Professor Henry Louis Gates and Sergeant James Crowley apparently enjoyed their beer summit with the president so much that they’ve decided to have another round.  Minus the president.

In a setting a tad less formal, with no president or national press on hand, the Harvard professor and the Cambridge cop at the heart of last summer’s White House “beer summit” met for a second round – this time, at a local pub.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sgt. James Crowley met for drinks Wednesday at River Gods, a popular River Street bar outside Central Square, not far from where their lives first intersected.

Exactly what they discussed is their business.

The news being slow, the press and the blogs are all over it. Jules Crittenden,  Jason Zengerle,  Anahad O’Connor and the Gawker gang all weigh in, with different degrees of insight and snark.  Crittenden’s is the best at the former.

Gates, when he was expounding on a CNN stage in the middle of Times Square last summer, said he not only wanted an apology, he wanted Crowley to submit to a lecture about the history of racism in this country. Gates has made a decent Ivy League career out of that subject, and even done some useful documentary work about the realities of people’s lives across generations. But imagine what kind of figure he could be in this nation’s tortured history of race relations if he actually played a role, a real person engaged in real events, in getting us past it. If he has learned the lesson of his own experience, maybe he’s the one who can lead us … 45 years after the Civil Rights movement and 145 years after the Civil War … out of this endless cycle of race-baiting, racial assumptions, racial preferences and racial discrimination, in both directions. Maybe the pair of them together … Irish cop and black Harvard prof … can serve as example for all of us of how it is done, how people can be met on their own merits. Judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.

I don’t have much to add except to note that the two reportedly frequent the bar, separately.  Which makes their original encounter all the more bizarre.

White elites, shockingly, seem to enjoy cities where the culture is dominated by white elites. Aaron Renn breaks the news.

Among the media, academia and within planning circles, there’s a generally standing answer to the question of what cities are the best, the most progressive and best role models for small and mid-sized cities. The standard list includes Portland, Seattle, Austin, Minneapolis, and Denver. In particular, Portland is held up as a paradigm, with its urban growth boundary, extensive transit system, excellent cycling culture, and a pro-density policy. These cities are frequently contrasted with those of the Rust Belt and South, which are found wanting, often even by locals, as “cool” urban places.

But look closely at these exemplars and a curious fact emerges. If you take away the dominant Tier One cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles you will find that the “progressive” cities aren’t red or blue, but another color entirely: white.

In fact, not one of these “progressive” cities even reaches the national average for African American percentage population in its core county. Perhaps not progressiveness but whiteness is the defining characteristic of the group.

He’s even got a handy dandy chart:

Not noted in the article but worth mentioning in this context: The “African Americans” in Minneapolis are mostly Africans, not Americans. There’s a huge Somali refuge population as a function of rather recent public policy decisions.

This raises troubling questions about these cities. Why is it that progressivism in smaller metros is so often associated with low numbers of African Americans? Can you have a progressive city properly so-called with only a disproportionate handful of African Americans in it? In addition, why has no one called these cities on it?

What is it that these cities are supposed to do? Send out advertisements for more blacks to move there?! Our black population is concentrated in the Deep South, for obvious reasons, and in a handful of urban centers that were built around industrial jobs and therefore encouraged a huge migration.

As the college educated flock to these progressive El Dorados, many factors are cited as reasons: transit systems, density, bike lanes, walkable communities, robust art and cultural scenes. But another way to look at it is simply as White Flight writ large. Why move to the suburbs of your stodgy Midwest city to escape African Americans and get criticized for it when you can move to Portland and actually be praised as progressive, urban and hip? Many of the policies of Portland are not that dissimilar from those of upscale suburbs in their effects. Urban growth boundaries and other mechanisms raise land prices and render housing less affordable exactly the same as large lot zoning and building codes that mandate brick and other expensive materials do. They both contribute to reducing housing affordability for historically disadvantaged communities. Just like the most exclusive suburbs.

