Posted by Sam Richards

Really, this is getting out of hand and needs to stop. Not sure how or why so many people have taken it upon themselves to be such rat heads. But silly actions seem to build upon other silly actions and soon enough there is a mess to clean up. And then when the black and brown people jump into the mix, it really get’s complicated. I love how one or two people become the spokespeople for an entire group, as you’ll see in the video below. That’s very much a dead end to any conversation and dialogue.

Here’s an article that pretty well sums up what has been happening out in California: “California Campus Sees Uneasy Race Relations”

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Posted by Sam Richards

This is rather troubling story and all the worse because this young woman was hired with the agreement that she would be wearing her head scarf while at work. While we haven’t heard from the company spokespeople, aside from the letter from which they quoted in the story, it doesn’t seem as though this fired employee was not doing her job. Hmm…

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posted by Sam Richards

So this guy, Don “Moose” Lewis, wants to start a basketball league for white guys because, among other reasons, white guys need a place to play that “traditional brand of basketball” that they know and enjoy. (That photo to the right is what the roster would look like.) It’s easy to scoff at Moose, and not just because of his nickname–because on the face of it this seems blatantly racist. But my thinking is that the issue is more complex than it first appears–and this is why I want some other people to weigh in on the matter.

Moose says “he’s filling market niche,” that there are plenty of (white) guys to don’t like the upscale tempo of basketball that is played professionally today and they should have a chance to complete in venues where they can earn a living. And there are lot of people who would (and should be allowed to) pay money to watch them play. Good point, Moose. Unfortunately for Moose, there are undoubtedly black and brown men (and women) who want to play “white ball” and so they’ll also have to have a chance to show their (white) skills in the slow lane, so to speak?

Maybe I could overlook this moose-sized oversight if Moose didn’t reveal his hand by saying the following:

“With players on other professional teams carrying guns, attacking fans in the stands, and going through the motions of playing the game, fundamentally sound [W]hite players are a vanishing species…Fans have spoken to the AABA asking to restore on court sanity to the game of basketball. Their pleas are our mission. Only players that are natural born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league.”

First off, the name looks like ABBA, that notoriously white band from the 1970s. Bad sign. Second, his words sound more like the standard white racist stance on black and brown people and less like a businessman responding to a market need.

Nonetheless, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and imagine that there are people out there who want to watch a slow style game that only native born white people know how to play. If so, then rock on to his bad self and let’s get to the tip off. Just don’t throw the ball too high…since the white brothers can’t….well, you know….jump. Here’s Moose explaining himself:

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posted by Sam Richards

This video about the prevalence of racism in the world of European soccer should get some conversation going. In comparison to the racism that exists here in the United States, the actions by these sports fans is extreme and vile — like stuff we’d have witnessed here a hundred years ago. And if these sorts of shenanigans happened in our professional sports stadiums, all manner of actions would be taken to stop them. But on that “enlightened” continent of Europe, for one reason or another they continue and are, to be sure, rather common place in many stadiums. (That said, I am certain that most fans do not support the barbarians clamoring at the turnstyles.)

As you watch the video, keep in mind a couple of things. First, while the video depicts events that are four years old, very little (if anything at all) has changed. European football organizations have taken the initiative to put a stop to the actions of fans, but they’ve not made much headway. Second, this is less about race and more about culture and the perceived threats related to immigration and the growing numbers of “dark skinned” peoples from southern countries, especially those of sub-Sarahan Africa. Europe is in the middle of an unprecedented cultural transformation stemming from widening immigration flows and (white) people are afraid they’re losing their hold on their cultures. This does not excuse their actions and thinking, but it should clarify it a bit and it must be considered in order to understand the causes and consequences of the behavior.

The video is very unnerving, to say the least, but I’m sure it will lead you to pause and reflect on just how far we have come in dealing with our own racism.

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Diana Nicholson, the mother of Taraha Shenice Nicholson, is comforted during a news conference in Tarboro, N.C.

posted by Sam Richards

Part of this story is about social class…maybe most of it is. I don’t know and nobody does. Race and class are so intertwined that they’re impossible to disentangle. My raised eyebrow to the fool who says it’s all clear to him or her.

All I know is that when I read this story I cannot even possibly imagine that these events would be silenced if the victims were middle class, and certainly not middle class and white. I really don’t expect the media outlets to cover every negative and sad event from across the land, but I have to wonder how much a life is worth and why some lives are worth more than others.

