President Obama at work

I just discovered that the White House has a Flickr page (through reading some really unhinged right wing blogs about photos of the president posted on Flickr). I like this one, which shows him on the phone talking about the December 25 attempted bombing of the plane to Detroit.

Officer Defends Arrest of Harvard Professor

Some updates on this issue:

1. Stanley Fish has finally written a column in the New York Times that I agree with, about how the accomplishments of both Professor Gates and President Obama are being doubted because of their blackness. At Duke, where Fish hired Gates as a professor in the English department, his accomplishments were doubted because of his blackness - "Doubts were expressed in letters written by senior professors about his scholarly credentials, which were vastly superior to those of his detractors. (He was already a recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, the so called 'genius award.')" In a similar way, the "Birthers" - those people who do not believe that Obama was born in the United States - cast doubt on his right to the Presidency.

Gates is once again regarded with suspicion because, as the cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson put it in an interview, he has committed the crime of being H.W.B., Housed While Black....

Gates and Obama are not only friends; they are in the same position, suspected of occupying a majestic residence under false pretenses. And Obama is a double offender. Not only is he guilty of being Housed While Black; he is the first in American history guilty of being P.W.B., President While Black.

Both Professor Gates and President Obama challenge a powerful white racist stereotype about blacks - the belief that they are inherently less intelligent, and therefore inferior to whites. And if blacks are inferior to whites, anything they accomplish in life is a sham and a trick, especially if they do better than a white person. It's embarassing to my profession that senior members of the Duke faculty thought that Gates was inferior to them despite having won an award that they doubtless would have liked to receive themselves.

2. Charles Blow, NYTimes op-ed columnist, writes about his first experience with a white policeman in Louisiana who threatened to shoot him and his friends at a traffic stop: Welcome to the Club. He also brings some useful statistics into the debate:

A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted last July asked: “Have you ever felt you were stopped by the police just because of your race or ethnic background?” Sixty-six percent of black men said yes. Only 9 percent of white men said the same.

These views are not without merit. A series of racial-profiling studies across the country have found that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be stopped and searched than whites.

In fact, last year the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York law firm specializing in human rights, released a damning study of the racial-profiling practices of the New York Police Department. It found that more than 80 percent of those stopped and frisked were black or Hispanic. The report also said that when stopped, 45 percent of blacks and Hispanics were frisked, compared with 29 percent of whites, even though white suspects were 70 percent more likely than black suspects to have a weapon.

3. The President has also issued a new statement about the arrest and subsequent controversy arising from his words:

He did not apologize but softened his language. “I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station,” he said. “I also continue to believe, based on what I heard, that Professor Gates probably overreacted as well.”

Mr. Obama described Sergeant Crowley as an “outstanding police officer and a good man” who has “a fine track record on racial sensitivity.” But he said the incident showed that “because of the difficulties of the past, you know, African-Americans are sensitive to these issues.”

Original Post

The officer who arrested Henry Louis Gates, Jr. last week has said that he won't apologize since he didn't do anything wrong (Officer Defends Arrest of Harvard Professor).

Sergeant Crowley said that he arrested Professor Gates because the professor got angry after being asked for identification and proof of his address, and continued his “tirade after being warned multiple times.” The sergeant was adamant that he was following police procedures in making the arrest.....

Next, the sergeant said, he warned Professor Gates to calm down and lower his voice, and to step outside to his front porch. Sergeant Crowley said he gave the professor two warnings, the second while holding a set of handcuffs, but that the professor continued berating him. “The professor at any point in time could have resolved the issue by quieting down and/or by going back in the house,” he said in the radio interview.

I don't understand why getting angry and yelling inside one's own home or on the front porch is grounds for an arrest. What did Professor Gates do wrong? Why would the police consider yelling to be something wrong? Aggravating, yes. Who likes to be yelled at? I'm starting to wonder if this isn't just a case of racial profiling, but of a cop reveling in the power of being a cop - of having that power to stop someone else's yelling by arresting them. I still strongly doubt that a white professor in the same situation would have been arrested.

President Obama: "Cambridge Police acted stupidly"

Why do I love the fact that Barack Obama is now our president? This is one big reason.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

No previous president could address racism in this direct, personal, intelligent, and politically aware way.

