The Arizona Immigration Law and the National Tumult: Stereotypes and Bi-Partisan Silliness

Both sides of the political spectrum are mired in rigid stereotypes about immigration. Stereotypes impede clear thinking. They undermine reason. I have messages for Right and Left on immigration. Pay attention; you might feel better and you won’t act or react stupidly.

First, some disclosures:

1 I am an immigrant married to an immigrant (a so-called “woman of color” in the stupid parlance of political correctness). We are both American patriots. We believe in “American exceptionalism” although we are both well educated. (If you don’t believe it, check out my vita – linked to this blog – and die a little inside. Also, ask to view my wife’s paintings. They cry out” cultured person.”) We are both political conservatives, leaning strongly libertarian (small “l”).

2 I believe that recruiting immigrants de facto on the basis of their willingness to violate our laws, first thing, is a stupid policy. Immigration policy discussions have not even begun, not under this Democratic President with his Democratic majorities in both houses. They did not take place under a Republican President either. This absence suggests to me that illegal immigration is not high on this country’s political agenda, at least, not sustainably high. And I agree with this assessment.

3 As I write, crossing the US border illegally is a misdemeanor from a Federal standpoint. It’s like a traffic violation, or possession of a joint in most states. This tells me that there is no national political will to act resolutely on immigration, illegal or legal.

Conservative dufuses (dufi?): Immigrants do not come to the US to use welfare nor to rape and kill those you love. Those who cross the border illegally come here to work, to mow your lawns and clean your dishes. They want to improve their lives and especially those of their children. That’s the American way. The fact that they break the law to pursue the American dream does not make it any the less the American dream.

This may be hard to believe but the last time I looked, immigrants in general were slightly less likely than the native-born to use welfare or to be in jail for serious offenses. I don’t know of much credible info about illegal immigrants specifically. I am open-minded. Show me good data, collected and analyzed according to scientific methods and I will turn on a dime. I will do it publicly and loudly, on this blog, in my radio program ( “Fact Matter,” on KSCO 1080 AM Santa Cruz, Sundays 11am-1pm), and in the coffee shop. The fact that I have issued this challenge before and that the data keep not coming makes me suspicious that they don’t exist.

Stop paying attention to La Raza‘s insane harangues. (“La Raza”= “The Race.”) It’s an extremist, racist organization that represents no one. If its membership had blue eyes, they would be called a dangerous armed “militia.” Instead, if you know someone who knows Spanish, have him help you ask Luis why he is here. (Luis is the quiet, polite guy who buses tables at your local restaurant.)

If you want to know more, read my co-authored article linked to this blog: If Mexicans and Americans Could Cross the Border Freely

Lefty mush-heads, here is for you: Stop thinking immigrants are “exploited.” First, the word has no objective meaning: I felt “exploited” when I was teaching university. Yet, you would scream in anguished envy if you knew how much I was earning per hour.

What kind of exploitation is it that large numbers of people seek at great risk to their safety and at great expenses, both monetary and emotional? Once more, your leaders are using words to confuse you

Immigrants, legal and illegal, come to this country because it’s a better country in some important respects than where they come from. For many, it’s just the opportunity to earn more money. This immigrant thinks, speculates, that the underlying reason why immigrants from everywhere come here goes like this: Until now, this is the country where a person’s success depends most on his efforts, his talents, his balls (women too, of course). This may soon change and the flow of immigrants will decrease.

Get used to it: There are scores of shitty countries in the world and only a handful that are better than this one, usually in some fairly narrow respect. (Yes, it’s true, French trains are faster!) Millions do come here from those shitty countries and many would like to come from the good countries. There has to be a reason.

As for American racism, again, don’t be absurd; face the facts instead. There is always discrimination from some quarter or other against those who appear different. It often takes unexpected forms. Excuse the recourse to personal experience: I had a neighbor who hated me first time she heard me, because of my French accent. It turned out she had known another, one, French immigrant who was an unpleasant person. Many, many more, all liberals, envy me because of the same accent. Envy makes them hostile. (You would not believe the numbers of upper-middle class liberals who hate themselves for not being French! But, I digress, as usual.) Below is a fact you have to deal with if you want to say anything about the relationship between immigration and American racism.