Now, I live in the Washington, DC area, which is incredibly diverse in terms of both a large black population and a much higher international immigrant population than the national average. I’ve got no dog in this fight. But it strikes me as silly to attribute predominantly racial motivation for moving to these cities. People go there for good jobs and quality of life.

In comparison to the great cities of the Rust Belt, the Northeast, California and Texas, these cities have relatively homogenous populations. Lack of diversity in culture makes it far easier to implement “progressive” policies that cater to populations with similar values; much the same can be seen in such celebrated urban model cultures in the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Their relative wealth also leads to a natural adoption of the default strategy of the upscale suburb: the nicest stuff for the people with the most money. It is much more difficult when you have more racially and economically diverse populations with different needs, interests, and desires to reconcile.

Right. And who wants more difficult problems to reconcile?

Even Matt Yglesias finds this argument “slightly odd.” For one thing, he correctly notes that number of blacks isn’t the only measure of diversity. Austin, for example, is less white than the country as a whole, with the diversity mostly added by Hispanics. And Renn goes to great lengths to dismiss foreign immigrants, which most of these cities have in great abundance, as a proper measure of diversity since they tend to be more affluent than inner city blacks.

But to take what I think is the ray of truth here, if you take a place that’s under-invested for decades in walkable urbanism and then create a bit of walkable urbanism the tendency is for that bit to become very expensive. And since African-American households have lower incomes and substantially less wealth than white households, the tendency is for the walkable urban places to become white. But to raise this as an objection to building walkable urbanism is like saying that we shouldn’t try to have great public schools, because poor people might not be able to afford to live near them. That’s totally backwards—the inability of poor people to afford to live in good school districts highlights the need for more good educational opportunities not fewer. By the same token, if investments in walkable urbanism cause prices to shoot up and price people out of the area that shows that we need more walkable urbanism.

Right.  To go further, it’s simply bizarre to criticize people for trying to build desirable communities for themselves simply because some people living elsewhere don’t have it so good.

Beyond that, it’s worth reading recent posts by Andrew Sullivan and others in reaction to Pat Buchanan’s latest article lamenting the loss of white American culture.   The upshot of all of them is that, as Sully puts it, “white Americans do not realize how black they are.”  By which he means how much of our culture is impacted by black culture via what we used to call “the melting pot.”   See Sully here, here, here, here, here, and here.   Also James Poulos.  Ann Althouse disagrees slightly.

“Diversity” is something that’s been advanced as a goal in recent years and which has in turn sparked a counter-diversity push by whites, like Buchanan, who see it as a threat.  It’s a very odd thing in that there’s never been a more diverse culture anywhere.  Not only are we a giant melting pot drawn from all the world’s cultures — even while our common core is Western European — but we’re incredibly heterogeneous.  Life varies from city-to-city, state-to-state, and region-to-region.  And “diversity” means more than “percentage of poor blacks.”

So, it’s more than slightly odd for someone to argue for more diversity by arguing we ought all be more alike.

Morehouse, the top historically black college for men, has issued a new dress code of which Bill Cosby will approve but gays groups do not.

Since he was named as president of Morehouse College in 2007, Robert M. Franklin has stressed the importance of defining education broadly, well beyond courses. He has been talking about the social and ethical obligations of those who are studying at the elite historically black college. Of late he has been calling for students to have “five wells” — to be “well read, well spoken, well traveled, well dressed and well balanced.”

Last week, the idea of being “well dressed” became much more specific, with the start of an “appropriate attire policy,” under which Morehouse is joining a small group of colleges that have in recent years adopted dress codes. Morehouse’s policy is generally being well received by students — and college officials stress that 90-plus percent of students are already in compliance. But the policy is getting some criticism from gay students over the idea of regulating dress, and specifically for banning the wearing of women’s attire.