Are American Jews getting more conservative?

I got into an argument last night with some friends here in Israel about whether American Jews are getting more conservative politically/supporting Republicans more. Their opinion was that American Jews were tending more Republican and more right-wing in general in their politics. My opinion was that American Jews remained quite liberal compared to the rest of the American population, based on how they vote in presidential elections. (I thought that they, surprisingly, were following the views of people like the Republican Jewish coalition, which keeps saying that American Jews are about to break massively for the Republicans - but then they never do). Other factors entered the argument, like how American Jews' customary liberalism affects how they feel about Israel, and whether American Jews have gotten more right-wing on Israel than in the past. I just took a look and found the statistics for Jewish voting in presidential elections from 1960 to 2008. There were some surprising results (for me).

I hadn't realized how much Jewish support Carter had lost from 1976 to 1980. An article that I just read on the net (The Israel Swing Factor: How the American Jewish Vote Influences U.S. Elections) recapitulates some of the events that led to that lessening of support (one was the U.S. ambassador to the UN voting in favor of an anti-Israel resolution in the Security Council). This was quite helpful to Reagan, who received 39% of the Jewish vote in 1980, the highest percentage received by any Republican presidential candidate since Eisenhower in 1956 received 40% of the Jewish vote. Jews also voted in greater numbers for Nixon in 1972 than I had recalled (35%). Since 1992, no Democratic presidential candidate has received less than 3/4 of the Jewish vote.

Jewish vote in presidential elections

1960 - 82% Kennedy; 18% Nixon
1964 - 90% Johnson; 10% Goldwater
1968 - 81% Humphrey; 17% Nixon; 2% Wallace
1972 - 65% McGovern; 35% Nixon
1976 - 71% Carter; 27% Ford
1980 - 45% Carter; 39% Reagan; 15% Anderson
1984 - 67% Mondale; 31% Reagan
1988 - 64% Dukakis; 35% GHW Bush
1992 - 78% Clinton; 11% GHW Bush; 9% Perot
1996 - 78% Clinton; 16% Dole; 3% Perot
2000 - 79% Gore; 19% GW Bush; 1% Nader
2004 - 76% Kerry; 24% GW Bush; <1% Nader
2008 - 78% Obama; 22% McCain

I doubt that these statistics would bring my argument with my friends to an end, but they do show that at least by one measure, Jews have not trended significantly more Republican since 1992.

Obama daughters to attend Sidwell Friends school

The Obamas have chosen the school that their daughters will attend in Washington - Sidwell Friends School. I usually wouldn't pay attention to what school the President's children go to, but this interested me because my mother attended Sidwell Friends high school when she was growing up in Washington, D.C., in the late 1940s.

The school was not integrated until 1956 (the year in which I was born), according to a February 16, 1956 New York Times article, which highlights the fact that the children of Senator James O. Eastland, Democrat of Mississippi, who was virulently opposed to integration of the schools, attended Sidwell Friends. This means that the school my mother went to was all-white. I do recall her saying that the children of foreign dignitaries went there, but it seems unlikely that any of them would have been non-white.

It's pretty remarkable that a school that was part of the white, segregated power elite of Washington will now educate the daughters of the first African-American president. My grandparents were part of that segregated elite - my grandfather, Richard Wilson, was the Washington bureau chief of the Des Moines Register and Tribune for many years, wrote a column for the Washington Star, was president of the National Press Club in 1940, and was active in the Gridiron Club. The deed to the house they bought in Bethesda, MD in 1948 contained a restricted covenant that forbade them to resell the house to Jews or blacks. (Incidentally, the Supreme Court in 1948 ruled that such restricted covenants were unconstitutional). (At the time the National Press Club was also restricted to white male journalists; in 1955 it was opened to black male journalists, and in 1970 to women).

When I was growing up and we used to visit my grandparents in Washington, I always felt a sense of discomfort walking around D.C. I knew that the city was segregated, that blacks were the majority of the population, but that white people held the power there. It felt like a colonized city (of course, that's not the terminology I thought of at the time). When I've visited more recently I've felt much more comfortable, although of course there are still great disparities of wealth and poverty in the city, often along racial lines. We also used to visit them at the house they owned in the West Virginia mountains (which was called "Ball Alley"), about 75 miles from D.C.