Only about half of the people living in the US who have any African blood also have a slave ancestor. All the others are immigrants and children of immigrants. (Tech note: I don’t have the reference at hand so, feel free to believe it’s 20% rather than 50%; it does not affect my point much.) Think about the implication: A country that had almost two hundred years of African slavery; a country where racial segregation was enforced in may parts until forty years ago, such a country attracts immigrants of African appearance by the millions. As is true for other immigrants, their move is costly in every way possible. How much vestigial racism can they possibly confront if they keep coming? Think! Force yourself to answer this simple question.

Yes, people vote with their feet whenever they can.

Ruben, Mike, any Hispanic who is reading this: Pay attention. I am speaking to you.

Yes, as I said recently, the new Arizona law will lead to racial profiling. It’s not motivated by racism though. It turns out, apparent manifestations of racism increases in periods of high unemployment and they wane with full employment. Do you really believe that Americans are “racist” one day and not racist one year later?

The liberal media’s accusations of racism against the state of Arizona are both disgusting and pathetic. They are are the death-cry of institutions that realize they are losing their ability to manipulate the befuddled and the compliant. Of course, no surprise, many immigrants are befuddled and compliant.

Here is my prediction: The new Arizona law will be destroyed by court action or it will be enforced only for a brief period and in desultory manner. I am glad it exists though. It’s a warning to the Federal Government to get its act together on illegal immigration. I am glad it’s there for this reason alone.

And yes, what little enforcement will take place will irritate and inconvenience some people. Those will include Hispanics in Arizona for 300 years, Navajos there for 5,000, and even a few “Indians” from Mumbai because not every cop has a doctorate in Anthropology! Their prospective suffering does not move me all that much. Thousands want to murder my daughter, and their daughters, because they sometimes show their belly-button, and a determined group is taking apart the economic foundations of this great country. “Suck it up,” I say.

Next: Why immigrants are superior.

Racial Profiling at its Best

Here is a story and a sociological essay all rolled into one.

My son the recent college graduate only thinks about cooking. I encourage his inclination, of course. Compulsion does not work. Most people do well only what they like to do. Besides, I am an immigrant from France. Scabs of French pessimism stick to my brain. I don’t know how long the current economic crisis will last. In Japan, there were ten dead years, a full decade lost. I tell myself that cooks never go hungry and neither do those who are close to them. I adore my son’s girlfriend. I want her to have enough to eat, happen what may. I used to work in kitchens myself, around the 18^th century. I believe that even the leavings from the average restaurant kitchen will keep you pleasantly fat forever. Go for it, I tell him.

My son has been cooking part-time since he was a teen-ager and throughout the embarrassingly long years it took him to complete his political science major. He has experience in a variety of fairly humble kitchen positions. I also think he has some talent. I don’t say this because he is my son. I am a mean father by California standards, a stern figure more or less from the Old Testament, you might say. Not long ago, I thought my son was worse than worthless. I am not afraid to be “judgmental,” bet on it! But he has changed. His brain has caught up with his glands at last. Having finished college, he is naturally looking for a full-time position, or better. He is meeting with an obstacle we did not expect but that was expectable if we had thought about it: He is not Mexican.

In California, where I live, everywhere in California, I think, during the fat cow years, immigrants from Mexico took over nearly all the kitchen jobs, Those are mostly hard jobs, stressful jobs offering low pay. The native-born young shunned them in favor of retail “sales associates” positions that are easy and allow for a fair margin of laziness although they don’t pay any better. The Mexican take-over began with Taco Bells and private tamales stands, and, naturally, taco shops. But immigrants are predictable. Many went considerably further.