Here are some of the policy’s features:

• Caps, do-rags and hoods are banned in classrooms, the cafeteria and other indoor venues. Do-rags may not be worn outside of the residence halls.
• Sunglasses may not be worn in class or at formal programs.
• Jeans may not be worn at major programs such as convocation, commencement or Founder’s Day.
• Clothing with “derogatory, offensive and/or lewd messages either in words or pictures” may not be worn.
• “Sagging,” defined as “the wearing of one’s pants or shorts low enough to reveal undergarments or secondary layers of clothing,” is banned.
• Pajamas are banned in public areas.
• Wearing of “clothing associated with women’s garb (for example, dresses, tunics, purses, handbags, pumps, wigs, make-up, etc.)” is banned. (Morehouse educates only male students.)

William Bynum, vice president for student services at Morehouse, said that the clothing rules are part of a broader agenda to develop students’ minds and “social consciences.” He said that Franklin, the president, has pushed President Obama’s idea that there should be “no excuses” for black men in an era when one of their own has been elected president of the United States.

Even the opposition from gay groups has been mild.

Kevin Webb, co-president of Safe Space @ Morehouse, a gay-straight student alliance, said that under Franklin’s leadership, the college has been more committed to equity for gay students than ever before, and that “as an openly gay student, I feel privileged to have matriculated now.”

Webb said that gay students are divided about the dress code. But although he will not have to change his style, he said he was bothered by the new rules. For many gay students, fashion is an important part of self-definition, he said. “Once you try to stop people’s expression, everything that is unique about people is going to start to crumble, and you will produce robots, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?”

A few gay Morehouse students do dress in women’s clothing sometimes, and Webb said that should be allowed. While all Morehouse students are covered by the new clothing policy, Webb said he was bothered that a specific rule singled out a style popular only with some gay students. “I think this borders on discrimination,” he said. “While someone can say that it applies the heteronormativity of other students in terms of do-rags and sagging of pants, I can also say that there are gay people who sag their pants and wear their do-rags, but you don’t find people here who identify themselves as straight walking around in feminine garb.”

If male students wear feminine clothing, he asked, “what impact does it have on how intelligent they are, their grade point average and how much community service they do?”

He also questioned the idea that someone who wears more formal clothing is necessarily a better person. “We are focusing too much on the exterior,” he said. “If you put a clown in a suit, he’s still a clown.”

Webb is right, of course.  One can be intelligent and dress like a slob — or someone of the opposite gender.  Conversely, one can dress like an executive and still be a fool.

But Franklin is carrying on a longstanding tradition at places like Morehouse.  Because it was harder for a black man to be considered intelligent or worthy of respect, a culture developed where black men of a certain station tended to dress much better and pay more attention to his manner of speaking than white men of similar status. It’s not as true as it was even twenty years ago — it’s been half a century since Brown and a generation since the Civil Rights Act of 1965 — but vestiges of that tradition remain.  Most black professionals in their 50s or older still tend to pay more attention to their clothing and public image than their white counterparts.

Franklin, Cosby, and Obama clearly want to keep this culture alive.  They realize that young black men running around with their underdrawers showing not only hinder their own chances for advancement but reinforce negative stereotypes.

Beyond that, Morehouse sees itself as something unique.  Being a “Morehouse Man” is more akin to being a graduate of the Citadel or VMI than of, say, one of the Ivies.  It’s a brand, not just an institution of higher education. And they want Morehouse men to project an image of success and professionalism.  And, it would seem, manliness.

Joseph Ashby argues that something fishy is being ignored in the matter of Rush Limbaugh’s failed bid to buy the Rams.

NFL Players Association Executive Director DeMaurice Smith served as counsel to Attorney General Eric Holder and was a member of Barack Obama’s transition team.

[...]

Despite the fact that Smith’s opposition was based on Limbaugh’s political commentary, the report failed to mention that Smith’s political connections (including those to whom he donated thousands of dollars) have a vested interest in Limbaugh’s discrediting.

[...]

