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"A Teachable Moment:" Gates' Arrest, Obama's Address, and a Pig
07/25/09 10:34 , Categories: Everything In the 2007 Denzel Washington directed film The Great Debaters, James Farmer Jr., played by Denzel Whitaker, comes-of-age. He bears witness to violence against African Americans - and Black triumph over Southern Horrors. He sees a Black man lynched, his burned body still smoldering as he falls from a tree limb into a pyre - and he stands with his peers as they, fully human and oh so excellent, emerge from the Texas backwoods as the best debating team in the US.
He also watches his father kill a pig.
In this scene, the happy family, whole and beaming in the glow of uplift, drive along a country dirt road. The family patriarch, James Farmer, Sr., mistakenly hits a hog, and Farmer, Jr, defying his father's order to stay in the car, watches as his father lowers his eyes, glances fearfully at his wife, and hands over his entire paycheck to a poor white racist too stupid to know what the term "endorse" means.
It is, for the eldest son, A Teachable Moment. The Lesson: Ignorant and poor, funky and crass, the white male (even the young white boy who also witnesses the scene) is superior.
But Farmer, Jr. has another, related teachable moment in the film. When Melvin B. Tolson, played by Washington, is arrested for union organizing across racial lines, the entire Black side of town seems to converge in front of the jailhouse to demand Tolson's immediate release.
In this scene, Farmer, Jr. witnesses Black activism. He witnesses Black defiance.
Fired by the passion and fervor of Tolson's freedom, and his father's elegant role in liberating the professor and debate team leader (and, symbolically, the reasoned, articulate voice of righteous Black manhood), Farmer, Jr. approaches the same white man who emasculated his father over the dead pig. "That pig wasn't worth $25," Farmer, Jr. insists, getting all up in the white man's face. "You owe my father some money."
It's a great sequence in a wonderful film; and, if the nation is going to seriously take on Obama's suggestion that Gates' arrest is A Teachable Moment in contemporary America, Lesson One might as well start with this movie.
At the jailhouse, Farmer, Sr., a leader of immense esteem in the African American community, is expected to genuflect before a man who, but for his white skin and badge, would have no social power or moral authority over him, he who was the first African American Texan to earn a doctorate and a church deacon.
Farmer, Sr. was born in 1886. Gates was born in 1950. And not much has changed in 2009.
On his porch, Gates, Jr., a leader of immense esteem in the African American community, is expected to genuflect before a man who, but for his white skin and badge would have no social power or moral authority over him, he who is the first African American Mellon Fellowship winner and Director of the DuBois Institute at Harvard.
Just as Farmer, Sr. had to lower his gaze, modulate his voice, move slowly, and carefully negotiate the tricky racial and class terrain on which the dead pig lay, Gates, Jr. is derided by conservative pundits for his arrogance.
Uppity ivory tower negroes indeed.
According to Eric Adams, co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care and a New York State Senator:
"It is not against the law to be arrogant. Police can't use their authority because they're upset. It is not a crime to be arrogant... If I arrested everyone that I gave a parking ticket to that called me out in vulgar language... a whole lot of people would be in jail. What you must understand is, it is not a crime to talk back to a police officer, specifically in your home..."
The police officer did act "stupidly." He tried to arrest a man he thought he could hassle for what he perceived as disrespect. He just had no idea which uppity ivory tower negro he was messing with.
This is a wonderful opportunity for discourse, a chance for us to cross the great racial divide and share experience, reason. Even debate.
It is not, however, a time to back-step on the tricky issues the media-frenzy has raised. It is not a time for the lowered gaze, a "yassuh" or a "yes, sir," or a shuffle along. We should, all of us, meet on the jailhouse step, over the dead hog, along the dirt road, online, and around our kitchen tables to get real about racial profiling, physical; emotional; and psychological violence against people of color, and (ahem) the pig(s).
It is a time for coming-of-age. The unlettered ignorance that demands Black subservience will no longer be tolerated. We have gathered to liberate ourselves. And we shall.
16 comments
I saw a panel including Tim Wise on CNN and understood what he said. He said he believed that the (deep) structure of racism in our country causes the behavior of Black people to be constantly called into question. The idea was: the neighbor lady calling the police; did she do so based on the skin color of the men she saw pushing the front door open? Did the police react more negatively to a man who was trying to straighten out a misunderstanding (caused both by the neighbor and the police officer's negative assumptions...based on guess what? Skin color.) Did the police react in a more hostile manner to a Black homeowner breaking into his own home....than they would to a White man doing the same thing.? Undoubtedly.