It does not matter where immigrants come from. They are a self-selected group and the selection is based neither on indolence nor on passivity. Every wave of immigrants comprises more than its share of hard workers, of ambitious, tenacious individuals with a vision. Yes, I do think that as far as these qualities are concerned, immigrants rank higher on the average than the native-born. That’s the case everywhere: in the US, in Canada, in the UK, in France. Accordingly, many immigrants make their way up within little-prized occupations. There are so many of them trying that some are bound to achieve high positions within these occupations. It’s the same at all levels of educational achievement. Immigrants are overrepresented in kitchens, in universities, and in innovative high-tech companies in Silicon Valley. I would bet they are under-represented in government jobs.

Courage, tenacity and vision often make up for initial linguistic incompetence, and even for continuing incompetence. The same qualities help immigrants overcome the reputed obstacle of culture. It’s much exaggerated anyway, as far as this country is concerned, at least. In the US, hardly anyone puts pressure on immigrants to assimilate beyond the strict requirements of their job. It’s even truer in Canada, and only a little less true in other open, tolerant, democratic, capitalist societies. (As I write, the French political class is arguing endlessly about forbidding the burqha, the complete, supposedly Islamic cover for women, in government offices. That’s in France!)

Note what I am not talking about: affirmative action, preferential hiring, or preferential promotion. If you invited yourself to the party, I say, you should not expect to be served first, or the best morsels. If your parents or grandparents had the good idea to come here, most likely uninvited (like me), congratulate them on their good sense but their inspired move does not give you any special right. It’s absurd to think that their immigration creates a debt for the society that took them in. It’s silly to think so even for a minute. But I digress. Back to the story of my son and of his search for a full-time cooking job. But first, a necessary personal digression.

Some of my friends take me for an inveterate food snob just because of my French accent. I am not; I am not even a foodie. I just know what I like and I have no tolerance for make-believe gastronomy, especially for presumptuous dishes. “Eyes-only” food is a plague all over this country. If that’s what you want, you are not a gourmet but an interior decorator, and probably gay, at least if you are a man. (If you are a woman, you are the chi-chi kind and almost certainly mediocre in bed.) Anyway, the occasions when I feel the urge to compliment a chef are rare. They are rare enough that I remember the last five with ease. On the last occasion, I enjoyed a quintessential traditional dish you never, ever find in so-called “French” restaurants in this country. (If I ever see another “French onion soup” slathered in cheap melted cheese, I will yell crudely!) Anyway, the dish is: “blanquette de veau.” I don’t want to sound brutal but frankly, if you have not had blanquette de veau at least ten times in your life, you have had a rude, bland, nasty existence, a life hardly worth living. On that occasion, I was so happy that I asked to talk to the chef of that otherwise unremarkable, small chain establishment. And yes, you guessed it right, the blanquette de veau artist, the masterful chef, was a Mexican immigrant, a man in his forties.

As I said, my son the graduate is hard-working and intelligent. He is also full of initiative in the kitchen and at work in general. Moreover, he was brought up in a household where the most traditional French cooking interrupted the rhythm of two kinds of Indian cuisine, North Indian and Bengali. He has had the exposure at least. He is not narrow-tasted. (I made that word up, by analogy with narrow-minded.) I employ him frequently on various repair tasks around my sweet Victorian house. I prefer him to most casual laborers I have employed. I pay him better than the going local rate because he deserves it. Under my guidance, he has even learned to dress in a way that is not distracting to employers. (No skateboarding championship t-shirt and no “Fuck Communism” t-shirts either.) So, he looks neat most of the time.

With all these qualities, my son can hardly cross the threshold of a restaurant without suffering rejection. He says managers hardly take a second look at him. “No opening” they affirm. This cannot be always true. People are still eating out in spite of the current prolonged crisis and the restaurant business is notorious for personnel turnover. I think rather that restaurants owners and managers discriminate passively against my son. They profile him.

