By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 23rd, 2010
Part 3: The Gates-gate affair, as a media race event, became explicitly political when Obama weighed in. His comment on the Gates arrest came at the end of a long and detailed news conference on health care reform. Asked what he thought about the arrest, The New York Times reported that: “Mr. Obama took it [the question] head on, noting that “I may be a little biased” because he is friends with Mr. Gates but condemning the police in Cambridge, Mass.
He said: “I think it’s fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry. No. 2, the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. And No. 3, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by police disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”
Obama admitted that he did not know all the facts in the case and he explicitly did not accuse anyone of racial bias, but the implication was there for all to comment on, and they did.
The debate intensified. It started with the arrest and was a continuation of an ongoing theme: dealing with the problems of race in America, including the very different perceptions of the problem across the population. Those with clear positions presented them forcefully, and they were joined by the beltway pundits who commented on the practical implications of the response, without much reference to the normative issues involved. (link) Obama backtracked recognizing that he had inflamed the situation by calling the Cambridge police actions stupid, and he invited Crowley and Gates for a beer at the White House to diffuse the situation, which it did.
Another moment in the continuing struggle to talk about the problems of race and American democracy passed. But this one was different, having to do with the fundamental issue of political culture: the relationship between culture and power. Things were turned around, a revolution of sorts was apparent. This was the first time that such an issue . . .
Read more: The Obama Effect
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 23rd, 2010
The first two parts of “Gates-gate,” a socio-political drama in three parts, suggest the validity of the old French saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Part 1: a local affair, in Cambridge, Massachusetts: Henry Louis Gates Jr. returned from a trip to China, ironically working on a television documentary on the heterogeneous racial, ethnic and national genealogy of Americans. When he and his driver were trying to open his front door, finding that it was jammed, a neighbor thinking that they might be burglars called the police. The police investigation led to the arrest of Gates in his own home, with Gates asserting racial profiling, with Sgt. James Crowley, the arresting officer, charging Gates with disorderly conduct. The charges were subsequently dropped.
The characters in the affair are noteworthy. Gates is a distinguished professor at Harvard, a renown scholar and public intellectual. As a student of African American culture, he is careful and sober, not a flaming radical. Crowley, ironically, is a police academy expert on racial profiling, teaching a course on the subject at the Lowell Police Academy. And in many ways the two are on the same side of the cultural wars. Both Gates and Crowley have cooperated with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Crowley having participated in a 3- day workshop on Racial Profiling at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles in 2007, Gates delivering the Center’s Third Annual “State of Antisemitism” Lecture in New York in 1994. These were odd antagonists in what turned out to be a major national affair.
Part 2: the local becomes national. The event was first covered by The Harvard Crimson, but given Gates’ prominence, and the irony that he was apparently arrested for breaking into his own home, it became a national story, covered by the national media. As such affairs go, it followed the conventional black and white script. There were those who clearly saw the ugly face of racism pure and simple, and there were those who sided with the cop and stressed the importance of maintaining and respecting law and order. The usual suspects played . . .
Read more: The more things change, the more the stay the same
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 23rd, 2010
The persistence and changes of racism in American political culture are nicely revealed in the periodic explosions of racial controversy. From decisions about affirmative action, to the killing and brutalization of innocents, from Emmett Till to Abner Louima, to the prosecution of a black media celebrity charged and convicted of killing his white wife, i.e. the strange case of O.J. Simpson, the character of racism is clearly revealed.
These events may not be at the core of the problem of racism. That is manifested more in the daily struggles and interactions of ordinary people, beyond the public eye, as they get on with their lives. But the events, “media race events,” permit the symbolic enactment of American moral codes about race.
Blacks and whites perceived the OJ trial and acquittal differently. In and of itself this would appear to be a trivial matter. It took on great significance because it revealed how separately and differently blacks and whites live and perceive themselves and each other in America. Distinctions, differences and commonalities about race were revealed. With an African American President, such a case, which inevitably appears periodically in American life, has taken on a new dimension. The head of state, the central symbol of authority in the society, is now black, and this necessarily has meaning. The first case in point in the course of the Obama Presidency is “Gates-gate,” a socio-political drama in three parts. The case suggests both how racisms persists and has not much changed even with the election of a African American President, but also how the election has changed everything.
