Prof. Louis Gates of Harvard was arrested for disorderly conduct, after police were called to his house because a neighbor thought "two black men" were breaking into his house. It was Prof. Gates, entering his house after flying back from China, and being locked out - the limo driver was helping him get in. the front door was stuck, so Gates entered the back door, and was trying to unstick the front door with help from the limo driver outside. The police wanted Gates to show identification that he lived there. Gates became angry ("I have to prove I live here?") on top of probably his exhaustion from flying half way around the world. He started yelling about how this is racial profiling, because he is a black man, told police they were stupid, and that is when he was arrested. One of the police officers was black himself. Could the police have handled this better? yeah. Did Prof Gates probably need a good nights sleep? Yeah. But here is the irony:
Gates had his DNA analyzed, and the majority of his DNA can be traced to Europe.
Here is the link to his PBS series, African American Lives. One more time: Prof Gates has more "white" DNA than African DNA. On African American Lives, he interviews many black celebrities and asks about their heritage, then traces their DNA - the results often surprise the celebrities. Gates' results surprised him, to say the least. Despite the headline for this blog, Gates isnt considered "white" - racial identify is self identified in the USA (a precedent set by the US Census). If you think you are black, they you are black. This can be very confusing, esp for some of Thomas Jefferson's children with his slave and "common law"wife Sally Hemmings, who looked white and passed themselves off as white while working in Baltimore and Washington DC. Gates has expanded his original series, and now is analyzing DNA from ordinary (non celebrity) black men and women.
My favorite celebrity DNA participant was Chris Tucker - I like him, he is funny, great when paired with Jackie Chan. Anyway, Chris's ancestry was traced back to the Mbundu ethnic group of Angola and one line of his mother's to the Bamileke of Cameroon - PBS flew him to africa to the Mbundu village his DNA most resembled, and the village greated him by singing and dancing - he cried and cried, a lost son returned home - you can imagine the stories told over generations of a young black man kidnapped from the village, disappeared, and now his ancester has returned, home again. Absolutely incredible series.
So who is black? Pres Obama decided as a child that he was black - he could have just as well decided he was white. But as a student once told me, who was Puerto Rican, black, and white, if you are the least % black, then you are treated by others as black. If you have brown skin, no matter how slight, then she said you are treated like you are black. So if you are discriminated against, profiled, because you look black, even if your DNA is majority White, then you better see yourself as black, because I guess you have no choice.
Pres Obama discussed this during his press conference, and the reporters, and police associations across the country, didnt get it. When we lived in Germantown TN, the only cars we saw stopped by Police were driven by black people. If you are black, and drive through Germantown TN, you will be stopped. We had a Xmas party at a Professor's house in Germantown, and yes, one of our black students was stopped - she was driving her daddy's Mercedes sports car and the police stopped her because they had a report about a stolen Mercedes sports car that matched her description. Yeah, right. If a black woman is driving a mercedes through Germantown TN, it must be stolen. The Press didnt understand what Obama was trying to tell them, because the press at the press conference was almost all white.
"Can't we all just get along?" (A quote from the philosopher Rodney King, whose beating and arrest triggered the LA riots). But seriously, Can't we all just get along?
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