It’s easy to imagine how it happens. When José, the second cook decides to go visit his old mother in Mexico, he recommends his cousin Jesùs to take his place for a while. And why shouldn’t he? The cousin is more likely to give him back his job when he returns than a stranger, especially a stranger who is not even Mexican. When Antonio gets fired, the first cook, Miguel, is first to know and he immediately offers his brother-in-law, Luis. The system makes for smoothness of operations by minimizing disruptions. Besides, when you observe Mexicans in a kitchen, you quickly notice that they have their own cadence of work, their own tempo. The current mechanism works well. Why risk throwing sand in its gears by bringing in a new guy, an unknown quantity who will be comparatively unpredictable simply because he is not Mexican?

In this closed market, my son enjoys a slight advantage over the average Santa Cruz surfer, say. In California, currently, the probability of a blond, tanned surfer getting a job in a restaurant kitchen is about the same as that of my winning the lottery. And I rarely buy tickets. My son was adopted from India and has brown skin. An unobservant or distracted restaurant manager might fail to notice that neither his first name nor his last name sounds Spanish. I keep hoping my son will be taken for a Mexican, that he will be mistakenly profiled and be given a chance. I encourage him to learn more Spanish, to form complete sentences in that language so someone will think he is just a slightly mentally challenged young Mexican man.

Obviously, this profiling looks unfair. But why not? The Mexican de facto monopoly over kitchens succeeds for nearly everyone concerned. It’s good for the Mexican immigrants, of course. It works well for the owners, as I just explained. The patrons don’t complain, except me, and that, only seldom. I eat Mexican food frequently by choice (I am fond of tacos de lengua, and of menudo on Saturdays.) I just wish almost everything you eat in California did not taste like Mexican food. But I tell myself, virtuously, “If you don’t like it here just go home where you come from, you stupid foreigner!” That usually takes care of it for a while. In the meantime, our reasonably laissez-faire policies are pretty successful overall. Our unemployment rate at its worst, now (March 2010), looks like normal unemployment in much of Europe.

What ails my son is clearly discrimination. It’s racial profiling of the crudest kind. And so, what?

PS It’s not unethical to offer my son a try-out and it’s not embarrassing to me. If you have an interesting cooking slot, even a temporary one, let me know. You can contact me through a Comment on this blog or email me at : jdelacroixliberty@gmail.com

© Jacques Delacroix 20010 (3/14710)

IF YOU WANT  TO LEARN ABOUT MY VIEWS ABOUT ILLEGAL MEXICAN IMMIGRATION, SPECIFICALLY,  FOLLOW THE LINK BELOW. IT WILL TAKE YOU TO AN ARTICLE CO-AUTHORED WITH SERGEY NIKIFOROV  AND PUBLISHED RECENTLY IN THE INDEPENDENT  REVIEW. THE ARTICLE PRESENTS A REAL LIBERTARIAN VIEW OF THE ISSUE. IT WILL PROBABLY SURPRISE YOU SOME.

http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_14_01_6_delacroix.pdf

Profiling: How To

The President first said: No big deal! Then, he called it a “systemic failure” and a “catastrophe.” He was wrong the first time and half right the second time. There was no catastrophe but it wasn’t thanks to our huge, expensive, cumbersome and troublesome anti-terrorism bureaucracy. It was asleep at the wheel one more time. The catastrophe was avoided because of the terrorist’s own incompetence (or loss of nerve) and because of the presence of mind and courage of a Dutch traveler. (Am I making this up or do I detect a reluctance on the part of the big media to call a foreigner, “a hero”?)

What we have is not working well enough, Even when it works, it’s repellent. The inconvenience of security checks act as a brake on my willingness to travel by air. There is no reason to think I am the only one feeling that way. In response to the failed crime, the airwaves have filled with discussion of “profiling.” Every discussion I have heard treats profiling in terms of physical appearance. It would not be difficult to convince me that preventive physical profiling could be done effectively and should be done. Yet. I try to be sensitive to the sensitivities of others. It’s clear that many Americans find the idea of profiling based on physical appearance disturbing, or even unacceptable. There may even be good historical reasons for this rejection that I will discuss if anyone asks. It seems to me though that a big partial solution is staring us in the face that I have nor heard mention at all. And yes, it involves profiling, another kind of profiling.

