ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE - AND BEING BROKE

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE - AND BEING BROKE
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One Black woman told me, "Barack Obama didn’t do anything for us because he didn’t give us jobs or provide housing." That woman wasn’t out of a job because of what Barack Obama failed to do, she’s out of a job because of what SHE’S failing to do.

Barack Obama has done Black people proud, and any Black person who doesn’t see that is a fool who’s sitting around waiting for someone to come bring them a gift basket.  Nobody’s gonna do that, so you might as well wake up and realize that Santa Claus is a myth.  A good president is one who creates the conditions for you to help yourself.  So the days of waking up and looking under a Christmas tree for your happiness ended when we were kids. So you're going to have to  get up off your ass and learn to do something that people will be willing to pay for, and create your own goddamn jobs.
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Black people have proven that we're a brilliant and creative people, and the very same creativity that went into creating Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, and Marvin Gaye can also be directed toward every other area of knowledge if we'd just take the time to pursue it. I went into business doing legal research and writing legal briefs for attorneys for an upfront payment and a third of their legal fees - I learned to do that fighting my own cases when I was a teenager growing up on the street and I got pretty good at it, I had to if I wanted to stay out of jail. That serves as an example of how the adversity of the Black experience has made us MORE, rather than less. 
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As a result of the knowledge that I picked up on the street just trying to survive, it allowed practicing attorneys to sit on their asses and let me win their cases for them before they even stepped foot in court.  I only lost one case in 20 years, and I never even passed by a law school. The knowledge that I picked up on the street just trying to survive allowed my son and daughter to never have to want for anything in their entire lives. A case would come in and I’d go out and buy a motor home or an Escalade - cash.  But after my kids went out on their own and my wife passed, I gave that up and began to just try to enjoy what’s left of my life.  But here it is over 10 years later, and lawyers are STILL ringing my phone off the hook today - some even call me for legal advice!!! 
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The following is an example of the kind of common sense that Black people consider routine and don't realize everybody doesn't have:  The United States Supreme Court and legal scholars all over this country are debating whether or not Trump has the power to pardon himself. The answer should be clear to anyone with common sense, but they’re just looking in the wrong place. These so-called "legal scholars" keep looking at Article II Section 2 of the Constitution which says, "The president “shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment." First, when it says, "except in cases of impeachment," it means except when it involves himself. And they also overlook another part of the Constitution that overrides even that - the Presidential Oath of Office.  Article VI, Clause 3, of the Constitution requires the President to "be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution."  And the Presidential Oath of Office says the following:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will FAITHFULLY execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, PRESERVE, PROTECT, and DEFEND the Constitution of the United States."
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So no, Trump cannot pardon himself or any member of his extended crime family, because the case involves himself and it's a possible cause for impeachment. It's also a direct violation of the Presidential Oath of Office. He cannot pardon crimes in pursuit of self-service because it violates his oath of office in which he swore to “FAITHFULLY, PRESERVE, PROTECT, AND DEFEND” THE CONSTITUTION."  In addition, his successor cannot come in and pardon him later for the very same reason - he'd be failing to “FAITHFULLY, PRESERVE, PROTECT, AND DEFEND” THE CONSTITUTION as well."  Having a President, or his successor, pardon either himself, or his fellow conspirators doesn't protect the Constitution, it corrupts it.
