I don’t have much more to say on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates that hasn’t been said better and more intelligently by others, so instead I’ll link to some my favorites.
Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon writes about the growing acceptance of police brutality and willingness to blame the victim in this and other situations of abuse. I also appreciate that she notes how so few have questioned whether the police report contained inaccuracies about the incident (having had firsthand experience with police writing outright lies on arrest reports, this was one of the first things I noticed in the coverage of the story: the way in which the incident report was taken as factual truth, instead of the subjective reporting of an officer who just might need to cover up any misconduct on his part. But I digress…).
Inspired by Marcotte’s post, Fred at the Slacktivist does his usual brilliant job of looking at the issue through the lens of his progressive Christian faith, this time using the story of Job to look at victim blaming.
Finally, I highly, highly recommend Tim Wise’s essay “Denial is a River, Wider Than the Charles: Racism and Implicit Bias in Cambridge.” Yes, it’s a little heavy on the academic language and may be a tough read for some, but please, especially if you are a person with white skin in the U.S., take some time to struggle with this one.
