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you still a Ni**a


The Somalian

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was in the bank and see this on the bbc newsIn-this-photo-taken-by-a--002.jpgHere's a tricky one. Henry Louis Gates is a distinguished American scholar of whom I had actually heard before he was arrested on suspicion of breaking into his house in Cambridge (theirs, not ours). As the Guardian reported this morning, he's pretty cross about it and the US airwaves, blogosphere and twittersphere are all excited too.Of course, it's about race. Professor Gates (did I mention he's a Harvard man and has 50 honorary degrees?) had just got back from a trip to China and had trouble getting into his front door. A passerby saw him – and the taxi driver – trying to force it open and called the police.As Ed Pilkington reports, it fell to "the hapless Sgt James Crowley" to investigate. White cop ends up arresting eminent black academic. Cue outrage. Prof Gates attributes the entire incident to a racial narrative in Sgt Crowley's head: "black guy breaking and entering."Fair enough, but here's where it strikes me as tricky.Let's assume that the cop has not even one degree, let alone 50. He's sent as a result of a tip-off and, quite possibly, he did fall into habits of racial profiling. Bank fraud? White guys in braces. Breaking and entering? Black guys ("My, this one looks 58, they're getting older every year. Nice shirt though").I've checked much of the US media and the story everywhere is much the same. Gates wasn't initially taking calls, though he spoke later to the Washington Post. So the police version of events is what we know: it has Gates blowing a fuse and ending up charged with disorderly conduct – though the charges were dropped when the story hit the press.What happened? Crowley asked Gates, by now alone and in his house, to step outside and identify himself. He refused ("Why? Because I'm a black man in America?") and asked for Crowley's ID. Outside they traded IDs, but by the sound of it things were way past all that.The prof allegedly accused the cop of racism and warned him "who he was messing with". The result: four hours in the slammer.I wasn't there, you weren't there; how can we know what happened? But Gates has spent a lifetime immersed in the history of African-Americans and all the dreadful things done to them. My hunch is that the very thought of being arrested in his own home triggered both memory and anger.That might explain why a brilliant 58-year-old scholar with almost one degree for every year of his life can't talk down a less educated cop trying to do his difficult job in the scholar's own home. As a Washington Post writer explains it's never a good idea to get angry with men in uniform – and Crowley was only following routine procedure.That's the trouble with anger: it's a good servant, but a bad master. Lots of people have cause for anger, both good and insufficient (I do myself and let it off the leash more than I should), but a Harvard professor has surely done well enough in life to work it through in the age of Barack Obama. Yes?Three relevant examples. John Lewis, a veteran black Atlanta politician musing on Obama's success, told a friend of mine that perhaps civil rights veterans such as himself were still too angry. The president missed all that stuff – far away on Hawaii – and is strikingly without visible rage. That may have been a key to his success with millions of white voters.Compared with millions of African-Americans still near the bottom of the heap, Obama doesn't have much to complain about, though he reminded them the other day not to feel too sorry for themselves and to raise their ambitions.Nelson Mandela has a great deal to be angry about: locked up for 27 years on a tiny, arid island within tantalising sight of the beauties of Cape Town. But it wasn't just his intelligence and character that sustained him into the presidency of a new South Africa. It was that Mandela emerged from captivity without anger or the urge to bloody vengeance.Remarkable, I agree, but somehow I think Mandela would have talked Sgt Crowley round. Plenty of people out there are like the very human Professor Gates – not just about race either – but plenty are more like the saintly Mandela, willing to ignore and/or forgive slights, real or imagined.A few weeks ago the Observer carried an interview from Afghanistan with senior aircraft woman Iphie Modu, a 29-year-old Briton of Nigerian stock. She's in uniform out there as she works her way to her career goal, becoming a military lawyer."Being a woman has been better than I thought it would be – you get cut a bit of slack. And race hasn't been an issue. I find that decent people treat you decently." Not all non-whites feel that way in the army, she concedes. "It's an individual thing, not a military thing."

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man basically has 50 honoury degrees is a respected professor at Harvard universityman just come back from china could not get into his yard and was having troublepeople saw this and called the policepolice came (man was in his yard by then)police asked him for id and he showed it to them he made the police show him theirsanyhow man ended up getting arrested at his own yardthe full story isn't out yethttp://www.collegenews.com/index.php?/arti...al_bias_087879/http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/21/massac...essor.arrested/

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sounds like he played the race card for no reasonany angry black man with a grudge
Basically.People who didn't know him saw him trying to buss open a door/window and called the police. The police arrived and thought he was a thief. When he proved it was his house they dropped the case/charges.There's nothing in this, and for that reason - I'm outrichard180507L_468x612.jpg
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tbh i can sympathise with the cop in this situationhe gets told to respond to an individual trying to force entry into a housewhen he arrives, and listens to the alleged burglar's explanation he simply asks for some form of identification to verify that the story is correct so that he can apologise for the confusion, wish him a good evening and be on his way (if he had allowed himself to be fobbed off by a genuine burglar with some half-cocked story and returned to the station he would have been both humiliated and subject to disciplinary action, as well as the real home-owner (though clearly not in this case) having had their home robbed when it could have been prevented)as it is, the individual in question becomes hostile and refuses to provide evidence that it is indeed his own home that he is attempting to force entry towhen challenged, the cop becomes both suspicious and defensive and most probably fairly aggressivehe is then accused of racism and, presumably, is subject to verbal abusesuspected burglar/indignant home owner is arrested on a minor public disorder charge

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man basically has 50 honoury degrees is a respected professor at Harvard universityman just come back from china could not get into his yard and was having troublepeople saw this and called the policepolice came (man was in his yard by then)police asked him for id and he showed it to them he made the police show him theirsanyhow man ended up getting arrested at his own yardthe full story isn't out yethttp://www.collegenews.com/index.php?/arti...al_bias_087879/http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/21/massac...essor.arrested/
reminds me of dave chapelle "apparently this nigga broke in and put up pictures of his family"
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tbh ive never liked this man.. he has had some useless documentaries about the atlantic slave trade saying that it was africans who started it, and that the stories of europeans running into villages at night stealing people was just a myth.hes one of those guys that appears to have read so much so he now just travels round the country chatting sh*t. good for him

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man basically has 50 honoury degrees is a respected professor at Harvard universityman just come back from china could not get into his yard and was having troublepeople saw this and called the policepolice came (man was in his yard by then)police asked him for id and he showed it to them he made the police show him theirsanyhow man ended up getting arrested at his own yardthe full story isn't out yethttp://www.collegenews.com/index.php?/arti...al_bias_087879/http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/21/massac...essor.arrested/
reminds me of dave chapelle "apparently this nigga broke in and put up pictures of his family"
yhyh :lol:
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