Smith’s gross conflict of interest and apparent political targeting of Obama’s top foe is a huge story. Unfortunately the media appears too blinded by their prejudice of Limbaugh to report on it.

To summarize, we know that a former Obama official and political ally–who was chosen by the NFLPA specifically for his political clout and connections to the highest rungs of power in government–directly attacked Limbaugh for the radio-talker’s political commentary.

Historically politicians have been prone to vindictive and petty behavior, but never in American history has someone had so much power to pummel his political opponents as President Obama. With control over banks, insurance companies, car companies, media (sports media included) and unions (like the NFL players union), Obama tentacles seem to penetrate into nearly every corner of the nation.

Glenn Reynolds, from whom I got the link, doesn’t directly comment but does pass on this from a reader email: “BTW this is a big, big deal, and something Nixon ( or maybe Gene Talmadge or George Wallace in his heyday.) would have done. The difference is the press wouldn’t have played along then. Not because it was wrong. The press could care less about that ( Go look up Walter Duranty), but because Nixon wasn’t a Democrat. It’s all about power with the press…their power. You get in between them and it, heaven help you.”

Now, unlike Glenn, I am not a lawyer (or, as they say on the Internets, “IANAL”).  But I fail to see a problem here.

For the sake of argument, let’s concoct an outlandish conspiracy totally unsupported by facts:

Attorney General Holder personally called Smith and says:  “Hey, Rush Limbaugh has placed a bid to become a minority owner of the Rams.  He’s been a real thorn in our sides.  Do whatever you can to screw him over and paint him as a racist.  I’ll send over some fake quotes that I saw on Wikipedia which will help!’

Smith:  “Yes, sir, boss!   I’ll also call up Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.  They’ll help for free, since Limbaugh makes fun of them all the time.”

At this point, the story unfolds as we’ve seen it.

(Again, this is a completely made-up scenario.  It strikes me as far more plausible that Smith and Holder — both African American liberal Democrats — came to dislike Limbaugh independently and needed no coordination whatsoever. Ockham’s Razor and all that.)

Would any laws have been broken?  Would Smith or Holder be in violation of any professional codes?  Would Smith be in any violation of his fidiciary duties as NFLPA head? None that I can see.  Limbaugh’s a controversial figure believed by a not inconsiderable number of people to be racist.   It’s quite likely, then, that some number of NFLPA members were antsy about Limbaugh as an owner.

Further, Smith is an attorney.  Like many in his profession, he’s had numerous clients.  Does having had a client in the past that might have some tangential interest in a matter being worked on for a current client usually require some sort of formal disclosure?   I’m unaware of such a requirement but, again, IANAL.

Missouri native Rush Limbaugh has been dropped from membership in a group seeking to buy the St. Louis Rams and keep them in the city.  This speeds up the inevitable conclusion fo the NFL’s owners refusing to let the controversial pundit join their ranks.

Limbaugh was to be a limited partner in a group headed by St. Louis Blues chairman Dave Checketts. Checketts said in a statement Wednesday that Limbaugh’s participation had become a complication in the group’s efforts and the bid will move forward without him.

Checketts told the Associated Press he will have no further comment on the bid process.

Three-quarters of the league’s 32 owners would have had to approve any sale to Limbaugh and his group. Earlier this week, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay predicted that Limbaugh’s potential bid would be met by significant opposition. Several players have also voiced their displeasure with Limbaugh’s potential ownership position, and NFL Players Association head DeMaurice Smith, who is black, urged players to speak out against Limbaugh’s bid.

A Limbaugh spokesman told ESPN that Limbaugh would have no comment on Wednesday. Earlier, on his syndicated radio show, Limbaugh was defiant, holding on to hope that he still could be part of the ownership group that buys the Rams. “This is not about the NFL, it’s not about the St. Louis Rams, it’s not about me,” Limbaugh said. “This is about the ongoing effort by the left in this country, wherever you find them, in the media, the Democrat Party, or wherever, to destroy conservatism, to prevent the mainstreaming of anyone who is prominent as a conservative. “Therefore, this is about the future of the United States of America and what kind of country we’re going to have.”