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So for a president to attempt to pardon either himself, or his fellow conspirators in order to protect himself, is a direct violation of his Oath of Office, and thus, illegal.  It's clear and simple, and anyone who can't see that is either dumb, or they don't want to see it. 
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So I defy ANY legal scholar in America to challenge me on this issue. This simple-minded debate clearly demonstrates just how clueless many of the people we except as "EXPERTS" really are. So we should never be blinded by titles and credentials. That's how we get played. Sharpen your own mind, and then NEVER give anyone else's ability to think priority over your own. And when the need arises for you to assess others, never base your assessment on their titles or credentials. Always base your assessment on their ability to think - period.
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Many of these so-call “scholars,” including Cornel West (I had to mention him) are simply ignorant little men with a receipt from Harvard and a big sign on their door. Yes, they can regurgitate the words of the thinkers of the past, but more often than not, they can’t think for themselves.  We must always remember that Socrates, who's universally accepted as the father of modern thought, was not a scholar, he was a stonemason. If it were not for his proteges, people like Plato and Xenophon, who listened to him hold court on the block, we wouldn’t even know who he was.  So be like Socrates and never underestimate your own intelligence, and since knowledge is free, you don’t have to depend on the White men at Harvard, Princeton or Yale to give it to you. Congress is full of Harvard graduates and people with titles, but it’s the most dysfunctional assemblage of self-absorbed idiots and fools in America - and at this point, it's not even necessary to describe the gross level of ignorance and incompetence that currently disgraces the White House.
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So don't just sit on your ass and wait around for the White man to BRING you a job. Knowledge is not only power, but it’s free. You don’t have to go to Harvard to obtain the knowledge to survive any more than John Coltrane had to go to Juilliard to obtain his musical genius. The adversity that the Black man has had to face has made him more, rather than less. We assume that these so-call scholars and "intellectuals" have some deep and arcane knowledge that we're not privy to, but that's not true. They're simply little men who pass out awards and certificates to one another and give each other big signs to put on their doors.
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Thus, the biggest problem we have in the Black community has absolutely nothing to do with our lack of intellect or ability, it’s based on the fact that we’ve allowed ourselves to be brainwashed into UNDERVALUING our intellect. We're buying into the brainwashing that others have a special kind of intellect that we don't possess, but that's pure, unadulterated bullshit.
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When the White man tells us that we can’t think because HE didn’t give us a receipt from Harvard or Yale certifying that we can think, far too often, we believed him. That’s how he controls the quality of our lives, and our destiny.  In contrast, Jews are taught from birth that they are God's chosen people. That's why they excel, because you ARE what you think.  A White boy told me just yesterday that "You need to get over yourself." I told him in response, "No, I'm not gonna get over myself, because if I don't love and respect myself, who is? And beyond that, I take great pride in having the ability to make you feel just like you're feeling right now - inferior." That's also why bigots hate Barack Obama so intensely, he makes them feel inferior to a Black man, and to some White folks, that's worse than death.
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So as Black people, we need to turn off BET and start educating ourselves. Once we do that the White man will be begging us to take his money in return for our knowledge and creativity.  Black creativity is a very valuable asset.  So if you're broke, that's not Obama's fault, it's your fault, because you're wasting all of your time sitting around learning rap lyrics instead of getting up off your ass and learning to do something that people will be willing to pay you for. A job is not a gift. Applying for a job is about placing your expertise up for sale. So if you can't do nothing, you can't expect to get paid.
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Eric L. Wattree
wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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An Open Letter to Richard, and Other Young Black People

