Gates' Arrest is Good for Obama PR

“This whole affair has given Barack Obama a chance to make a little public relations move after he has recently been criticized for a number of actions that were “anti-Black”, like going along with the US boycott of the International Conference on Racism that was held this past April (2009) in South Africa…”

Dear friends,

The current furor over Henry Gates being arrested is humorous to me. After all, the story is not even newsworthy, in my opinion.

What is more laughable is: For many years, long before this incident occurred, a number of my friends who are longtime progressive African American scholars/educators have considered Henry Louis Gates to be the antithesis of the “angry Black man” that the news media is revealing. In fact, the aforementioned African American professors have, as I mentioned above, for years, attached the same type of pejorative monikers to Henry, as they have/do to Clarence Thomas.

My own personal experience with Henry is old – i.e., not recent. Almost forty years ago, as a young Black Panther from the Boston, Mass. chapter who, along with a dozen or so fellow Panthers from all over the country, was temporarily stationed in the New Haven, CT chapter for about a year (1970-71), in order to rebuild the aforementioned chapter after the F.B.I. had concocted a murder case against our comrades there, including our national chairman and co-founder Bobby Seale, and had them all jailed. Henry was an undergrad at Yale then. As I mentioned in a piece last year about occasionally running into then future President George “Dubya” Bush (who had already graduated), Henry was an unassuming brother who was around Yale campus, during the same period. As best I can remember, he was always with a buddy (I cannot recall the other cat’s name). I do remember Henry being a good brother, nonetheless. But having to take on adult responsibilities can really change some people.

In any case, the point that, at least to me, so many people are missing is: This whole affair has given Barack Obama a chance to make a little public relations move after he has recently been criticized for a number of actions that were “anti-Black”, like going along with the US boycott of the International Conference on Racism that was held this past April (2009) in South Africa. In other words, Obama’s well-calculated remark about the “stupid” actions of police, for example, has certainly won him brownie points with many African Americans.

Meanwhile, genuine dialogue about racism is swept under the rug, as usual, because racism in the context that is being presented by Obama and the government- and corporate-controlled mass communications media is defined as either a “disease” or some kind of xenophobia, as opposed to being what it really is: a system of oppression and exploitation that is instituted by citizens who disregard their true ancestral pasts and make the mean-spirited claim of being “white”, in order to form an artificial “majority” group and maintain White Supremacy. Dig? Peace.

G. Djata Bumpus