [Students] Bias incident investigation
Date: Wed, 14 May 2014 21:07:47

To the Vassar Community:

I am writing to condemn a racist, anti-Semitic graphic posted to the Tumblr online site affiliated with the Vassar chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). In response to this posting, the college is initiating a full investigation and action on the matter under established college procedures. SJP Vassar is a Vassar student “preliminary organization,” an initial status required of all student organizations as they seek full certification by the Vassar Student Association (VSA). I am requesting VSA review of the SJP’s pre-organization status. The college is also investigating the SJP’s online posting as a bias incident under college regulations. I also request that the SJP Vassar membership take responsibility for its actions and cease representing itself as an official Vassar group, pending these investigations. Vassar College is committed to free speech and academic freedom, but we condemn racist, hateful speech.

Catharine Hill

Jacobson suggests that the graphic might be the Nazi propaganda poster that I wrote about a couple of days ago.

Once again: Vassar SJP and White Nationalist publications

There are times when you simply cannot make it up. SJP Vassar's Communique #1 - On White Supremacy and Its Watchdog reads as if it came from the Onion.

Where to start with the fisking?

Well, first off, they accuse nameless people of "lies, propaganda, and misrepresentation leveled against our movement. Baseless ad hominem attacks have been launched against us in an attempt to mystify both our politics and those of our attackers."

I've read many of the recent critical articles about SJP Vassar, and they address what the group is doing, without engaging in ad hominem attacks. The Commentary article from yesterday even ends with these words: "The SJP consists of students, and perhaps a national publication is not the place to discuss their foolishness." While condescending, this is not an ad hominem attack.

I have not attacked the SJP Vassar students personally. I have criticized their words, as posted on their various internet sites.

They claim that people are accusing them of supporting white supremacy. Since they provide no links, I don't know who they are referring to. I certainly haven't accused them of doing this. I have demonstrated, however, that their Tumblr blog reposts material from White Nationalist sites. They reposted an article from The Occidental Quarterly called "Zionist Internet Trolls." They reposted a cartoon from a White Nationalist Tumblr blog called "neonationalist." Both of these postings are still up on their Tumblr blog (as of this moment). Another blogger on Tumblr, Ora-Shira's Blog commented to them:

The article then says: "We find it an appalling irony to be accused of supporting white supremacy by those who support the racist Israeli regime and its white nationalist agenda. This agenda is comprised of policies that work towards exterminating Palestinians and African migrants, only to replace them with predominantly white Euro-American settlers."

I would like to see some proof that Israel is trying to exterminate Palestinians and African migrants. As Ari Shavit shows in his book My Promised Land, Israeli forces did expel Palestinian Arabs during the 1948-49 war. He details what happened in Lydda, and there are many other examples. Israeli forces also committed atrocities against Palestinians then; the most notorious example is the massacre at Deir Yassin (which Shavit also writes about). About 150,000 Arabs were left inside of Israel at the end of the 1948 war. Arabs are now about 20% of the total Israeli population. The refugees who fled to Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq have also increased greatly in population since 1948. While the State of Israel is guilty of crimes against Palestinians, it certainly did not in 1948 and certainly not now try to "exterminate" Palestinians. 

And the Jewish immigrants who came after 1948 were predominantly not "white Euro-American settlers." Hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees entered Israel in the next few decades from North Africa and the Middle East, motivated to leave Arab and Muslim countries by the physical attacks and discrimination that they encountered in those countries. The Arab countries are also guilty of crimes against their indigineous Jewish populations. The current Jewish population of Israel currently is about half of Ashkenazi descent (many of them Holocaust survivors and their descendants) and half of Sephardi-Mizrachi descent.

Now we get to the heart of the matter. SJP Vassar writes:

This should go without saying, and yet here we are saying it: providing an article link from a white nationalist publication does not mean we support white nationalist ideology; rather, we found this particular article’s description of those behind zionist propaganda campaigns and how they operate to be a helpful articulation of problems many organizations like us face. A profound irony is that we have come under assault from the very same trolls the article describes. As students who must navigate the world under the thumb of white supremacy, we understand what it is like to have to take ideas from organizations that have supported white supremacist structures, whether they be from Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, Legal Insurrection, or the Occidental Quarterly, and put them in a productive conversation. The struggle for justice for the Palestinian people will continue despite petty slander, and we at SJP Vassar strongly encourage anyone who may read this to question the dominant narrative.

