The Atlantic - Latest Comments in The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

G.D. — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 01:14:40 -0000

brent: just a heads-up.

we highlighted this comment over at PostBourgie

(http://postbourgie.com/2009/07... it's been retweeted a billion times since then.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

brucds — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 21:39:03 -0000

"some of those folks are still talking shit about Michelle Obama's background and humble beginnings."

WTF ???? Total fucking assholes.

That's all.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Marcos El Malo — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 21:36:47 -0000

I not only agree with you, but wanted to thank you for teaching me (to type).

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Marcos El Malo — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 21:29:09 -0000

It's also worth noting that the prosecutor (City Attorney/DA/whatever) saw the police report and still thought the arrest was unjustified.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Waishatsu — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:07:41 -0000

I'm just poking fun at the numerous police apologists I've seen on various blogs who justify the treatment of Professor Gates by comparing his situation to that of a spoiled white teenager or poor, white redneck. Obviously, if we decide we want to examine the racial element of this through analogy we can only do so meaningfully by comparing Professor Gates to a man of similar wealth, stature, and accomplishment. I find the posts comparing him to an unaccomplished, poverty-stricken white man pretty offensive.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Bert — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:37:33 -0000

You can't really dialogue at that point. Some white people just have a problem with "angry black men" and for them, the fact that Gates got "angry" justifies the arrest. For me, it's a simple constitutional issue of privacy. If I was harassed like that in my own house I would respond the same way. Those cops didn't have a warrant; it was obvious a robbery wasn't taking place. They were just some macho dudes that wanted to throw their weight around against a black man who was being "uppity" with them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCxpSmVQIWU

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

cham — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:49:46 -0000

Perfect. I tried to make that point to my fellow Texans yesterday. They can't see it.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

AhYup — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:44:52 -0000

"Thinking and talking through the “privileged class” aspect of this spectacle is actually useful "

Since it gives you more ammo to claim the cop is less than human eh'? Prof. Gates erred in his loud and prejudiced assumptions. I can't imagine how anyone not predisposed to particular prejudices against cops or in this case white cops in particular could look at the facts and see anything other than two humans pride butting up against each other.

Systemic racism my ass. The only time I've watched any cop take the kind of abuse and humiliation this guy laid out was when they are trying to look ultra-professional during a COPS filming. Usually somebody goes to to jail no matter what color who is.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

AhYup — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:35:13 -0000

Your efforts to be even handed about this are admirable Ta-Nehisi. The title here really nails the crux of the problem in my view.

"The Rage Of A Privileged Class" indeed. I can understand why people who have been pulled over for "driving while black" would read race into this. The trouble is that if you grow up a middle class white person and know folks on both sides of the law you would not expect to be treated any differently. I've seen cops do asinine things in my life and been in a rage about it. Was younger and drove crappy cars I got pulled over and searched spuriously all the time. Its not just black folks that happens to. Its anybody who fits the "suspicious" profile. Sure I could change that and never got pulled over again after I could afford a Volvo.

Some Cops can be officious pricks, aggressively suspicious, racist and every other kind of -ist. That's because they are just people like everyone else and not all of them are one particular way or another. The constant assumptions to the contrary just because one is a white authority figure seem prejudiced to me. Form some quarters that racially prejudiced but I've watched spoiled trust funders talk their way into hand cuffs just as easily as Gates did.

Barnicle's stance is only partly generational. You have to remember that he's a guy with a solid working class upbringing. When I read through the whole incident particularly from the officers perspective in the police report at Smoking Gun http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0723092gates2.html , the bit where he decides to arrest him really stood out for me. What it reminded me of was the last sentence of Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant".

"I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool."