On the one hand, a Finnish grandmother who belongs to the Lutheran church is about 35,000 times less likely to blow up anything than a 28-year old Muslim man from Yemen. Yes, I made up this number. The real odds are probably even less than that. On the other hand, international air travel requires certain documents, a passport in almost all cases. Passports show the age and name of the traveler,

Muslim males nearly always have distinctive first name and last names. Even when their last name is generic, their first name comes from a small list of Islamic first names. So, why not profile on the basis of sex, age and name? I mean, create a special security line at airports for all males under a certain age (I think, fifty), who have a Muslim name. Subject them to special scrutiny and frisk them physically or electronically. I am not referring here to any deliberately humiliating or gratuitously disruptive treatment, just to a businesslike standardize procedure. In fact, if such a measure were adopted, one could ease up the inspection of everyone else and all lines would probably move faster, including, the profiling line itself.

Objections to such a scheme are easy to predict: Predominantly Muslim countries would protest. We could call their bluff and point out that international relations are governed by the principle of reciprocity: tit-for-tat. There would be nothing to stop them for subjecting young Christian men entering their territory to equivalent treatment. Some Muslim men would no doubt choose to go elsewhere on vacation or to school than the US. That would be a negative consequence but a price worth paying to avoid millions having their freedom restricted forever without notable gain in their safety. Besides, some of the tiny number of would-be terrorists might also be dissuaded. (A column in the Wall Street journal just observed that there is apparently not an inexhaustible supply of jihad martyrs.)

Next, American Muslims would howl: “Islamophobia!” There are two answers to this accusation. One is that Islamic organizations don’t have a vote until such time as they come to their senses, stop denying reality, and shoulder a big share of the burden their misguided brethren impose on all of us. Shouldering the burden would involve first and foremost making concrete proposals to improve on our common danger from violent jihadists instead of crying “Islamophobia.” Right now, they are worse than useless. Two days after the Christmas Day foiled terrorist act, none of the following organizations had any comments on its website: Islamic Supreme Council of North America; Islamic Circle of North America; Council on Islamic-American Relations. The latter had, prominently displayed, an article about an old fake accusation against a Muslim traveler. The Council on American-Islamic Relations reported simply that Detroit area Muslim leaders did decry the bombing attempt and that they feared “retaliation” and the creation of a “climate of fear.” (Historical note: The fact is that not a single Muslim was murdered in America in retaliation for 9/11. My own very first spontaneous reaction on he morning of 9/11 was: What to do to protect local Muslims? My reaction was wrong, unwarranted.) The Arab-American Institute, an organization for which I have much esteem, had nothing. Al Jazeera in English had nothing by Sunday morning.

Here is a message about how to deal with protests from such organizations: It’s OK to punish mildly persistent collective irresponsibility. Being double-searched at the airport is a mild punishment.

My second response to the silly accusation of Islamophobia, is that allowing large numbers of Muslims to be killed without lifting a finger to protect them either is Islamophobia or, it’s worse than Islamophobia. The fact is that the hapless Nigerian traveling on the day of the main Christian holiday in order to explode an airliner over the largest concentration of Muslims in America (Detroit) was about to assassinate many Muslims. The young Muslim man subjected to the unpleasantness of double scrutiny at the airport will be protecting his mother, his sister and his children. As I keep repeating, violent Jihadists have murdered many more Muslims than they have Christians.

So, it seems to me that it’s simple to improve greatly on both our safety at home and on the chilling effect airport security measures have on our economic life and on our enjoyment of life. Someone is not doing his job or her job, not even thinking about it. And, by the way, nothing like the Christmas Day failed attack took place on Georges W. Bush’s watch.