The article is trying to evade the fact that they reposted from a White Nationalist site by claiming that Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, and Legal Insurrection all support "white supremacist structures," along with Occidental Quarterly. OQ publishes articles that denigrate Black people as inferior to whites. It publishes articles from Kevin MacDonald, who accuses Jews of having a "group evolutionary strategy" to undermine western white civilization. While the Jerusalem Post and Legal Insurrection are conservative publications, they would never publish articles like those. OQ is the "kinder, gentler" face of the white supremacist movement in the United States. The SPLC puts OQ into the category of "academic racism," writing "Founded in 2001 by Chicago millionaire publishing scion William H. Regnery, the Charles Martel Society puts out The Occidental Quarterly, a journal devoted to the idea that 'race informs culture' that is edited by a Who's Who of the radical right."

Why would an ostensibly anti-racist organization like SJP Vassar want to be connected in any way with The Occidental Quarterly? This is what I find particularly baffling. Why didn't they just apologize, remove the articles from the Tumblr blog, and move on?

More from SJP Vassar - it is "alright" to republish articles from antisemitic White Nationalists

Vassar Students for Justice in Palestine justified their publication of a link from the Occidental Quarterly on their Facebook page as well.

This is a screencap of the discussion:

"If the idea is alright, who cares where they come from?" Would they have the same response if they found out a supporter of Israel had links to racist sites on his or her blog? I doubt it - it would be used as a way to characterize that person also as a racist.

What is wrong with them?

SJP Vassar and White Nationalism

Last night I tweeted to @SJPVassar about their use of an article from the Occidental Quarterly (see previous post), and this is the response I got.

I didn't think it was possible to prove that there exist links (intellectual, political) between at least part of the pro-BDS movement and far right antisemitism and white nationalism, but here it is. I wonder who is writing the tweets for SJP Vassar. If someone is really antiracist, as they claim to be, they would stay far, far away from even a hint of connection to the organized racist and antisemitic far right. 

And it's not accidental - the SJP Vassar Tumblr just posted from another white nationalist on Tumblr.

This is the Tumblr blog of "neonationalist":

His slogan? "I have no white guilt."

Racism poisons Israeli society

Good article from Shiraz Socialist on how Racism poisons Israeli society.

“Garbage”. “Poison”. “Cancer”. These are some of the words used by Israeli politicians to describe African migrants in the last month, which has seen racist riots, assaults and firebombings in working-class neighbourhoods of south Tel Aviv, encouraged and partly orchestrated by the “mainstream” right. 

The real cancer in Israeli society is racism, running riot as Israel entrenches its domination over the Palestinians, Israeli society is further militarised and brutalised, and Israeli politics shifts further and further to the right. 

To give a flavour of the kind of things being said about migrants and refugees, one Knesset member (MK, like MP), Aryeh Eldad has argued that “Anyone that penetrates Israel’s border should be shot— a Swedish tourist, Sudanese from Eritrea, Eritreans from Sudan, Asians from Sinai. Whoever touches Israel’s border — shot.” He describes people who oppose such a policy as “bleeding hearts”. 

Eldad is a member of a small nationalist party. But politicians from the government party Likud were instrumental in sparking the riots. Meanwhile the government has refused to condemn attacks on Africans and instead used them as an excuse to step up its anti-migrant agenda. This includes 

• a new law allowing refugees to be jailed for three years, and those who help them illegally to be jailed for up to 15 years; • seeking to immediately deport all refugees from South Sudan, with raids across Israel since the start of June, on the spurious pretext that now it has separated from Sudan it is safe (ironically for the Israeli right, this will hardly lessen the number of refugees in Israel, since the vast majority come from Sudan and Eritrea, to which they cannot legally be returned); • building a 150-mile fence along the border with Egypt; • building a giant detention centre, with accommodation made out of cargo crates, in the Negev desert. 

Naturally such measures will — in addition to directly producing a lot of death and suffering — boost racism and lead to further attacks on those who remain in the cities (and probably black Jewish Israelis — this has already happened in at least one case).
There are 60,000 African migrants in Israel, out of a population of almost 8 million. Yet anti-African racism is even more widespread than anti-Arab racism, and seems to be rapidly becoming a new cutting edge for political reaction in Israel. Likud MK Miri Regev described African migrants as “a cancer in our body” — and one poll suggests just over half of Jewish Israelis agree with her. One third sympathise with the recent attacks. Even among Arab Israelis, 23 percent sympathise with the attacks, though “only” 19 percent agree with the “cancer” description. 