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 23rd, 2010
As Obama was elected to the United States Senate and with talk about his Presidential prospects going beyond our family circle, my wife, Naomi, and I became early and enthusiastic supporters. He made us believe that there was an alternative, another, better America which he could represent and lead, and in which we wanted to be active. We made early modest financial contributions to his campaign, and in turn the campaign identified us, and recruited Naomi in December of 2007to go to the city of White Plains, New York, near our home, to collect signatures to put Obama’s name on the ballot for New York Democratic Primary. She spent an afternoon and collected around 20 signatures. It was hard work. A cold afternoon, people were not yet focused on the election, and those who were did not think that Obama had a chance, nor was he their choice.
Remember Hillary Clinton was our popular Senator. Naomi particularly remembers one African American man who practically laughed in her face that she thought Obama had any chance. Although she did good hard work, I thought I could more easily get as good results at a nearby community center where I swim, and I did.
Our county, Westchester, is a residentially segregated. Renown for wealth, it is actually quite diverse (40% of the population is non white), with significant immigrant neighborhoods and concentrated African American sections, one of which is served by the Theodore Young Community Center. Most of the staff and the patrons of the center are African American, but many other people, Latino, Asian and white, also use the Center, for many different activities. For years, I went to swim. I didn’t socialize. I would put in my mile or two, two or three times a week, without making friends and barely having acquaintances. I worked out and went home, that is, until I decided to try to match Naomi’s collection of signatures, doing so in less than an hour before and after a mid day swim.
In a way, it wasn’t as easy as I had expected. Many of the staff . . .
Read more: Talking about Race in a New World
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 23rd, 2010
Like many others, I first became aware of Barack Obama as a national figure when he, an Illinois State Senator, gave his now famous 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address. He inspired a nation by identifying his idiosyncratic personal story, father from Kenya, mother from Kansas, named Barack, with the highest hope s and dreams of America.
 My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or ”blessed,” believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. They imagined — They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential. I heard about the speech from my son, Sam, who was then living in Obama’s neighborhood, Hyde Park, as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. I was teaching in Krakow, Poland that summer, and in a phone conversation, Sam confidently instructed my wife, Naomi and me that we had to listen to the speech. We had already read about the speech. Sam predicted that Obama would be the next President of the United States. We had our doubts. He was prescient. For Sam, the prospects of an African American President didn’t seem as extraordinary at it did for Naomi and me. We came of age during the height of the civil rights movement. We remember when overt racism was on ongoing part of daily life. Young though we were, we remember the March on Washington and the “I Have a Dream” speech. We remember the slain civil rights workers. We remember the urban riots, the urban decay, and the fear on the city streets that followed. We remember the golden age of television, when black and white were the color of the images but not of the people on the screen. We lived through many firsts for African Americans and women, but the first we couldn’t imagine in our lifetime seemed to Sam to be likely, given Obama’s talents. His world, the world . . .
Read more: The Wisdom of Youth
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 23rd, 2010 The recent violent conflict over the blockade of Gaza enforced by Israel and the attempt of humanitarian organizations and political movements aligned against Israel to break the blockade reminds me of the fundamental nature of conflict. Amos Oz once summed up the situation as he understands it:
“[I]t is high time that honest people outside the region .. conceive of [the Palestinian Israeli conflict] as a tragedy and not as some ‘Wild – West Show,’ containing good guys and bad guys. Tragedies can be resolved in one of two ways: there is the Shakespearean resolution and there is the Chekhovian one. At the end of the Shakespeare tragedy, the stage is strewn with dead bodies, and maybe there’s some justice hovering high above. A Chekhov tragedy, on the other hand, ends with everybody disillusioned, embittered, heartbroken, disappointed, absolutely shattered, but still alive. And I want a Chekhovian resolution, not a Shakespearean one, for the Israeli – Palestinian tragedy.”
I completely agree. A persecuted people, after centuries of oppression and exclusion in Europe, culminating in genocide, find a place for themselves in what they perceive to be their ancient homeland. A peaceful people are forced off their land, displaced, homeless, subjected to second class citizenship. As Israelis and Palestinians fight against each other in their pursuit of justice, justice is denied. The majority on both sides, at least at times, have even agreed on what they perceive as a just solution, a two state solution, with Jerusalem as the capital of two nations, but getting there from here has made the solution elusive, if not impossible. Repeated failure has led to despair and aggression. On both sides, majorities are convinced that the other side is not serious about a just resolution, not serious about peace. Against these majorities, some try to keep alternatives alive. Their activities remind me of small things I had observed in the U.S. and in East and Central Europe.
A most compelling example of people who work against the common sense about the other is The Parents Circle, a Palestinian Israeli organization of “bereaved families for peace.” I first met them at their Israeli headquarters outside of Tel Aviv when a student . . .
Read more: Looking at Gaza, Remembering Tragedy, Looking for Hope in Small Things.
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