Read the story and chew on the question that is embedded into that last statement. It’s going to take you a few minutes, but it should keep you thinking. HERE IS THE LINK TO THE STORY.

UPDATE: Perhaps you’ve been following the case of the man in Cleveland who tortured and killed 10-11 women whose bodies were buried or hidden in his house in a poor section of the city. The man is black, as were most (perhaps all) of the women. This case juxtaposes well with the one in North Carolina in that the relatives of the missing Cleveland women all report that the police entirely disregarded their attempts to report someone as a “missing person.” In one case the aunt of a missing woman was (purportedly) told to just sit tight because her niece would return “when all of the drugs were gone.” It seems as though the message is the same: the rape, assault, and disappearance (i.e., murder) of poor and marginalized women is not really a public concern.

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Beth Humphrey, 30, and her boyfriend, Terence McKay, 32

posted by Sam Richards

Some of you have no doubt heard this story pass through the media outlets. More surprising than the Justice of the Peace being unwilling to give these two a marriage license is that fact that he stands by his decision, as discussed in THIS ARTICLE.

Before you go off on how outrageous this is, I want to remind you that two weeks ago in class I discuss the number of you who would not adopt a child with ancestry other than your own or who would not use the sperm or egg of people with ancestry different from your own. And you might recall that everyone who stated that they were uncomfortable being the head of a mixed ancestry family all said it was because of the children. “The children would have a difficult go of it down the road,” was the sentiment.

So how is this judge any different? Along with “mixed race marriages often end in divorce,” this is what this guy has said (although that particular statment is not in this article). Sounds like we might have to get back to some serious thinking about what constitutes racism and bigotry. If people in SOC 119 can say it, why not the judge? Okay, so you’re actions of not starting mixed ancestry families do not impact someone else’s life, but the idea that we’re protecting those who most need “protection” is still the same. Just a thought worth pondering.

It’s unfortunate that he speaks with a southern accent. In fairness, he says that his definition of “racist” is when you treat black people differently than white people. By not issuing the marriage license he’s actually treating black and white people the same! So I guess he’s not racist. Life is complex…

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posted by the Gremlin

After watching this short video of a recent incident of racism in a high school where kids were being openly racist, it seems as though I have discovered why it is that we are all just a little bit racist…. still. Race is an open topic in many places here in America and racism must be seeping into our psyches.

In the video students were openly hating black students and there was literally nothing being done about it This is what made me think “WTF?” the most. I certainly remember there being strict rules about racism back when I was in school. But why not this school, how can these kids run wild degrading everyone that looks a little different than them into rubble? Who is to say that we don’t do the same behind our own eyes?

So why are we all racist…. still? Because parents aren’t educating their kids, or choose not to? The schools aren’t doing much to prevent this behavior either. One administrator admitted that their staff wasn’t properly trained in this area. But how much training do you need to undergo to spot such blatant racism and then to speak up?

If you were among this group of so called “administrators,” what would you do? Would you dial up your own little way to report things to the staff? Or something a more extreme?

And then I encounter this video. Another “WTF?” How about these administrators? What are they thinking. The woman won a case in court, afterall, and so her story, which sounds entirely far-fetched, must be true. How can it be? I guess the inmates really do sometimes take over and run the asylum.

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posted by Sam Richards

There are scores of ethnic groups in China and the majority group, the Han Chinese, make up over 90 percent of the population and remain relatively entrenched in their power to influence Chinese society. Think European Americans in the United States before the 1960s. The problem is that China has not had it’s 1960s civil rights movement and accompanying “conscientization” and so many of the Han are thinking about the rights of minorities in much the same way as many white southerners were fifty years ago–that is to say, “rights” are not on the table for a public conversation.

So remember the riots that broke out in China this past summer between minority Uighurs (who are Muslim) and majority Han? Not likely…because it’s probably not an issue for you. But do know that these riots were big news in the world’s most populated country. Many hundreds died all because of an overt racism that we rarely see on this side of the Pacific. Both the majority Han and minority Uighurs violently clashed over the issue or rights. Imagine thousands of majority Han (think white people) roaming the streets with knives and meat cleavers looking for Uighurs (think people of color) to kill after Uighurs had killed over 150 Han. The Uighurs attacked, so they said, as a response to racist attacks and policies by the Han. So yeah, big news in China.