Left-leaning and secular Israelis are much less likely to hold anti-African views. But no large political organisation has spoken out in defence of migrants. The Israeli Labor Party is typically speaking out of both sides of its mouth, condemning (in the words of its leader Shelly Yachimovich) “inflammatory and shocking racial incitement against foreigners” but also saying that “the government has failed… and let the slums be flooded by migrant workers and refugees, thereby helping to kindle wild passions” and asserting the need to “protect the country from facing a huge mass of migrant workers”. It has set up a “panel of experts” on the issue, headed by a former head of the Israeli national police’s serious crime department. The Histadrut union federation seems to have remained quiet.....

This is an article cross-posted from the Workers Liberty website.  The Alliance for Workers Liberty is a small far-left wing party in Britain that, unlike the other far-left-wing parties and organizations in Britain, actually supports Israel and a two-state solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. This article reflects accurately what is happening in Israeli society today.

Hate Crimes - FBI report for 2008

The annual FBI report on hate crimes for 2008 has been posted to the FBI website, and once again it is interesting to see what the most common hate crimes were (among those reported to law enforcement agencies, which certainly doesn't include all hate crimes committed in the U.S. in 2008).

The FBI reports:

Of the 7,780 single-bias incidents reported in 2008:

• 51.3 percent were racially motivated.
• 19.5 percent were motivated by religious bias.
• 16.7 percent stemmed from sexual-orientation bias.
• 11.5 percent resulted from ethnicity/national origin bias.
• 1.0 percent were motivated by disability bias.

Of hate crimes motivated by race (total 4,704), 3,413 were motivated by anti-Black prejudice (72.5% of the total). This means that 37% of all hate crimes reported were motivated by anti-Black prejudice. The percentage of the American population which is African-American is about 12%.

Hate crimes motivated by bias against people of a particular religious group break down as follows:
There were 1,606 hate crime offenses motivated by religious bias in 2008. A breakdown of these offenses shows:

• 65.7 percent were anti-Jewish.
• 13.2 percent were anti-other religion.
• 7.7 percent were anti-Islamic.
• 4.7 percent were anti-Catholic.
• 4.2 percent were anti-multiple religions, group.
• 3.7 percent were anti-Protestant.
• 0.9 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc.

Therefore, 12.8% of all hate crimes were motivated by anti-Jewish prejudice and 1.5% of all hate crimes were motivated by anti-Muslim prejudice. I wonder what the "other religion" category includes. Jews are about 2% of the American population, while Muslims are less than that (when I looked this up a couple of years ago, the best figure I could come up with was about 2 million Muslims in the U.S. - claims that there are up to 6 million Muslims in the U.S. do not seem supportable by the evidence).

If we break down the statistics by type of crime, it's also interesting. Fortunately, in 2008, there were no reported murders on the basis of religion, and one rape.

For the remaining crimes against persons, these are the statistics:

Aggravated assault - total crimes 47
• anti-Jewish: 25 (53%)
• anti-Catholic: 1 (2.1%)
• anti-Protestant: 3 (6.3%)
• anti-Islamic: 5 (10.6%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 1 (2.1%)
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Simple assault - total crimes 114
• anti-Jewish:58 (50.8%)
• anti-Catholic: 3 (2.6%)
• anti-Protestant: 3 (2.6%)
• anti-Islamic: 30 (26%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 1
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Intimidation - total crimes 311
• anti-Jewish: 201 (64.6%)
• anti-Catholic: 3
• anti-Protestant: 1
• anti-Islamic: 46 (14.7%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 0
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Statistics for crimes against property:

Lumping together robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft - total crimes 83
• anti-Jewish: 23 (27%)
• anti-Catholic: 12 (14%)
• anti-Protestant: 8 (9.6%)
• anti-Islamic: 5 (6%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 5 (6%)
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Arson - total crimes 13
• anti-Jewish: 4 (30.7%)
• anti-Catholic: 0
• anti-Protestant: 2 (15%)
• anti-Islamic: 5 (38%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 0
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Destruction/damage/vandalism - total crimes 1029
• anti-Jewish: 742 (72%)
• anti-Catholic: 0
• anti-Protestant: 2 (15%)
• anti-Islamic: 5 (38%)
• anti-atheist or agnostic: 0
(the rest were against either "other religion" or "multiple religions")

Even though, according to polls, there is more prejudice against Muslims in American society (for example, the percentage of Americans who would not vote for a Muslim for President is far higher than the percentage who would not vote for a Jew), there are more actual crimes committed against Jews based on anti-Jewish prejudice.