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE

An Open Letter to Richard, and Other Young Black People

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I want to thank you so much for taking the time to write me. Nothing is more gratifying to a writer than knowing that his message is being received.
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As I read your email I couldn't help but think how much you remind me of myself. When I was younger I too felt misunderstood. Then as I got older I began to understand the reason why - because I WAS misunderstood. Fortunately, I had been cursed with the blessing of functional intelligence, just as you clearly are, but unfortunately, gross ignorance is the coin of America's realm. The powers that be have a vested interest in promoting stupidity as cute in this country, and we are bombarded with that message from the time we open our eyes in the morning, until the time we close them at night.
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How many times have you seen the image of the young intellectual portrayed as a Steve-Urkel-type character to be ridiculed, while the dim-witted captain of the football team is portrayed as a lady-killing macho man to be admired? Then think about John Wayne. I don’t know what John was really like in life, but the character that he portrayed was undoubtedly one of the biggest dummies who ever rode across the Texas plains. Yet, he's presented as the quintessential American male. There's a good reason for that - because a nation filled with citizens who worship ignorance is much easier to control. So whenever there's a person with your level of intelligence who can see through the mass manipulation of the people, the very people who you are trying to enlighten will bring tremendous group pressure down on you to shut you up.
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It’s a simple matter of cognitive dissonance. In most cases your peers know you’re right, but they have so much invested in forging their images to conform to what’s defined as "impressive" by the status quo, that to admit you’re right, is also to admit that they’ve been hoodwinked and manipulated. It also suggests that they need to rethink who they are from the ground up, and that’s unacceptable to most people. So the misguided are content to simply play-out the role that they’ve been assigned by society, and they have no interest in a person like yourself revealing the fact that they’re allowing themselves to be played like idiots.
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But as bad as that is for society as a whole, the pressure to remain ignorant is even more pronounced in the Black community. Within our community we are held to what amounts to a moral obligation to be stupid in order to maintain our credibility as loyal to the Black race. Think about that. It’s not only unbelievable, but it virtually ensures a self-perpetuating mode of behavior, and view of life, that’s certain to keep us at the very bottom of society.
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Our attitude comes from our experience under slavery. During slavery the only Black people that the average field slave knew who spoke anything close to proper English was the house slave, and many house slaves tended to look down upon those who worked in the fields. So Black people came to associate other Black people who spoke proper English, or who they perceived to have knowledge and intelligence, with Uncle Tomism, or as "trying to be White." In addition, that also created a mind-set that led to the syllogistic conclusion that knowledge was the White man's domain.
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That's why you have young hip hoppers walking around purposely trying to destroy the English language by saying things like, "What it be like?" - because they see ignorance as cool, and a defining characteristic of what it means to be Black - and many of these young people are brilliant, but they’d die before they’d let that get out into the world. As a result, the very quality that’s required for the Black community to move forward, we’re trying our best to stifle. These are the issues that our so-call Black intellectuals should be addressing, instead of constantly chasing television sound bytes in an attempt to profit from our misery.
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The irony of ironies is, we’re currently living under a system of Urkel’s revenge. The Steve Urkels of yesterday have now morphed into the Iceberg Slims of today, because it’s the Steve Urkels of yesterday who are now controlling Wall Street and pimping us - and the macho captains of the various football teams are now their chauffeurs. So, yet, once again, Urkel has proven that knowledge is power. Ignorance is only bliss until reality sets in.
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So Richard, a young brother like yourself, who is fortunate enough to have the innate intelligence to see through this, have the closest thing to a moral obligation to combat this kind of ignorance. But you don't have to run your head up against a brick wall, or face the ire and condemnation of your peers to address this situation. Simply use your intelligence, class, and behavior, to find ways to send the message that knowledge is cool. Become the kind of Black man that if a bigot points at you and tell his young son, "that’s a nigga," his son will look at you, and then look back at his dad and say, "Daddy, I want to be a nigga when I grow up."
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I noticed that you're a very good writer. That’s one area in our community where knowledge and intelligence is tolerated. Since writers appear in newspapers, magazines, and in the electronic media, we’re looked upon much like artists, or ‘blingless’ celebrities of a sort, so we’re given a pass. So take the time to hone that skill. You can not only help the community by helping to educate our people, but you can also gain both notoriety and independence if you become good at it, and I’m sure you will.
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And, continue your education at all cost, but don't wait for the schools to educate you. Obtaining a receipt from a university is very important; it adds to your credibility. But knowledge is free, and in the final analysis, the only one who can educate you is yourself. So begin right now, and start educating yourself, because once knowledge is obtained, it doesn’t matter where it came from, and your water is just as wet as the water at Harvard. Some of the greatest minds I've ever known held court while sitting on empty milk crates in the parking lots of ghetto liquor stores, and they are directly responsible for whatever I said that captured your imagination.
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In that regard, the internet is a repository of all of man's collective knowledge, so use it to explore those areas of knowledge that interest you as an individual, because you are unique. No one alive, or no one who has ever lived, sees, or have seen, reality in exactly the same way that you do. So for all you know, you could be that one individual who can connect the dots like no one ever has before.
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Finally, I want to thank you again for taking the time to write me. I’m not getting rich doing what I do, so hearing from people like yourself makes it all worthwhile. So I want you to stay in touch, and let me know what you’re doing. I want to see where you go with this. If I've helped to create a monster, I want to know about it. Because while I’m not a very religious person, there’s much wisdom in religion, and as my grandmother used to say, "God works in mysterious ways." So for all I know, my birth, life, and everything I’ve done up until this point in life, might just have been to prepare me to write one sentence that would ignite a passion in you, which would allow you to go out and save humanity. That’s the way life works. We must never forget, the chances are, some nameless person probably inspired Martin Luther King. Thus, you should never discount the fact that you may be one of those people who are destined for greatness, so always take your thoughts, and your view of reality, seriously.
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So keep this email, and reread it from time to time, and then, go out and give ‘em hell.
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Exploding the Myth: The Impact Of the Black Experience on This Black Man
http://wattree.blogspot.com/2014/03/exploding-myth-impact-of-black.html