I’m sympathetic to Limbaugh here, in that he’s been smeared by made-up quotes and vilified for making perfectly reasonable and legitimate political arguments in a provocative manner.  Conservatives are frequently branded as “racists” and “sexists” and “homophobes” as a tool of stifling debate. While I long ago got tired of his shtick, I still think he’s a decent guy who’s made a lot of enemies with his act.  Given that he’s been doing three hours of live radio five days a week just about every day for nearly twenty years, he’s bound to have said quite a few stupid things.

Further, there’s an argument to be made that he’d be good for the NFL.  He’s a true fan of the game and loves his boyhood home, so he’d bring a lot of passion to his minority stake in the Rams.  And this bid is the best chance to keep the team in the city.   He could be an NFL version of Mark Cuban, which the No Fun League could use.

Among those making pretty powerful arguments against Limbaugh’s bid, ironically, is Mark Cuban.

The problem with Rush is that its his job to take on all of life’s partisan issues and problems.  Not only is it his job to take on these issues and problems, its key to his success that he be very opinionated about whichever issues he feels are important to him and/or will cause his very large audience to tune in.  Given that we will never know what the “next big issue ” in this world that Rush will be discussing on his show is,  its impossible for the NFL to even try to predict or gauge the impact on the NFL’s business if something controversial, or even worse yet, something nationally polarizing happens. There is an unquantifiable risk that comes with the size of Rush’s audience.  The wrong thing said on the show, even if its not spoken by Rush himself,  about a sensitive national or world issue could turn into a Black Swan event for the NFL.

Thats a huge risk that is not commensurate with the value a minority investment in a franchise brings.

This isnt about Free Speech. Its about the NFL protecting their business.  There is no reason to put it at risk.  If Rush were to retire from his show, or become a local DJ in Sacramento, or just about anything else he may want as a vocation, then I dont think they would have any problem with him being an investor in a team.

And, frankly, in the Age of YouTube, even a local shock jock would have the same issue.

Steven Taylor points out that the NFL is institutionally conservative on such matters:

First, the NFL is extremely image conscious and Rush makes a living going out of his way to say things that make somewhere between 30%-60% of the population mad on a daily basis (depending on what he is talking about).  As such, it is hardly a shock that some NFL owners are a bit skittish about welcoming him into their ranks.

The second business point I would make is that this is a case of pure capitalism at work:  private owners making decisions concerning with whom they are willing to do business.  Conservatives really have no ideological grounds to object if the NFL owners have found Limbaugh too controversial for their business tastes.   Heck, if Major League Baseball thinks Mark Cuban is too controversial, it is hardly a shock that there was pushback on Limbaugh from the NFL.

All of this does boil down, however, to the voting rules, as institutions do matter.  To wit:  for a purchase to be approved, 75% of the league’s owner have to agree on the sale.  There are 32 teams, meaning 24 had to say yes, but much more importantly, only 9 had to say no.   One of the simple facts that is often ignored by casual observers about super-majority rules is that they empower the minority substantially.

Add to that, by the way, that the League is about to enter into serious labor negotiations that are already extremely contentious.  No way are the owners, who need serious concessions from the players to realign the business model, going to antagonize the union — which is overwhelmingly comprised of African Americans — by accepting an owner that many players deem racist.  (Now, if Limbaugh were the majority bidder and offering to substantially overpay for the Rams, it might well be a different story.)   Fair?  No.  But not much about the business of professional sports is.

Now, as Doug Powers and others point out, the NFL has some shady characters in its midst already.  But there’s a much higher tolerance for thuggish behavior on the part of great athletes than for prospective owners. Rick Moran notes, too, that the NFL has always been way behind the other leagues in minority hiring. But that’s really all the more reason for owners to be cautious.

Sean Hackbarth argues that Limbaugh has done himself no favors, either.

