(NAME-MCE) Henry Louis Gates arrested and Dave Chappelle could have predicted it!

[Antonio Garcia]

Henry Louis Gates gets arrested
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/us/21gates.html?_r=1&hp

Dave Chappelle talks about black fear of calling the police because they
would never believe a black person.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkQKOBiHyNU

What's your opinion? Black professor, Henry Louis Gates, was arrested for
being a suspected robber in his own house. The reporting officer didn't
believe him and Gates was irritated at the credulous nature of the officer.
Had it been a white man would the police have been so skeptical? Was this an
incident of racial profiling or "black paranoia" in which whites in general
are out to get blacks?

As Dave Chappelle says, the police would never believe that he [D.
Chappelle] lived in the house he occupies because it's a little too nice.
We, speaking in general from the white constituency, are "afraid of black
people in the ghetto areas" and then we're "afraid of blacks in middle to
upper class areas." Do black people have a chance in white America?  When I
heard the details of this incident I couldn't help but think about the movie
Higher Learning (John Singleton) when the police check out a disturbance and
ask Ice Cube for his ID, but do not ask the white students for theirs.  In a
defiant gesture Ice Cube pulls out his flash light and shines it in the
cop's car window and says "Let me see your ID."  And in an updated reminder
of the racial tension we can go to the movie Crash in which Terrence
Howard's character, an upper class black actor, is harassed by police
because he "fit the description."  It's not black paranoia, but caution by
the black citizenry based on historical precendences.  Again as Chappelle
jokes, he doesn't go out if he hears the "police are looking for a black
male between the height of 4'7 and 6'8."  In an even more lamentable
example, a prisoner at Angola prison in Louisiana said that the woman who
accused him could never identify him again (See the recent documentary
called "The farm" on Angola prison).  He said that she is on record saying
that she could never identify him exactly because "all niggers look alike."
Not to mention that when he was in the line up for his accuser he was the
only black man handcuffed.  There is a social, political, and [racial]
ideological history that has to be examined and made "visible," especially
in a time of color-blind racial ideology (See Bonilla-Silva's Racism
without Racists).

These types of events happen everyday. Whose fault is it? It is all our
fault. We have all engaged in some type of inequality practice whether it is
racist, sexist, classist, religious, and so on. How we develop critical
notions and form a consciousness about our presence and agency in the world
is what sets us apart. The fact is that the issue of inequality in America
has become like “matter” in the scientific sense, it is neither created nor
destroyed, but always is. So we are left with some contemplation in
confronting "matters" which will always exist regardless of our liberal or
conservative ideological notions and fantasies. The path here thus becomes
one of negotiating balance and consciousness of reducing these incidences
and taking ownership of unequal social practices resulting in the
degradation, subjugation, humiliation, or destruction of an individual or
group.

The matter is not to be taken up with strictly whites in America, but all
people within the human race who have contributed to its less than
benevolent character. As we move into an era where we can be technological
agents and actors, we should utilize this space, i.e. twitter, facebook,
myspace, etc… to voice our discontent over small incidences as well as large
atrocities. What do you think?

I look forward to thoughts on this incident and issues of inequality in
America in the Obama/post-bush era. Tell me what you think.
Antonio Garcia
Indiana University
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/Greenwood-IN/Antonio-Garcia-Teacher-cultural-critic-philosopher-and-writer/97145100372