The total number of victims of hate crimes in 2008 were reported as 9,683 (single-bias incidents). They included (among others):
3,596 Blacks (37%)
1,145 Jews (11.8%)
1,672 gay men, lesbians, or bisexuals (17.2%)
792 Hispanics (8%)

This means, just as I said in 2007, "From these statistics, we can see that the hatreds rampant in the United States are really the old tried and true ones - anti-black racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiments."

Officer Defends Arrest of Harvard Professor

Some updates on this issue:

1. Stanley Fish has finally written a column in the New York Times that I agree with, about how the accomplishments of both Professor Gates and President Obama are being doubted because of their blackness. At Duke, where Fish hired Gates as a professor in the English department, his accomplishments were doubted because of his blackness - "Doubts were expressed in letters written by senior professors about his scholarly credentials, which were vastly superior to those of his detractors. (He was already a recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, the so called 'genius award.')" In a similar way, the "Birthers" - those people who do not believe that Obama was born in the United States - cast doubt on his right to the Presidency.

Gates is once again regarded with suspicion because, as the cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson put it in an interview, he has committed the crime of being H.W.B., Housed While Black....

Gates and Obama are not only friends; they are in the same position, suspected of occupying a majestic residence under false pretenses. And Obama is a double offender. Not only is he guilty of being Housed While Black; he is the first in American history guilty of being P.W.B., President While Black.

Both Professor Gates and President Obama challenge a powerful white racist stereotype about blacks - the belief that they are inherently less intelligent, and therefore inferior to whites. And if blacks are inferior to whites, anything they accomplish in life is a sham and a trick, especially if they do better than a white person. It's embarassing to my profession that senior members of the Duke faculty thought that Gates was inferior to them despite having won an award that they doubtless would have liked to receive themselves.

2. Charles Blow, NYTimes op-ed columnist, writes about his first experience with a white policeman in Louisiana who threatened to shoot him and his friends at a traffic stop: Welcome to the Club. He also brings some useful statistics into the debate:

A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted last July asked: “Have you ever felt you were stopped by the police just because of your race or ethnic background?” Sixty-six percent of black men said yes. Only 9 percent of white men said the same.

These views are not without merit. A series of racial-profiling studies across the country have found that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be stopped and searched than whites.

In fact, last year the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York law firm specializing in human rights, released a damning study of the racial-profiling practices of the New York Police Department. It found that more than 80 percent of those stopped and frisked were black or Hispanic. The report also said that when stopped, 45 percent of blacks and Hispanics were frisked, compared with 29 percent of whites, even though white suspects were 70 percent more likely than black suspects to have a weapon.

3. The President has also issued a new statement about the arrest and subsequent controversy arising from his words:

He did not apologize but softened his language. “I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station,” he said. “I also continue to believe, based on what I heard, that Professor Gates probably overreacted as well.”

Mr. Obama described Sergeant Crowley as an “outstanding police officer and a good man” who has “a fine track record on racial sensitivity.” But he said the incident showed that “because of the difficulties of the past, you know, African-Americans are sensitive to these issues.”

Original Post

The officer who arrested Henry Louis Gates, Jr. last week has said that he won't apologize since he didn't do anything wrong (Officer Defends Arrest of Harvard Professor).

Sergeant Crowley said that he arrested Professor Gates because the professor got angry after being asked for identification and proof of his address, and continued his “tirade after being warned multiple times.” The sergeant was adamant that he was following police procedures in making the arrest.....

Next, the sergeant said, he warned Professor Gates to calm down and lower his voice, and to step outside to his front porch. Sergeant Crowley said he gave the professor two warnings, the second while holding a set of handcuffs, but that the professor continued berating him. “The professor at any point in time could have resolved the issue by quieting down and/or by going back in the house,” he said in the radio interview.

I don't understand why getting angry and yelling inside one's own home or on the front porch is grounds for an arrest. What did Professor Gates do wrong? Why would the police consider yelling to be something wrong? Aggravating, yes. Who likes to be yelled at? I'm starting to wonder if this isn't just a case of racial profiling, but of a cop reveling in the power of being a cop - of having that power to stop someone else's yelling by arresting them. I still strongly doubt that a white professor in the same situation would have been arrested.