James Taranto’s opening segment on “Best of the Web Today” today neatly juxtaposes the conduct and actions of civil rights pioneer and icon Rosa Parks in 1955 with those of “the man who would be Rosa Parks” 54 years later. I am referring of course to the now-infamous Skip Gates.
Taranto describes Park’s courage and heorism and Gates’s . . . well — cowardice and self-deception. It takes no guts to pick a fight by behaving provocatively, especially when your goal is to throw in the towel immediately anyway.
After his arrest, Gates in an interview with The Root, the online magazine he edits, remarked that “there haven’t been fundamental structural changes in America. . . . The only black people who truly live in a post-racial world in America all live in a very nice house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.” Much as Gates appears to yearn for a time when he’d have had a case, those times are happily gone. Yes, pockets of anti-black racism continue to exist in America, as do strains of anti-white racism within some black communities. But as Taranto observes, treating a black person on a bus in 2009 the way Rosa Parks was treated in 1955 would be seen instantly for the outrage it is, and was then.
Gates’s complaints ring hollow to all but the staunchest of race hucksters, of which Gates is now one. He spoke after the incident of wanting his confrontation and arrest to be a “teachable moment.” And it is. It teaches us that we must sometimes suffer fools.
UPDATE: Andrew Breitbart, in my opinion one of the better and certainly franker commentators, has an interesting take on the Gates situation in particular and race in America in general. Read it here.
Comments 2
Mr. Taranto is doing a subtle “whoops” after continuing to fault the cop in the Gatesgate fiasco. Two lengthy columns in a row, and he continued to say, “We really don’t know what went on, so the policeman should have behaved differently.” He didn’t read the police report, and he wasn’t aware that there were witnesses, and he also appears to be unaware that police follow pretty strict procedure. His point of comparison between Rosa Parks and HLG is fair and insightful, however.
July 27th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Barbara, I sent him details of the police report after his initial column. I agree that he is probably bending a little further than I would expect to be fair, or maybe he just takes a different viewpoint from you and me.
July 27th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
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