Read this is from a James Fallows column in the New Yorker to get a sense of the racism in China. Fallows has had considerable experience living there as a Westerner/foreigner.

Regarding the “no Uighurs” sign [that is often seen in the Xinjiang region], that type of thing is pretty common in China. Many advertisements for foreign English teachers will include something like “Whites only” or a “Looking for Caucasian teachers” sentence somewhere in the text. Additionally, many a native speaker have flown from their country to China only to find upon arrival that regardless of the applicant’s qualifications, the job could only be performed by a white person. At these times the Chinese are usually polite and a little embarrassed (most Chinese are very nice people and mean no harm), but they will remain very firm in their conviction that a person with darker skin than theirs could not possibly make a good teacher.

I have experienced this on a number of occasions. But after living in China for a while I realized that what we would consider racism in the West is simply a deeply ingrained cultural characteristic of mainland Chinese people. White skin (the Chinese like to consider themselves white) and/or being a Han (the dominant ethnic group) means a person is good. Dark skin or not being Han means a person is inferior (and more likely to be a bad guy/a thief/incompetent etc.). It does not equal KKK style hatred. It does not even mean a Han Chinese wouldn’t be friends with a person from India or Africa. It simply means that if a person is non-white or a member of certain Chinese minorities [like Uighurs], they simply are to be considered less smart, less competent and less trustworthy than the average white person or Han.
On a lighter note, the Chinese are not inflexible and when exposed to nice people of color they usually will change their minds quickly, as with Obama. However, the tendency towards ethnic and racial chauvinism is a current running through Chinese culture that is unlikely to change in any meaningful way anytime soon.

These are pretty graphic scenes. I realize that there are many sides to this issue and there is no way that I can begin to present them all here. Nonetheless, these riots are not much different than the riots we have seen here in the United States in terms of their causes and consequences. What I want you to get a window into is the idea that ethnocentrism and prejudice and discrimination occur all over the world. I say this because I often hear people say something to the effect that the U.S. is the “most racist country in the world,” when in fact that know little to nothing about other countries in that world of which they speak.

This post is just a window into another culture and their struggles for civility and understanding.

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posted by Mike Jefferson

That’s a photo of Brian Milligan with his girlfriend, Nicola Fletcher. He’s white, she’s African American. Young and in love. Here’s the short version of the story: 

On August 18, Milligan was beaten nearly to death on a Buffalo street by a group of black males because he was dating Fletcher. By all accounts, that’s factual. He’d been threatened many times by various black males for “being in the wrong place” and “being with the wrong girl.” But they were in love…until August 18th when the threats manifested into reality.

Though this story is still developing, it offers an useful opportunity to look at the subject of “hate crimes” in the context of hypocrisy, racism, and free speech/thought.  Given Sam’s definition of racism as “believing that some person or group is superior or inferior than another person or group because of some identifiable physical characteristics that they can not change,”  I think most everyone would agree that this particular crime, and true hate crimes in general, are amongst the most egregious forms of racism.

But what about the hypocrisy surrounding this event?    In my experience, hypocrisy is a foolproof indicator of ignorance and intellectual dishonesty.   And let there be no mistake, there is a great deal of hypocrisy in this incident of a white boyfriend being assaulted for dating his black girlfriend.  I’ll admit that I may have missed some of the details of the case but to my knowledge Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson (nor any other Civil Rights activist, for that matter) have not been to Buffalo to protest this hate crime.  Sharpton doesn’t miss many opportunities to publicly demand justice in hate crime cases.  And to be fair to Sharpton, I haven’t heard  a peep out of any of the race baiters, black or white.

At this point, you probably think I advocate having the Feds roll into town and arrest everybody involved for violation of Federal Hate Crimes law.  You’d be wrong.  Make no mistake, I think the punks that ganged up like a pack of animals to beat one lone guy nearly to death need to be locked up.  Or forced to face a real fighter mano-a-mano, but then we’d have to clean up the mess that would be left.  And then they need to be locked up for what they DID (e.g., assault, attempted murder–take your pick) and not WHY they did it or WHAT they thought.

Our constitution actually demands that people be allowed to wallow in their ignorance.  They just can’t act on their ignorance when it adversely affects others.  Let me clarify that. With a few exceptions, you can say and believe and read and write most anything you want. And your thoughts and words can be really, really dumb–like rock dumb. But when your stupidity infringes on the safety of others, as it inevitably will do, like when you decide to blow up a tree stump in your back patio with five sticks of dynamite, then “the man” will come knocking on your door.