The problem here was that Gates didn't just act rude. He tried to humiliate the man in front of a crowd of people. That was the point where he got arrested. I'm to lazy to transcribe the key piece but I highly recommend reading the police report and trying to put yourself in the guys shoes for a minute. Maybe you have to have worked at some sort high pressure job involving confrontation to recognize that moment where the cop has to maintain stoic professionalism while being humiliated or do something unprofessional and stupid to feel like he's saving face. Back before all this postmodern focus on feelings that those of use still under forty grew up with a was a rare person who saw the slightest thing wrong with making the kind of decision the officer made here. Now a days more of us could recognize a more rational path path but the person who could manage to not slap cuffs on him is much rarer creature than those that would. While all some people are going to see here is race all a guy like Barnicle is going to see here is the position that Gates' behavior put the man just trying to do his job in. It has nothing to do with race whatsoever but at least something to do with class and everything to do with pride on both sides. Its a proud Harvard professor treating a working class guy with derision due to his own prejudices.

Was it a "bad bust"? It looked barely legal but I suppose that's arguable. Yet I've have seen plenty of less egregious things end with somebody not so privileged as Gates is go to jail. If he wasn't a rich and well known asshole we'd have never heard about it or cared.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Teknontheou — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:56:48 -0000

Gates, at this point, is honorary Black upper class, even though he wasn't born into it. Or that is to say, I think he has been accepted into that group by the members of that group, even in a way that the Obamas probably haven't been just yet (i.e., some of those folks are still talking shit about Michelle Obama's background and humble beginnings.)

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

eric k — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:48:38 -0000

I should have put gaffe in quotes, in the Kinsley definition that is what he means, it isn't actually a gaffe.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Carrington — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:40:48 -0000

Meh. I suspect Obama knew what he was doing. He wouldn't be where he was if he were gaffe-prone.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Carrington — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:40:00 -0000

The reason this galls me is that I know of the blood, sweat, and tears that has gone into limiting tyranny -- the arbitrary exercise of authority by the state.

This is, to be sure, a petty incident in and of itself, but it is fascinating in the way that it plumbs people's opinions of the just society. To put it politely, I'm deeply disappointed and angered by the number of people for whom the the major concern is that we not hurt the feelings of the Cambridge police department.

There's a good deal more at stake than Crowley's feelings and self-image, or Gates' and much of it has to do with our willingness to limit state authority.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Carrington — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:40:00 -0000

The reason this galls me is that I know of the blood, sweat, and tears that has gone into limiting tyranny -- the arbitrary exercise of authority by the state.

There's a good deal more at stake than Crowley's feelings and self-image, or Gates' and much of it has to do with our willingness to limit state authority.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

stuffy55 — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:30:18 -0000

Thinking and talking through the “privileged class” aspect of this spectacle is actually useful because it pushes us to think about class in the US, something that isn’t often or easily addressed, and it helps us to see a public display of the very toughness with which racism (at the individual and structural level) keeps its hold because ordinary mitigations associated with class position don’t necessarily hold when it comes to folks of color. In other words, watching the expectations associated with upper middle-classness get up-ended shows us something.

That’s why the fact that Gates is an ivy league academic and black is useful in returning our attention to police misconduct in more general terms. Even if a particular cop is not an active bigot, the spectacularity of this incident at least makes us talk about what US commonsense exists with regard to being subjects of scrutiny by the police. What I hear and see people talking about is how much people are trained to give way to police authority and whether or not that should be the case. What I hear and see people talking about is whether somebody’s class standing successfully exempts them from the automatic cop defence expected by to be shown by everybody. What I hear from some folks is resentment that upper class folks might expect that they shouldn’t bear the costs of police authoritarianism especially if those folks are black or somehow “other.” I’m fascinated by how many people (of various self-described races or ethnicities) in this thread or the earlier one on the Gates incident have talked about what it means that Gates didn’t get the memo on how to survive an encounter with the cops while being not-Caucasian.

And that’s interesting in and of itself given how much many US-ers seem to think (given comments in public forums like blogs) on non-spectacular occasions that our system’s economic mobility means that the US is *not* class stratified. Or, how much many US-ers seem to think, again on non-spectacular occasions, that race constraints only effect ordinary (non-upper class) people.

Oliver Cromwell Cox, a black American sociologist writing in the 1940s, produced stunning work on the intertwining of class, caste, and race in the US; the issue isn’t new. We just seem to have to rediscover it on a regular basis usually in the presence of some kind of spectacle whether a cop shooting of a black unarmed poor immigrant or an arrested black Harvard professor.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Tonya — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:23:47 -0000

I agree. I think people feel Obama should be that paid personnel who should be bigger than the baiter. The journalist was baiting him and Obama should have 'no commented' her.

