Well it's been five days since my last post and seemingly not much has changed. Mark Buehrle followed up his perfect game by starting out last night throwing five perfect innings setting a new record. (No pitcher has ever thrown two perfect games in a career, and back-to-back no-hitters has only been done once. ) And what people are still talking about is Henry Louise Gates. The police released the 911 tape in which the person who called it in never says the suspects are black. That changes my initial post some although she was asked to call them by another person, and we don't know what she was thinking.
The release of the tape does however make the police situation look even worse since what was written in the report was that the caller said there were two black males as suspects. When did that information appear? Second, the caller said there was luggage on the porch and it was possible they lived there and were having trouble getting in. Did the responding officers ever get told this information?
On Bill Maher's show he did say this situation shows how much we have advanced as a society because it wasn't that long ago that a black man would never have had the audacity to behave like a rich white man and demand the officer's name and badge number. A guest, who is running for congress in California, said the police officers biggest mistake was in doing this to a person who has a direct line to the President's office. If this was another person there would never be any apologies because the police department wouldn't be embarrassed enough to even think about it, and depending on the situation they might also still be in jail.
I do not think that the police officer or the women who spotted the events are racist. But the problem is all of us are inundated all the time with things which portray blacks, blacks males in particular, in a negative light. We are getting better, but let us not pretend that we, black and white, don't have a long way to go. I feel sorry for everyone who is involved in this situation, because it is no longer about them or this incident. It has become a metaphor for greater things happening in society, and in that they are all victims. But maybe this incident will bring everyone in the country to a different place.
Let us remember Paul's words from Galatians "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Let that be our goal.
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