Sunday, July 26, 2009

Obama’s Recent Comments Suggest His Prejudice

The recent comments made by Barak Obama about the arrest of a black professor who claimed he was arrested out of racial prejudice in Cambridge, Massachusetts suggest Obama’s own prejudice. Although the President has since partially taken back his words, he judged the arresting officer as having acted “stupidly” before he knew the facts. In other words, Obama prejudged the white police officer.

Regardless of whether Obama went so far as to accept the allegation of racism made by the professor, whom he knows personally, he nonetheless asserted that the arrest must have been stupid, at least because “cooler heads” should have prevailed. But the facts that have emerged since then suggest that it was the professor who was the only one who did not remain cool, which is why he was charged with disorderly conduct after the officer responded to a dispatch for a suspected burglary that turned out to be based upon the fact that the professor was breaking into his own home. It was the professor – not the police officer – who was uncooperative in proving his residence there, prejudging the white officer’s actions as having been based upon racial bigotry, which turned out to be an unfounded judgment.

Although Obama did not allege that the arrest was racially motivated, his knee-jerk criticism of the white police officer accused by the black professor of racism lent credence from the office of the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the United States not only to criticism of the officer’s actions, but to the more controversial accusation of racism. Obama’s comments reveal that beneath the veneer of coolness, is the angry black man he does not want the world to see, but whose associations, statements and policies reflect.

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