Hate crime laws cross the line by attempting an end around “double jeopardy” in criminal cases that are not properly prosecuted the first time.  [Double jeopardy is prosecuting someone twice for the same crime.] They came about because of some missteps of justice in the past where crimes were committed against individuals but the guilty were not brought to justice.   These miscarriages of justice were often attributed to racism.   But instead of doing the hard work of fixing the corrupt judicial systems, the “powers-that-be” decided to exert more federal control over the populace and punish thought rather than deed.

The problem is, if you have an interest in freedom of speech, you might want to recognize that hate crime legislation is just one more step down the slippery slope of constraining this important right.

And so I cry “foul.”

On another note, if black and brown people want to be treated as equals, then why do so many cry “foul” when hate crime laws are applied to them? Is it only white people who hate? Is it only white people who victimize others because of their ancestry? In the case of Brian Milligan, it took nearly two weeks for some prominent members of the black community in Buffalo to stand behind this young man. This occured when a number or preachers excoriated their parishioners for not helping to find the culprits:

“The story [finally] touched a nerve with several members of Buffalo’s African-American community, including a local pastor who leads a predominantly black church in Buffalo. ‘At first, it didn’t affect me the way that it would have if I heard it was a black teen attacked,’ said the Rev. Darius Pridgen, who spent years fighting for civil rights for African-Americans. ‘But after I saw his father on TV pleading with the community to find the assailants, I decided I had to go after the people who beat this kid.’ Pridgen said he felt that the community has turned a collective blind eye to the beating. So he gave a fire-and-brimstone sermon at the True Baptist Church on a Sunday after the attack, appealing to his congregation to help find the culprits. ‘He didn’t deserve to be beaten this way,’ Pridgen recalled saying at the service. ‘If you believe this, put your hands together.’ If it was a black teen, Pridgen said, ‘We would have been protesting with flags and everything else.’” [CNN]

By the way, this is where the hypocrisy enters the story. You either walk for justice for everyone or you don’t walk at all. People know who these attackers are…and I want to ask them what they’d say to the white people whose silence protected white thugs who attacked a black or brown man.

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posted by Bryson Nobles

Probably.  The 2009 definition of racist seems to be:

a person who carelessly says or does anything race-related within earshot of a race member other than their own that at least one person with an active imagination could take exception to, irregardless of the merits of the statement.

So maybe Glenn Beck is right; maybe Obama IS a racist.  But then so is he just by saying it. 

And now so am I. See how that works?  It’s all a bit ridiculous actually.  What is even more ridiculous is Glenn Beck is now popular for his aggressive opinions (while Kanye is crucified – damn, more racism), in the same country that put people in jail for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts just 4 years ago.  But…somehow this is cool (damn, more racism).

Isn’t it also a stretch to call Obama “racist” because of his past, and maybe privately maintained, connection with radical Reverend Wright.  Well, let’s consider this: George Bush is a white guy from Texas, an Ivy League alum, who likes to hunt and comes from a family with a very high social status because of his grandfather’s dealings and his father’s career.  For my money, the odds of him having a “Reverend Wright” in his life, a relationship that he’d feel publicly obliged to denounce if it came into the public arena, is extremely likely. Is that a racist conclusion?  But hey…what are you gonna do?

What’s more interesting is WHY Obama is a being called a racist.  I had an odd suspicion that Obama could be the beginning of the end of racism.  But not like most people think.  I saw Obama’s presidential win as an ethnic “win” for white people.  As my imagination would have it, white intellectuals have never quite been able to overcome the “black people can’t be racist because they don’t have power and authority to oppress or exclude white people” response in the race dialogue.  Enter Obama.  Black, check!  Power and authority, check!  Oppression of republicans in the predominately white Congress and exclusion of tax benefits for the wealthy (whites), double check!!  We have a winner.

Add to that that everything is about race with him, even when it’s not, and the conversation is bound to happen.  I think that it could be a blessing is disguise however because the day we find white people calling black people racist at the same rate the blacks say it about whites, it is probably losing its impact.  There was once power in the exclusive rights to label people racist.  But, as sure as white people abandon the suburbs when black people arrive, so too will black people abandon labeling folks racist for ironically the same reason – they both lose their value.