I loved my grandparents and I loved visiting them, especially at Ball Alley - but increasingly through the 1960s and 1970s I heard them making racist remarks about black people. (Although my recollection is that my grandfather was also involved in hiring the first black columnist for the Star - Carl Rowan, who had written for the Minneapolis Tribune, which was part of the same newspaper chain). I remember that they were very frightened by the riots in Washington in 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King, which probably was a factor in their increasing antipathy to blacks. I recollect my grandmother talking about the riots and telling us how close my grandfather was to the violence.

This is a photograph of nine presidents of the National Press Club, taken in 1971. My grandfather is the second from the right (the tallest man - he was 6' 3").

I wonder what my grandparents would think now if they knew that the children of an African-American president of the United States were going to the school their daughters had gone to in a segregated Washington, D.C.

Racist Reactions to Obama's Election

Unfortunately, this is not a "post-racial" country: a roundup of articles on racist reactions to Obama's election:

Election spurs hundreds of race threats, crimes.

Anti-Obama racial incidents reported in several cities.

Opinion: Racist Incidents Follow Obama Victory

Chronicle of Racist Incidents and Threats Against Obama

Since election day, the number of threats against the president-elect, and racial or violent incidents directed at his supporters, have soared. The Secret Service is concerned, calling it the highest number of threats against a President-elect in memory, but the national media until this weekend have largely ignored the disturbing pattern.

A couple of examples:

* In a Maine convenience store, an Associated Press reporter saw a sign inviting customers to join a betting pool on when Obama might fall victim to an assassin. The sign solicited $1 entries into "The Osama Obama Shotgun Pool," saying the money would go to the person picking the date closest to when Obama was attacked. "Let's hope we have a winner."

* In Idaho, the Secret Service is investigating a "public hanging" sign erected by a man upset with the election outcome, the Bonner County Daily Bee reported Thursday. A handmade sign posted on a tree reads "FREE PUBLIC HANGING" written in large letters beneath a noose fashioned from nylon rope. The most prominent name on the sign is "OBAMA," according to the Bee. "That's a political statement. They can call it whatever they want, a threat or whatever," the creator of the sign, Ken Germana, told the Bee.

Hate Graffiti Targets Obama Backers in Torrance.

Vandals over the weekend attacked homes in south Torrance that displayed support for President-elect Obama, spray-painting cars, walls, trees and campaign signs with swastikas and racial slurs. One Hollywood Riviera resident awakened to find a large Nazi symbol on a tree, the N-word across her garage door and the phrase "Go back to Africa" scrawled across a front wall. "They had painted a big swastika on my car and spray-painted out my bumper sticker," she said Monday. "It was pretty shocking. Immediately my heart began racing." Torrance police Sgt. Bernard Anderson said officers took four vandalism reports Sunday morning. The Daily Breeze located a fifth home that was hit. One couple who live near Calle Mayor found the words "Hitler" and "Nazi" painted in black on their Volkswagen.

Gang angry at Barack Obama win beat me, says Staten Island teen.

A black Muslim teenager said he was beaten on Election Night by four white men furious that Barack Obama was elected the nation's next President. Ali Kamara, 17, was walking home when four white men leaped from a gold car and started kicking him and smashing him with a baseball bat at about 10 p.m. near his Staten Island home. "I see the car coming. They looked at me and said, 'Obama!' They were not happy. They had hoodies on. They started hitting me with bats and my body started vibrating," said the Curtis High School, S.I., student.

Obama Victory spawns racist, derogatory remarks - from "The Appalachian," student newspaper of Appalachian State University. "At least one t-shirt has been seen around Appalachian’s campus with the phrase, 'Obama ’08, Biden ’09' displayed on it."

Racist Graffiti at Colgate University. Catch the photos of the graffiti - one reads "They were born to be slaves and serve white people."

Church parishioner claims pastor humiliated her over Obama signs.

Whoever voted for Obama shouldn't receive Holy Communion.