Rush failed to treat his quest as a campaign with the end goal being a stake in an NFL team. He played the politics wrong and lost this chance to be an owner. With better preparation the conservative giant would have better anticipated the attacks against him and eased the worries of certain owners during the firestorm.

As soon as he had an inkling to want to own an NFL team Rush needed to start laying the groundwork to make sure there wouldn’t be nine opposing votes. He should have started a process years in advance to soothe owners’ fears that he wouldn’t be an annoyance as an owner. Owners are businessmen who love football, so they would prefer to focus on improving their teams and growing their fan bases instead of dealing with the distraction of the latest fake-controversy created by Rush’s opponents. Running a business is partially about managing risks. Controversy is a risk that can be avoided, so it’s not a surprise NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said what he said.

Finally, as Tom Maguire observes, “Rush, love him or hate him he has made fabulous living being controversial and (that awful word) divisive.  That has opened some doors to him and, unsurprisingly, closed others.  Quel surprise.”

President Obama is losing support among white voters — including white Democrats — a new LAT poll finds.

The voters losing faith in the president are the ones he had worked hardest to attract. New surveys show steep declines in Obama’s approval ratings among whites — including Democrats and independents — who were crucial elements of the diverse coalition that helped elect the country’s first black president. Among white Democrats, Obama’s job approval rating has dropped 11 points since his 100-days mark in April, according to surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. It has dropped by 9 points among white independents and whites over 50, and by 12 points among white women — all groups that will be targeted by both parties in next year’s midterm elections.

“While Obama has a lock on African Americans, his support among white voters seems to be almost in a free fall,” said veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse.

Strategists in both parties blame Obama’s decline on growing discontent with his policy agenda, particularly after a month of often-rowdy debate over his proposed healthcare overhaul, in which some conservatives accused him of socialism. Obama’s ratings seem likely to rise again if he wins passage of healthcare legislation this fall.

But the drop in support among whites also comes as some conservatives have stoked controversies that have the potential to further erode Obama’s standing among centrists — including some controversies that resulted from White House stumbles.

Disclosure: Newhouse is a founding partner of Public Opinion Strategies, which employs my wife as its Chief Operating Officer.

It’s virtually axiomatic that, if Obama’s support dropped — which was itself virtually inevitable given his high initial ratings and the political challenges he faced — that it would first do some among the groups that he had to work hardest to persuade.   He got elected partly on an “anybody but Bush” platform and partly on a “Change!” agenda of doing away with politics as usual.  Once he won, however, he was forced to govern in the usual political system.

Beyond that, because so many fiscal conservatives and libertarians were disaffected by the Bush administration and the Republican leadership in the previous Congress, a lot of regular Republican voters supported Obama.  They were naturally going to be disappointed.

Justin Barrett, a 36-year-old soon-to-be-former Boston cop and Massachussetts Army National Guard captain, is making the headlines with a letter he circulated describing, a bit too enthusiastically, his views on a Boston Globe column on the Henry Louis Gates incident.

Alan Colmes has the background:

His palpable anger appears to be directed at Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham, to whom he refers as “a hot little bird with minimal experiences in a harsh field.”

Barrett refers to himself as “a former English teacher, writer, current police officer, father, husband and military veteran.”  He says he’s “embarrassed I paid the 1.50 for the paper” which he calls “sub standard,” “one sided” and “fourth grade level.”  About Gates he writes, “He is a suspect and will always be a suspect.”

The “former English teacher” goes on to state, “if I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey I would have sprayed him in the face with OC deserving of his belligerent non-compliance.”  Barrett continues to criticize the Globe by mockingly asking, “I might as well ax you the question, ‘Is this your first test at reporting’?”

Attacking Gates’ credentials, Barrett asks, “[He's] famous for what?…What has he done for me and my family?  What has he done for the law enforcement community or military veterans or to secure freedoms and our borders in this country?  What has he done to help limit and reduce my income tax?”