Eric
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Eric L. Wattree
Http://wattree.blogspot.com
Ewattree@Gmail.com
Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

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Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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WHY AM I SO FIXATED ON CORNEL WEST?

Beneath the Spin * Eric L. Wattree

WHY AM I SO FIXATED ON CORNEL WEST?

IS THIS THE SAME CORNEL WEST WHO WAS
BAD-MOUTHING OBAMA BEFORE IT BECAME CLEAR
THAT HE WAS GOING TO WIN?

A lot of people ask me why I’m so fixated on Cornel West. The reason is simple. I grew up with brothers like West in the hood - they were a dime a dozen - so I know exactly what he’s about - nothing.
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Contrary to popular belief, there’s a wealth of both knowledge and intellect in the Black community. Johnny Cochran came out of the hood, and so did Colin Powell, Barack and Michelle Obama, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, and Charlie Parker. Langston Hughes came out of the hood - and hell, so did I. So contrary to what's reflected in the media, a large part of this nation's most valuable resource is lying dormant in the inner cities across this nation, because there, you've got to be sharp just to survive.
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But what's generally reflected in the media are the dregs of the Black community.  For every 'gangsta' in the hood, there are literally thousands of young people struggling to get ahead. But the problem is, far too many of us have allowed the media to define who we are, so we no longer have respect for our own intelligence. As a result, many young people tend to have more confidence in the intelligence of frauds like Cornel West than they have in their own ability to think.