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posted by Sam Richards

So Harry Allen has an interesting critique of white racist rants about Kanye West that spread across twitterlandia in the hours (make that minutes) after the tantrum he threw at the VMA ceremony. If you’re not aware of what that means, it’s a yearly gathering of corporate created celebrities (along with a few organically talented artists) who hand out awards to one another so that the corporate owners can more easily entice unsuspecting consumers to shell out more of their hard-earned cash to consume the images-words-songs that very few of those celebrities created in the first place (because their not truly artists). Whatever…

So Mr. West has a moment of psychiatric infamy and the rest is FB and T history.

Back to Harry Allen, who trolls the Web and finds tweet upon tweet of insulting and racist comments about Kanye and asserts that these tweets represent the underbelly of whiteness — public faces of respectability and politeness followed by sudden bursts of racist ranting when one of their/our own (in this case, Taylor Swift) is publicly insulted by persons black or brown.

The tweets are pretty raw and clearly go into the “WTF Are They Thinking?” folder. It’s amazing that white people feel as comfortable as black and brown comedians to attach their name and face (and Twitter ID) to the n-bomb with such gusto and glee. Check out Harry Allen’s blog entry, which you can read here.

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posted by Sam Richards

In my twenty years of teaching about race I think I can count on my ten fingers the things that I’ve heard or read that I thought were utterly and unquestionably “racist.” That’s a word that gets kicked around far too liberally and to which people apply far too many non-sensical definitions. Anything they don’t like, for example, is often called “racist” if it involves human physical or cultural differences in any way.

So here’s the technical definition of the word: believing that some person or group is superior or inferior than another person or group because of some identifiable physical characteristics that they cannot change (because they’re fixed, bodily features). That’s it. Simple. So people with curly or kinked hair are superior or better or preferable because they have curly or kinked hair. Generally there is some justification association with the identified characteristic (e.g., kinked hair causes increased blood flow to the brain and increased blood flow leads to greater intelligence). I’ve never heard anyone make that argument, by the way, although I’m sure that it has been articulated.

There is nothing in this academic definition that presupposes that less powerful groups–and in the West that would be black and brown people–cannot be racist because they lack the ability to limit the collective abilities of more powerful groups. It’s just a straight-up definition that can apply to anyone, even the most marginalized and disenfranchised people in any society.

So along comes the issue of skin whitening. White skin is better than brown skin is the belief spread round the planet. Why? Because it’s more beautiful. There’s rarely some sort of practical argument linked to this particular preference, aside from making the case that lighter skin will lead to greater opportunities in a society of people who hold dark-skinned people with distrust or even in contempt. That’s pretty practical given the many hundreds of studies that conclude that the darker the skin the more numerous the hurdles people face in every facet of social and political life.

Watch this CNN video about the proliferation of skin whitening creams. It’s so blatently “racist” (i.e., grounded in the belief that people with lighter skin are better than those with darker skin) that the defenders of the practice look foolish in their justifications.

So what to do? We can’t legislate this kind of activity. If people want to go so far as to bleach their skin, then who am I to stop them. Of course, what if they’re going to unknowingly do serious bodily damage to themselves? And what about the fact that people who play into this image that “white is better” make it more difficult for the people who are happy to live with the skin that was endowed to them by their creator–but who nonetheless suffer the consequences of racism that are strengthened by the perpetuation of this practice?

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In this electronic image of a poster with head shots of U.S. Presidents, take a look at the “photo” that was selected for Obama. Let me help you. Check out the lower right-hand corner. The image was a joke sent out in an email by an aide in the Tennessee state legislature. I think you can assume that the aid was a GOP staff member–but don’t be fooled to think that there are no Democratic aides that would make a similar blunder.

This goes into the file labeled, “What in the world were they thinking?” I’m torn between assuming, on one hand, that the people who end up in this file are just a few knuckleheads AND that this is emblematic of the depth of racism in our society on the other. (People really do seem to make a lot of racist jokes…or so I’ve heard.)

Here’s another one for the file.

Shortly after the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a Boston police officer and member of the Massachusetts National Guard sent out an email–and to lots of people, I should add–in which he called Gates a “banana eating jungle monkey.” Ouch.

By the way, there is a sub-folder in this file that is titled “What the F are they thinking?” and this one probably goes there. The police office, Captain Justin Barrett (he’s not a twenty year old rookie), asserted that he felt remorse and was sorry for the email and that he is not racist because, afterall, he has friends from all racial and ethnic backgrounds. “It was a poor choice of words,” Barrett said. “I didn’t mean it in a racist way. I treat everyone with dignity and respect.”