Why No Racial Profiling? (and the President’s Shrewdness on Health Reform.)

The Gates ‘arrest episode: It does not matter but it’s symptomatic of a certain mood. I suspect it’s also further proof of the President’s presence of mind. Several comments.

A Harvard Professor who is black, Henry Louis Gates, tries to force his front door open because it’s stuck. His taxi driver, also black, is helping him. This is all happening in a tony Cambridge neighborhood. A white neighbor calls the police because she suspects a burglary in progress.

The cops arrive. The white cop in charge asks to see an ID. The professor first refuses, then he shows the cop an ID without an address, or maybe, one with an address; reports vary. Words are exchanged. The professor accuses the cop of racial profiling. The cop arrests the professor for “disorderly conduct.”

It seems to me most commentators are missing the boat, usually in revealing ways. First things first.

Conservatives who will not admit that there are pushy, abusive law enforcement officers with a quick-trigger temper are denying the obvious. They are likely in bad faith. The charge under which the professor was arrested tells it all. “Disorderly contact” is a b.s. charge. I will bet it almost never sticks before a jury of twelve peers, unless the accused is actually drunk in court, or really ugly. That’s the charge police officers use when they are really pissed off and don’t know what else to do.

I had an encounter with a pushy law enforcement officer myself a few months ago. Read about it in my essay on this blog, “Yosemite Enema.”

Some conservatives add gratuitously that the professor was “rude” to the cop. So? Since when is it illegal to be rude to cops? That’s exactly the day I fear, as a conservative, when rudeness to police becomes a crime. Police are our servants who happen to be doing a difficult job. Being rude to a cop is uncivil, like being rude to a cab driver. Period.

A couple of days later, several police officers’ associations held a nearly hour-long press conference to protest the President’s statement on the mini-event. (See below.) That’s ridiculous. Sensitive cops! Just what we need! Next thing you know, a couple of them will be sobbing on camera at the verbal injustice done to one of them.

It appears that the professor accused the cop of “profiling.” I don’t care that the second arresting officer, in the foreground of the best photograph of the event, was black. Why wouldn’t the cops be racially profiling?

People who are called upon to intervene on a possible crime scene, of necessity rely on appearances. In particular, they must ask themselves what’s out of place: a butcher’s knife on a playground, a man with a set of tools in a large parking lot, a woman screaming at a man who tries to restrain her. If they did not, we would fault them, and rightly so.

When using appearances, they must engage in split-second probabilistic calculation. There might be an innocent explanation for the knife. The man with the tools might be about to do a quick fix on his own car. The woman might be screaming in grief because she just received bad news on her cell phone. Nevertheless, many cops will chose to intervene because they decide, in a split-second, that the probability of mischief is not negligible. In most case, we will think they are doing their job properly. Would they not intervene, they would often be punished, professionally.

It turns out, Americans of African appearance commit proportionately many more non-white collar crimes than do Americans of European appearance. It turns out, wealthy areas of Cambridge are overwhelmingly white. Had the thought not crossed the cop’s mind that he was witnessing a burglary in progress, he would have been a dolt.

Here is a digression: The question of whether cops are more readily hostile to black than to white citizens for reasons other than visceral racism is a taboo topic. There is a simple sociological study crying out to be done. It won’t be. Here it is: Do African-American police officers respond differently to black and white suspects? Do they consider them with greater suspicion than they do white people?

“ Racial profiling” is frowned upon and, in some areas and for some purposes, it’s illegal. This must cause tremendous waste of police resources. When you waste police resources, you enable additional crime, including homicide. If you don’t believe me, conduct the following mental experiment:

The police in your town is hot on the tracks of serial killer, or killers. Acting on a tip, they focus on a group of older, church-going black ladies. What’s your reaction, focusing on the judicious employment of law enforcement resources? Below, here is mine.

Serial killers who have been captured are overwhelmingly white. They have been nearly all males. With a few exceptions, they have been between 16 and 35 years of age. They are almost all loners.