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Many of our young people are simply taking the media's word for the fact that Cornel West is suppose to be this powerful intellect instead of actually assessing what West is saying for themselves. The problem is, they’ve been brainwashed into believing that the White man’s water is wetter than their own, so when they hear the words "Harvard" and "Princeton" connected to Cornel West’s name, they simply assume that he possesses a greater ability to think than they do, and that he can see things that they can't. That's nonsense, and it didn't used to be that way. Brother's used to define themselves based upon their ability to think, not by how 'fresh' their tennis shoes look - in fact, unless they ran track, they didn't even wear tennis shoes, because their primary goal in life was to get away from having to wear tennis shoes.
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I remember how much pride my grandparents took in me when I went off to college.  And later, when I got my degree, they stopped debating issues with me all altogether. It was like all of a sudden I went from being one of the kids to becoming the head of the family. I remember my grandmother used to say, "Well, Eric, you’re educated, so you know about all that stuff. We don't understand it."
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They didn't understand it?  They understood enough to waltz through the Great Depression while White folks were throwing themselves out of windows, and they also understood enough to managed to become financially secure in a world that threw every stumbling block before them that it could muster - and without busting a sweat bubble. I don't ever remember them having to suck-up to a landlord.  They always owned their own home.  Yet, even as they were keeping an eye on me and my young family to make sure we didn't falter, my grandmother was saying, due to my education, they didn't understand life like I did.
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I knew my grandmother was giving me much too much credit, but I didn’t say a word, because my young ego had me soppin' up the props like gravy.  But I knew in my heart that even though I’d gone off and gotten a degree, that she - and especially my grandfather - could think circles around me.
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Because even back then, I understood that there was a big difference between innate intelligence and its attendant wisdom and knowledge, and simply going out and picking up a degree. You see, if a ghetto kid who dropped out of high school has an IQ of 140, and a brain surgeon has an IQ of 120, due to his education, the brain surgeon may be in possession of more information, but he'll never be able to connect the dots as efficiently as that high school dropout, because the kid is smarter, and he always will be. Well, I had enough education to recognize that my grandfather was naturally smarter than me, and regardless to how much education I obtained, he always would be - in fact, he was so smart that he had the wisdom not to humiliate me by ramming that fact home. He understood how important it was to let me THINK that I was his peer, so he placed my self-esteem above his need to be 'the man.' That took wisdom, the kind of wisdom that still benefitting from to this day.
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So I knew what my grandfather was doing - after all, I was his grandson - but in spite of that, his actions taught me a far greater lesson - that no institution of higher learning can confer either wisdom, knowledge, or intelligence upon any individual. The only thing that Harvard, Princeton, Yale, or any other institution can confer upon an individual is a receipt indicating that the individual paid his tuition and occupied a seat in a room where knowledge was shared. And while that receipt might also indicate that the individual was able to regurgitated the information once or twice, it cannot certify that any of the information was absorbed, or that it can be effectively manipulated to draw further insight. Education is a solitary pursuit, so the only one who can educate you, is yourself.
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Thus, what my grandmother failed to understand was, my degree didn’t certify that they’d taught me to out-think her, the only thing it certified was that I had been exposed to, and learned to regurgitate, the thoughts of dead White folks. It said absolutely nothing about whether or not I’d learn to think for myself. After all, George W. Bush obtained a receipt from Yale, and we all have a firsthand knowledge of how little that was worth.
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Therefore, it’s important that we in the Black community learn that the very same thing is true of Cornel West, Boyce Watkins, and many other so-called public "intellectuals." While we should have all of the respect in the world for education, we must also have a clear understanding of what constitutes an education. An education is the consumption of knowledge, regardless to whether we consume that knowledge at Harvard, or at the corner library. Knowledge is knowledge, and it's free. So Harvard's knowledge is no more knowledgeable than anyone else's - you just pay more for it, and it comes with public relations support. So if you can't afford to go to college, seek your knowledge from elsewhere - anywhere else - but continue to seek it. And always remember this - Harvard was built to teach what insightful men had ALREADY thought.
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So what most of us fail to understand is, a person cannot BE educated. Each individual must educate himself. Thus, to allow someone else to educate you is not education at all - it's indoctrination. So while having a string of letters behind one's name makes for an excellent calling card and has immeasurable economic value, it says aboulutely nothing about an individual's ability to think. Titles, robes, badges, and all of the other accouterments of alleged knowledge and stature are society’s way of dictating who we listen to, and that’s not always in our best interest. So unless we’re dealing with a highly specialized area of knowledge - like medicine, for example - we should NEVER give anyone else’s ability to think priority over our own, because when we allow someone to think for us, we're also allowing them to control us.
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Consider this - simply having influence over the minds of other people is big business. It can be worth literally millions of dollars to any person who can convince you and others to let him control your attitudes, thinking, and behavior. During the 2008 primaries, one preacher in the south charged Hillary Clinton a specific dollar amount for every brian that he controlled in his congregation.
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A perfect example of how valueable having influence over others can be is, even as we speak Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are on the road trying to portray President Obama as the Bogeyman in an attempt to get Black people to elect the Devil - the Republican Party. Can you imagine how much money the billionaires in the Republican Party would be willing to pay them, not to actually deliver the vote, but to merely keep Black people away from the polls? Now, I have no evidence to suggest that that's what's going on, but it wouldn't be the first time that Cornel West has engaged in the tactic of dividing the vote. West joined forces with Ralph Nader in the 2000 election and helped to get George Bush elected ("Once Again, Nader and West Team to Elect a Republican President").