I don't agree. I appreciate Obama's comment. Now is that because I agree with Obama? Probably.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Daughter — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:23:38 -0000

Good point. He was forced to resign from the Globe within the same six month period as a black female columnist--Patricia Walker, I think her name was. For the same reason. Has anyone heard from her since?

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Doctor Cleveland — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:22:19 -0000

Look, the class angle doesn't sell me. If the cop wrongly arrested Skip Gates out of class resentment, I don't think that's better.

And to be honest, I don't think a white man's class resentment of a black man can easily be disentangled from race. But say it was. Do the Cambridge cops get to arrest everybody upper-middle-class whom they consider too arrogant? If they arrest E. O. Wilson or Laurence Tribe tomorrow in similar circumstances, it's still not right.

As for the other angle on class, that it's only a problem when upper-middle-class types get railroaded, I have to admit that I'm an outsider to that conversation. But isn't it just a desire for the same rules to apply to blacks as well as to whites?

You can't tell me that a stereotypical white biker doesn't get treated differently than a stereotypical white banker. Is that right? No. But there's also an element of performance, rather than pure class involved. If you perform law-abiding citizen, you expect the police to register that performance. There's an unjust and inaccurate set of class expectations in that performance. But if you can't get a fair shake even when you're doing the official "right" thing, what the hell are you supposed to do? It's not that Gates, Ford and Watson are endorsing all the rules of the game. They're pointing out that they're not even being allowed to play the game.

I know that if I'm dressed neatly and speak in an educated way, the police will generally treat me better. I know if I grow my hair long and wear a "Born to Lose" T-shirt, police are more likely to misunderstand me. The bar to misunderstanding is much, much lower for African-Americans dealing with the police, and the standards for performing "law abiding" much, much higher. That's wrong. But the solution is certainly not to raise the bar impossibly high even for Harvard professors, MSNBC anchors, and DCCC chairs.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

brucds — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:17:52 -0000

Wow - I turned The Morning Jerks off before this part of the exchange. Believe it or not, I got disgusted with Mika and her buddy Barnicle before they even started this segment of the discussion. Also, Harold Ford stepped up his game as the thing progressed and I've got to give him credit.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Teknontheou — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:17:11 -0000

AJH,

Pretty much. Like when Daniels walked Prezbylewski through the b.s., fabricated explanation of why he had to sock that kid at the Towers at 2AM.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Tonya — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:12:12 -0000

I think that it is a little unfair to find offense in Obama 'stepping' in to this debate. He could have said "no comment" but given the history behind this issue (class, racial..and even maybe his own personal experience) I am not surprised he had response.

I don't feel Obama's comment as class-based bullying. Everyone within a group will tend to stand by their group- class, race, family or whatever. A President is not immune to that. Humans aren't. The Pres. stated a fact: police brutality towards blacks and hispanics is disproportionate towards other races. That isn't a class thing.

What should be upsetting, like TNC blogged about earlier is that the media only cares about it because Gates happened to be a friend within the same class. How many countless blacks being harassed by police and how many times is a President asked about it?

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

ElisaA — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:07:49 -0000

There are 2 issues here - one is that police should respect our rights and the second is that in reality police do not respect people's rights. Cops (and people with power in government in general) are clearly treated differently from others - just look at any of the stories that TNC has posted recently. The police in Gates' case will not likely face any consequences, no matter what the law is. I doubt that Gates' immediate actions will make any difference. It is possible that he will be able to make changes through future work in the Cambridge/Boston community now that he's felt this personally.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Stacy — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:03:41 -0000

He was pretending to be a commenter on another blog. It's kind of a strange post.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Jennifer D. — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:02:23 -0000

Thanks! Appreciate that. Maybe I can find a way to work that new vocab into a conversation soon. Ha.

Re: The Rage Of A Privileged Class

Doctor Cleveland — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:58:42 -0000

And I think his brother is a long-time Boston police officer. Barnicle has a lot of police and firefighter connections, and built more over his years as a metro reporter and columnist for the Globe.