I believe the police is probably wasting its time and worse, letting a dangerous person free to kill again. This police behavior is bordering on criminally negligent in this case. What’s wrong with the police strategy? In a word, it’s not profiling. In particular, it’s not engaging in the sort of racial profiling the situation reasonably demands. The serial killer is very likely to be white. The police is also at fault for not engaging in sex profiling. The killer is probably male. And so forth.

The probability of someone black, female, old, and gregarious (belonging to a church group) being a serial killer is so low, people of that description should go right down to the bottom of the list of suspects. Police strategies that don’t comply to this set of probabilities are irrational and irresponsible.

So, it’s racial profiling against blacks specifically that is banned because of past racist actions by police at some times, in some places. That is still irrational from a crime-fighting perspective. The solution is not to prohibit any sort of racial profiling but to establish the appropriate reward structure for cops such that any profiling that does not pay dividends in convictions becomes a visible, embarrassing and punishable waste of their time.

Incidentally, the victims of black crime are mostly black. We are not doing anyone a favor, except fading civil rights organizations, by failing to protect black people against black predators.

Here is another facet of this tiny event: The professor’s profile. (Oops, that was bad!). First, he is clearly a professional, academic African-American (not an African-American professional; that’s something else). He has a good number of publications as befits a Harvard professor. Those are almost all books. This is legitimate but I have to note that books escape the harsh censure of blind-refereed scholarly journals. If there is a pro-black bias anywhere in academia, it’s much more likely to manifest itself with respect to the publication of books than with respect to the acceptance of scholarly article in refereed journals. In addition, his books are about various aspects of being black in America. If there were (conditional), a mutual aid society in American academia, Black Studies, broadly defined would be a good place for it. It would be one of the good places for it as opposed to, say, civil engineering, or English. Still no book is easy to write, I readily admit.

In case, you are wondering, I am displaying no sour grapes here. When I was an academic, I played unambiguously with the big guys. Professor Gates chose not to, maybe, or perhaps not. No one dictated to him the ambiguous career course he chose. He did not have to be professionally black. Our most useful economists,a great teacher, is Thomas Sowell. He is ablack man but he is not professionally black.

Harvard has been good to Professor Gates. That’s why he lives in a ritzie white suburb instead of among the people for whom he poses as an intellectual spokesman. A couple of days after the non-event, he sent a communication to the press from his other home, on Martha’s Vineyard. No desperate, exploited ghetto kid, the professor! Yet, he could not have made the same living had he not been actively black. I mean, as opposed to a bus driver who happens to be black, or as opposed to an African-American brain surgeon, for example. I figure he had no choice but to confront the white officer in the vituperative manner he did. To have done otherwise would have been a denial of his whole life and career.

Of course, the only important facet of this tiny near-non-event remains the President’s seemingly impromptu comment about it. Commentators, including some on the Left, criticize him for criticizing the Cambridge police actions without sufficient evidence. They say it shows a troubling lack of judgment. I am not so sure.

President Obama was once an academic himself ( a mediocre one; i explain this judgment in a previous posting). Certainly, he must have known that Cambridge Mass. is not Cambridge, Miss. Besides, he is aware that 2009 is not 1909. He must have known also that the said police department, in that liberal town serving that liberal university, must not shelter many closet racists. (It turns out the arresting officer once kissed a black male athlete on the mouth in public. Well, he gave him mouth-to-mouth, anyway.)

The President delivered himself of his summary judgment about the Cambridge police near the end of a press conference on health care reform. The conference gave absolutely no new information. Even the lazy, ass-kissing Washington press corp was uncomfortable. The health care plan was already tanking in Congress because of a report from the independent Congressional Budget Office. Health care is the Democratic issue par excellence. The President’s entourage has been know to plant questions at press conferences. The distracting question about the professor incident saved the President from having to squirm to avoid more possible embarrassing questions on the official topic of the conference, health care. Semi-apologizing a couple of days later was a small price to pay for this respite.