So the conversation and teaching moment should really be about the racist structure of our society which has brought about these kinds of assumptions. The snap judgements that people make, when they are on the job, holding a gun, driving a car, getting into a verbal dispute... that can make it very dangerous to be a Black person in the US.
I'm really glad you've posted your comments. I must, however, disagree with you. I think the public discourse over Gates' arrest is an important human rights issue. I'm thinking of Amadou Diallo, who was profiled and shot in the doorway of his home. There are so many documented cases of police brutality; Black and Brown men are killed by police in this country at alarmingly high rates - and all of these victims were profiled before they were murdered.
Eisa
Thanks to this author of "A Teachable Moment" for reminding us that obedience to police officers is not mandated by law. It may be good form and common sense but it is not unlawful to express umbrage toward these individuals, who are supposed to provide names and badge numbers when these are requested by citizens.
I, too, am happy to see a bonafide debate taking place here. Kudos. Personally, I would like to err on the side of ridding the society of racial injustice rather than excusing it because of the status and/or attitude of the victim for in the last few years, I have had more than a handful of African American male friends and the children of friends arrested for NOTHING and subsequently released (sometimes with an apology and sometimes not). Sadly, a friend (a black dentist no less) was unarmed and killed in DC by an off duty black officer. This should not happen to anyone's husband, son, brother, uncle or friend and it needs to stop now!!!
I do NOT like Gates in the least. And I will never defend him. But I will defend the situation and the truth of the matter. I don't care who it was...as long as I do not touch, or threaten a police officers life, he/she does not have the right to arrest me for exercising my freedom of speech. I don't care if I told him his mama was a whore who sucked men off for money. He can be pissed all day long, but he does not have the right to arrest me. I can speak freely if I am annoyed. And like Gates or no, I refuse to defend the bad behavior of those cops.
They are going too far, and if we don't stop them, it will land on our doorstep. Because as much as we think it's cute to have to say yessah massa, it isn't until we have to do it, that we realize that it AIN'T all that cute. What are we waiting for, for our spirits to be torn down to the bone marrow before we see it isn't right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osO7FgcQk_k
also titled funny police stop
it's spelled 'poop chute,' my niggah
don't be 'typical'...learn how to spell
Another Ricci Case in NYC?
A stinging court decision that past New York City firefighter exams violated U.S. civil rights law sets the stage for negotiating a fair settlement while avoiding the divisive remedy of forced hiring.
Brooklyn Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis could not have been more forceful in concluding that the city's 1999 and 2002 FDNY tests ran afoul of Title VII, the same statute at issue in the New Haven firefighters case made famous in the Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/07/28/2009-07-28_fdnys_big_diversity_test.html
The article states that only 3% of black applicants passed 1999 NYFD test. So in 2007 after the test was tweaked and changed the 12% of black applicants passed NYFD test. Maybe I'll sound ignorant but how do you create a test that favors a particular race?
then everything will be alright~
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/who_wrote_dreams_and_why_it_ma_1.html
http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/who-really-wrote-obamas-dreams-from-my-father/
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/who_wrote_dreams_from_my_fathe_1.html
try screaming at a judge that he's a racist and see what happens. Why should police officers deserve less protection than judges? They're in more danger.
The disorderly conduct charge was not dropped because it wasn't a good arrest. It was dropped, according to Gates' own lawyer, because of Gates' connections.
there's a video of Gates using the N-word all over the Internet, and in that short, three-minute video, Gates uses the phrase "your mama."
The only contrary evidence is that Gates recently denied that he told the cop he'd "speak with your mama outside." He also desperately wants to drop the subject.
In modern America, the alleged "victim" is always really the aggressor, and the alleged "aggressor" is always the true victim.
negro entitlement.....where is your allah now, ulen?
http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/printer_friendly.cgi?article=323
In favorable conditions for a prejudiced interaction.
Professor gates may have been on what one would call on edge, or what many non blacks say "overly sensitive" from the traumatic experience faced in the disposition of the world toward blacks based on stereotype. One tends to think upward progress(being a black professor) would tend to alleviate this stress, but on the contrary attitudes at the upper levels of society can be even more prejudiced, and one may always feel the pressure to reshape the perception of their whole race within ones every action under the scrutiny of ones (conditional) peer group(concern over the retention of social capital). It is not the over sensitivity of the subordinate culture but rather the over insensitivity of those not directly targeted by the inherent capitalistic driven internalized prejudices
Intertwined with the roots of capitalistic advantage America afforded some. This meant that others must be stood upon. What is known clinically as "adverse racism" is the phycological absolution of this behavioral byproduct of freedom. But on a lighter note I think this whole thing was orchestrated to distract from healthcare reform issues.
