Racial Profiling of White Policemen
July 23, 2009 2:30 PM
Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying, "Put a bag of manure in front of a Democrat and he'll step in it every time." It seems that the Democrat President of the United States has done just that, by prejudging and shooting his mouth off about an incident in which a presidential friend, Afrocentric Harvard professor "Skip" Gates got into a conflict with a white cop after trying to break and enter into his own house. Al Sharpton also alleged that the incident was "racist." Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs lamely tried to effect damage control. At first glance the incident seemed trivial, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that a basic principle was at stake: Americans are going to have to start considering a long-standing ugly pattern of racial profiling of white police officers. This is not a laughing matter.
What is racial profiling? Basically the phrase is a fancy name for prejudging another human being based on the actual or presumed race of the profilee. What color is his or her skin? Hair? Eyes? Does he wear a turban? A blue cap with a badge? In other words, profiling is, or can be, a kind of racial prejudice.
Police officers of any race or nationality must act on instinct and experience when judging suspects, and some profiling is not only inevitable but necessary. This has caused great distress to nonwhite citizens who have been confronted by police, and for that reason racial profiling of Blacks by police officers (of any race) is a sensitive issue. Understood.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Racemongering demagogues generally exploit Black sensitivity about racial profiling, and in order to discuss racial profiling of nonwhite citizens and white police officers, I must first address the problem of racemongering demagogues.
When I was a kid, there was a kind of politician called a Dixiecrat, a Southern Democrat. (Do today's school history books mention the Dixiecrats? I wonder.) At the risk of racially profiling Dixiecrats, I will venture to say that they were mostly white racemongering demagogues who stirred up the anger of white voters against Black citizens, and against "outside agitators" who lobbied for Black civil rights.
Today many Southern policians are Republicans, but Democrats never actually gave up their racemongering demagoguery. They just reversed the races. Instead of getting white voters riled up against Blacks, they now get Black voters riled up against whites. For that reason, racial profiling of white cops has become a useful political tool. It is precisely that bag of manure that President Barack Obama stepped into when he went off half-cocked about Professor "Skip" Gates and the white police officer who arrested him for disorderly conduct.
This leads me to a question: Is Barack Obama a racemongering demagogue? My answer is: maybe. Obama's spiritual guide for 20 years, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, was and is definitely a racemongering demagogue.
Is Professor "Skip" Gates a racemongering demagogue in the classroom? Read his Wikipedia entry and decide for yourself.
Racial profiling of Black citizens is not going to go away, and neither will racial profiling of white police officers. Both issues deserve public scrutiny and comment. Although racial profiling has an up-side, for limiting abuse both by white cops and Black citizens, it as a dangerous tool when exploited by a racemongering demagogue.
In addition, there is another kind of racial profiling that has raised my concern: potential profiling of Black presidential candidates. There are Black elected officials that could serve with distinction and excellence as a US President, and I hope that the voting public will not hesitate to elect them, just because the historic first Black president, Barack Hussein Obama, turned out to be a lemon.