Ishmael Reed: Post-Race Scholar Yells Racism

I had a feeling that Obama would eventually retract his defense of Gates and come out with a statement affirming the professionalism and integrity of the Cambridge Police Dept. I think someone could write something very interesting about the act of putting someone in handcuffs. I wonder what percentage of us have ever been in handcuffs. Its quite the act of domination- pregnant with all kinds of symbolic resonance. I wonder what the dynamics were when the white cop put the handcuffs on the black prof. Now who's boss? Did the elderly gentleman who walks with a cane needed to be dragged out of his own home in handcuffs. I'm sure Obama will give us perfectly reasonable explanation as to why such an outcome was not actually 'stupid.'

When Gates is the radical and Obama the moderate, you know our spectrum is skewed. I wonder if Gates now has any interest in retracting all that stuff about the "behavioral dimension" to the problems confronting African Americans. You sing the song the power structure wants to hear, and they still drag you out of your home in handcuffs. Here's Ismael Reed:

Ishmael Reed: Post-Race Scholar Yells Racism

While his alliance with feminists gave Gates' career a powerful boost, it was his Op ed for the Times blaming continued anti-Semitism on African Americans that brought the public intellectual uptown. It was then that Gates was ordained as the pre-eminent African American scholar when, if one polled African-American scholars throughout the nation, Gates would not have ranked among the top twenty five. ... Last week Rachel Maddow called Gates "the nation's leading black intellectual." Who pray tell is the nation's leading white intellectual, Rachel? How come we can only have one? Some would argue that Gates hasn't written a first rate scholarly work since 1989.

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