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DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE THAT NATIONWIDE
IS ON YOUR SIDE?
DO YOU THINK TAVIS SMILEY BELIEVES IT?
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But if you confront members of the Nader/West coalition with the fact that they helped to elect George Bush, they’ll immediately begin to obfuscate and engage in intellectual gymnastics in an attempt to avoid responsibility for the horrific fate that they brought upon this country. They’ll say things like, "It’s not our fault that Gore lost. He just didn’t fight hard enough for a recount." But by using such arguments what they’re actually saying is, "Gore just didn’t work hard enough to undo the damage that we’d done." But here are the facts - Gore lost the 2000 election to Bush in Florida by 537 votes, and the Nader/West coalition peeled off 97,488 votes from Gore in Florida alone. So don’t take my word for it, you do the math. The bottom line is this – Cornel West is more than partially responsible for the very poverty that he's reportedly being paid $10,000 a speech to complain about - period, and case closed..

That's why back in the hood we used to routinely dismiss people like Cornel West. We recognized them as self-serving individuals who couldn't be trusted, because they would do or say anything to get attention. So even if we allowed them to hang around, the minute they opened their mouths we’d simply tell ‘em to shut the hell up, and that would be that. But back then, people like West were simply a source of irritation, under the current circumstance, however, West’s propensity for self-service and chasing public attention is in direct conflict with what’s in the best interest of the Black community. So for that very reason, I try to drag his tired ass through the mud every chance I get. I have a Google Alert on both Tavis and West. I call it the Mutt and Jethro Alert - and I'm about to add Boyce Watkins to it as well, and change the name to the Treacherous Trio Alert.

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At first I tried to prevent it, but this has become a personal thing with me. One of my primary missions in life has become getting Black people to see Tavis and West for who and what they are - two ruthlessly self-serving and dangerous individuals who crave public attention so desperately that they're willing to drag the entire Black community under a bus to get it. West is all affectation, contrived image, and gesticulation, and if you take off his costume and cut off all the fuzz from about his head and face, the only thing you’ll be left with is a goofy-looking little bucktooth punk who takes a very long time to say very little.

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Think about it. Tell me one thing that Cornel West has said in his 30 years of public prominence that’s been either profound, or even the least bit memorable?  Let me answer that for you - not a damn thing. Cornel is best known for two things - slandering the first black President of the United States, and publicly calling his Black female colleague, Dr. Melessa Harris-Perry, a liar and a fraud.  Never mind that it was grossly disrespectful to the President of the united States, Dr. Harris-Perry, and Black women in general, it got him public attention, and that's all he cared about - and this, from a 'brother' who claims to love his people, yet, has never taught at a school that the average Black person can even afford to eat lunch at in his career.

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So in the hood we had a rule of thumb regarding people like West - "Never trust a brother who's always trying to be the coolest thing in the room, because he’s putting so much brainpower into his image that there’s nothing left for him to think with. Hood Rat Wisdom 101.

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LESS WE FORGET  

Here’s a 2008 video of Cornel West calling himself giving, then, Senator, Obama a tongue lashing for deciding to announce his intent to run for president instead of postponing it so he could appear on Tavis’ dog-n-pony show. Think about that for a minute. Tavis was so big headed that he thought the democratic process should be put on hold just for him! And Cornel, latching on to an opportunity for publicity, jumped right on his bandwagon.  I’ve never seen such presumptuous arrogance in my life. Who the hell do Tavis and West think they are!!!?

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Here’s Old-schooler, Dick Gregory, on the same show, essentially telling Tavis and West that they’re damn fools.

 

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Related Article

Dr. Cornel West and intellectual Rice Cake

http://wattree.blogspot.com/2011/07/dr-cornel-west-and-intellectual-rice.html

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Eric L. Wattree

Http://wattree.blogspot.com

Ewattree@Gmail.com

Citizens Against Reckless Middle-Class Abuse (CARMA)

Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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How to Protect Yourself When You Suspect Racial Profiling

