Aug 4, 2009

Innocence Is No Defense

Update: See GOP Returns To "White Voter Strategy" for a look at why profiling and racism plays.

Oh yeah, Henry Louis Gates Jr is an innocent man. An insignificant detail not mentioned by those who cheerlead all the progress we have made in race relations and defend the cop who persecuted an innocent man.

Bob Herbert reminds us this morning of this minor detail of Prof Gates' innocence and the propensity of cops to target people of color.

No one is immune. Colin Powell told Larry King that he had been profiled many times. Attorney General Eric Holder spoke last week about how humiliated he felt as a college student when a cop made him stop his car and open the trunk so it could be searched for weapons.

Young, old, innocent as the day is long — it doesn’t matter. Your skin color can leave you perpetually vulnerable to a sudden and devastating criminal injustice.
Well, Gates like Colin Powell and Attorney General Eric Holder is black; so I guess he had it coming. We just need to ignore such distasteful facts like the man's innocence and understand the perpetrator because he wears a uniform and a badge.

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