Can I disentangle this just a bit. It seems to me that if I went to a KKK meeting and asked someone in a hood to define “negro,” they just might say something like, “Negro? Why yes, son, that would be a ‘banana eating jungle monkey’.” What else would they possibly say that would be acceptable to the racist hoards waiting to reclaim the country from the brown skinned barbarians?

Here’s another one for the WTF file:

Unfortunately, this guy only had the funds to pay an entry level, mail order public relations clean-up person and so he couldn’t come up with something more convincing than blaming it on supporters of Charles Darwin. That was a pathetic attempt to spin this slip and it went nowhere. My god, brother, have some respect for our intellect.

I find myself saying some pretty off-the-hook things at random moments and yet I never seem to slip into this level of racist banter. I guess since I don’t have the thoughts, the words never leave my lips. But I have to wonder if this how many of us think in our private moments. And then when these private moments get loose in the public domain, they spin about until we’re all dizzy with the feeling of impending dread of having to suffer another media circus.

Sometimes the “attack of the racists” goes a bit too far — like the condemnation of the poor schmuck who a few years back correctly and unwisely used “niggardly” in a meeting among colleagues. He got hammered pretty hard because his office mates didn’t know what the word meant. (Of course, he might have been baiting them because without the “dly” the word is pronounced just like the N-bomb.)

Other times, however, I suspect that people who engage in what is so obviously offensive and racist behavior clearly deserve what they get. “We don’t give a damn if it’s part of your cultural heritage; we don’t do that any more.” Sure there can be a very fine line between these two reactions, and I don’t want to be the judge of who crosses it. But sometimes enough if enough.

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Microsoft in Web photo racism row Click on link if you would like to read an article about this.

So someone at Microsoft decided that a black man in an advertisement directed at Polish consumers is not a good idea. Or perhaps I should say “a black man’s head,” since his hands were fine.

If this had happened in the United States, I think it’s probably more likely that the “photoshopping” would have occurred in the opposite direction–a white guy would have been replaced by a black guy. “We can’t have a photo without at least one woman and one person of color, afterall.” Given that this was directed at Polish consumers, however, I have to imagine that someone made a calculation about how much “color” would be acceptable to that very white population. I spent two months in Poland and it is clearly the “whitest” locale that I’ve ever visited–even whiter than the BJC during THON. (Can’t we do something about that, by the way.)

Here’s another way to think about this. Companies shift their advertising to appeal to different markets all the time. An ad for buses in San Francisco might have an Asian woman, for example, while the exact same advertisement for Memphis or Miami buses would replace the model with a black woman in Memphis and an Hispanic woman in Miami. Is that racist? Someone decided that a black person will be less appealing to Polish consumers. Would you use photos of straight couples in your advertisements in LGBT magazines? Sometimes, no doubt, but you’d more often opt for a gay or lesbian scene.

At the heart of the Microsoft issue is that they cut out the black man’s head and replaced “it” with one from a straight up white guy. It just feels raw. Maybe the event got press simply because the manipulation that drives the advertising dimension of marketing was exposed for what it is…manipulation. And maybe it’s because when companies shift the “cultural inflections” in their ads, it feels right. But when they do the same thing with “race” it comes across as disingenuine. And maybe, just maybe, all of those people sitting around the table in that photo represent one single culture — corporate culture. To tell one of them that he has to “relinquish his seat at the table because of his race” is…well…racist. Isn’t that what racism is?

But really, don’t accept my interpretation of this Microsoft debacle. What do you think?

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If you didn’t hear about the “beer summit” and the events that led to it, then clearly you were not paying attention to the mainstream media during the latter part of the month of July. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a very famous and well known professor to any regular viewer of PBS television, was arrested on his front porch by a police officer near (or actually on) the Harvard campus. CLICK FOR: summary of events.

We’re not particularly interested in debating who was “right” and “wrong” in this mess, nor whether the arrest was fueled by racial profiling or racism. What is interesting is the follow-up and it’s impact on race relations. So is this it? We give two aggrieved parties a beer and, as Laurie Mulvey says in the video, they agree to disagree and we call it “dialogue”?

Tell us what you think about what she’s saying. Is the event (and the spillover) indicative of our need for racial dialogue and racial healing…or is it merely another case of a small incident getting blown out of proportion by mass media outlets in search of sales?

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