BENEATH THE SPIN • ERIC L. WATTREE How to Protect Yourself When You Suspect Racial Profiling Well, racial profiling is in the news again. Prominent Black scholar and Harvard professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was recently arrested after a forced entry into his own home. Dr. Gates alleges that he was arrested for spite after he'd presented his identification, then repeatedly insisted that the officer provide his name and badge number. Racial profiling cannot be defended. It is a horrible affront to the constitution, the rule of law, and to every law-abiding citizen, but I'm not addressing that issue here. The one issue that is at least as important as racial profiling itself, is how to best protect yourself if you suspect you're the victim of racial profiling. After all, that could become a matter of life and death. Many of the tragedies that stem from racial profiling, regardless to whether the profiling is the result of blatant racism, or simply gross ignorance, is greatly assisted by the blind outrage of the victim. So if you suspect that you're the victim of racial profiling, it is imperative that you keep a cool head. It could save your life. When racial profiling is due to pure racism, there's very little that you can do other than make sure you don't allow it to escalate. A good rule of thumb is, whatever the situation, never give your enemy what he wants, and in the case of racial profiling, what the enemy wants most is for you to become enraged. That gives him carte blanche to carry out his agenda. But in some cases racial profiling is a result of ignorance. It's not that the officer is a blatant racist, but he's acting on his stereotyped image of Black men - and in those cases he's often scared to death. If that's the case, you also need to control your rage, because you'll not only protect your well being, but it gives you the opportunity to take advantage of an educational moment, where you can demonstrate to this man that his stereotyped image of Black men may be less than valid. It's all about thinking instead of giving in to knee-jerk emotionalism, because it is that very unthinking emotionalism that leads to racial profiling in the first place, regardless to whether it's motivated by racism or ignorance. While it was well within Dr. Gates' right to respond to his situation with outrage, I would have handled it differently. Dr. Gates indicated the following in an interview with The Root: The officer asked, "'Would you step outside onto the porch.' And the way he said it, I knew he wasn't canvassing for the police benevolent association. All the hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and I realized that I was in danger. And I said to him no, out of instinct. I said, 'No, I will not.'" Although Dr. Gates was clearly within his rights, what's within your rights is not always the smartest thing to do - the graveyard is filled with people who were right. By responding as he did, he not only injected a confrontational tone into an already tense situation, but he also challenged the authority of a man whose authority as a police officer might have been the most meaningful thing in his life. In addition, by repeatedly demanding the officer's name and badge number, he backed the man into a corner. He could have gotten that information later from the police report. But again, Dr. Gates had every right to do everything that he did, but as I mentioned above, what is within one's rights is not always the smartest thing to do. What Dr. Gates didn't do was think. If the officer was indeed a racist, it might have felt good to imply that I'm a world renowned Black scholar and you're nobody, so I'm about to crush you like a grape, but it was a very dangerous thing to do. On the other hand, if this was just a cop trying to do his job but had a misguided and stereotyped attitude towards Black men, Dr. Gates missed a prime opportunity to change that attitude. Instead, he became a catalyst to pushed the officer from simply misguided, to true racist - in which case, the next Black man that the officer runs across, who don't have the clout of Dr. Gates, may have to pay dearly. Had I been in Dr. Gates' position - and I have - when the officer asked me to step out on the porch, I would have said, "Absolutely." And as I was coming out the door I would have said the following: "Officer, I'm Dr, Henry Gates, and I'm a professor at the university. I just returned from China to find my front door jammed, so I had to force entry. I know this looks suspicious, and I'm sorry you had to come out, but it does give me an opportunity to personally thank you for being so conscientious in protecting my property while I was away. I have several more pieces of identification showing this address if you need them." That way, if the officer had a racist agenda he wouldn't have anything to act on. But if the officer was simply misguided and acting on a stereotypical image of Black men, Dr. Gates' gracious behavior would have challenged that image, and given the officer something to think about in his interactions with Black men in the future. While we should continue to vigorously address racial profiling, we can't defeat it through the courts alone. We've got to address the root of the problem, and that root is deeply embedded in the mind of man. We've got to address the problem of racial profiling on several fronts. Turn on your television and look at how we allow Black men to be portrayed in the media. Corporations pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for 30 second commercials to influence our minds. Now consider that there are entire networks beaming videos around the world, and around the clock, declaring that the Black man is a gangsta and Black women are whores. So is it the world's fault that they believe us? The fact is, the Black community is not only promoting, but financing racial profiling. So who should we really be mad at? 　 Eric L. Wattree wattree.blogspot.com Religious bigotry: It's not that I hate everyone who doesn't look, think, and act like me - it's just that God does.

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