RACE RELATIONS

I was going to leave this alone. I was just going to let this die a slow, natural death, but something happened today that has forced me to get my two cents worth in. I am talking about the incident in Cambridge, Mass. where a Harvard Professor was arrested for disorderly conduct and the subsequent commentary by President Obama during a news conference.

In case you live in a cave without any news source, the brief facts are that a black Harvard professor had lost his house keys and tried to break down the door to get into his own house. A neighbor witnessed the act and called the police to report a break in. So far so good. A white police officer answered the call and tried to investigate the facts of the case. The black professor took offense that the white cop didn't know who he was and became belligerent. Rather than just showing the police an ID, the professor decided to be a victim. When the cop had had enough abuse from the professor, he placed him under arrest and hauled him off to jail. Later the professor was released and charges were dropped.

The events that followed caused this incident to get blown out of proportion. During a news conference, President Obama said that the police acted stupidly. Later when he came to his senses and when he read the headlines he had caused with his ridiculous comment he tried to back off of the situation. He finally decided that both parties had over reacted. Sorry but that isn't going to work either.

Rather than being grateful that the police came to protect the property of this professor, he decided that he would play his race card. I am sure that all of his life he has been told that he has been put down by white society. Never mind that he has a position of Professor in one of America's most prestigious universities. Never mind that he is probably in the top two or three percent of wage earners in this country. No, he is a victim because he is black. Nonsense. He was arrested because he committed a crime. That crime was disorderly conduct. He would have been arrested whether he was black, white, or Asian. Imagine if you will what would have happened if the professor had been white and the cop had been black. Do you suppose President Obama would have injected himself into that situation?

The incident that set me off today was the offer by the black professor to give the police department a free lecture on race relations. What absolute arrogance. He is lucky that he is not picking taser leads out of his butt and spending some serious time in jail. As an aside, the particular white police officer who made the arrest is also the officer in charge of teaching race relations for his department. If this professor wants to offer some atonement for his stupidity, he should apologize both to the officer involved and to the entire police department in Cambridge.

There are lessons to be learned here. The race hustlers who continue to inflict themselves on the black community are not helping. Their separatist rhetoric serves only to guarantee that black people will have to work all the harder to compete in this society. We will never be a color blind society as long as the black community sees themselves as second class citizens. As long as they listen to the nonsense spewed by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton nothing is going to change for their people.

Here then is the rule. When a police officer says to you "stop", you stop. If he says "go", you go. That is the law in every city and state in this country. The cops often don't have the time to have a debate. They are just trying to protect the community and themselves. I am truly sorry for you if this rule is too tough.

Ron Scarbro July 27, 2009