The author of the article to which Barrett objects is told she is a failure who deserves to be serving him coffee and donuts.   The officer concludes by screeching, “Go ahead, ax me what I think? Gates is a goddamned fool, and you the article writer simply a poor follower and maybe worse, a poor writer. Your article title should read ‘CONDUCT UNBECOMING A JUNGLE MONKEY-BACK TO ONE’S ROOTS’.”  JB

The National Guard has already suspended Barrett,

The Massachusetts National Guard does not and will not tolerate racially insensitive language.

The language contained in the e-mail violates policies of the Massachusetts National Guard and what it stands for in its commitment to uphold and protect the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Constitution of the United States.

Capt. Justin Barrett’s actions and opinions are his own and do not reflect those of the Massachusetts National Guard. Capt. Barrett’s opinions are in complete violation of Army and National Guard Values and will not be tolerated.

Not surprisingly, he’s been suspended from the BPD as well and the mayor says he’ll be gone permanently.

Barrett, a 36-year-old who has been on the job for two years, was stripped of his gun and badge yesterday and faces a termination hearing in the next week, said police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll. He has no previous disciplinary record, she said.  “Yesterday afternoon, Commissioner Davis was made aware that Officer Barrett was the author of correspondence which included racially charged language,” she said. “At that time, Commissioner Davis immediately stripped Officer Barrett of his gun and badge, and at this time we will be moving forward with the hearing process.”

[...][Mayor Thomas M.] Menino said he was angry when Davis informed him of the incident Tuesday night. Of the suspended officer, Menino said he told Davis: “He has no place in this department and we have to take his badge away. That stuff doesn’t belong in our city and we’re not going to tolerate it.” The mayor stressed that the incident was about one officer, and ”one officer doesn’t make up a police department.”

Menino, speaking to the Globe before an evening event in the South End, said he hadn’t seen the e-mail Menino said while the officer is not officially terminated, he might as well be “He’s gone, g-o-n-e. I don’t care, it’s like cancer, you don’t keep those cancers around.”

Barrett says it’s all a big misunderstanding.

Except, apparently, members of the public with whom he has disagreements.

In last night’s press conference, President Obama weighed in on the disorderly conduct arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates.

“The police are doing what they should,” he said. “There’s a call. They go investigate. What happens?

“My understanding is that Professor Gates then shows his I.D. to show that this is his house, and at that point he gets arrested for disorderly conduct.”

“I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that,” Mr. Obama continued. “But I think it’s fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry; No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and No. 3, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by police disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”

I’m surprised and a bit disappointed that the president would weigh in so strongly against a local police officer on such sketchy evidence.  He concedes that Gates is a friend but, still, president’s traditionally stay out of such matters until they develop.  This isn’t a Rodney King situation where we have video.  Further, Obama is eliding some steps in the incident; I guarantee Gates wasn’t charged with disorderly conduct for simply showing ID.

Dave Schuler and I discussed the incident toward the end of last night’s episode of OTB Radio.  We agreed that 1)  the specific facts of the case are fuzzy, with Gates and the arresting officer releasing accounts that put themselves in the best light and 2) Cambridge is a small community and police should know who its most prominent citizens are.

I think it’s probable that Gates went into outrage mode quickly and that the officer felt disrespected and wanted to assert his authority and basically goaded Gates into a situation where an arrest was possible.  Henry Farrell’s explanation on that score strikes me as quite plausible.

As I’ve written numerous times before, police, especially in urban areas, have adopted a militaristic attitude toward their jobs, viewing the citizenry as hostiles to be pacified rather than as the community they’ve pledged to serve.   It’s a dangerous and lamentable development.

This is by no means universal.  Dave, who lives in a suburban-style community within the city limits of Chicago, has a much more pleasant experience with the police.  The police and citizens have a cordial, cooperative relationship.

UPDATE:  Jules Crittenden has some interesting background on Officer James Crowley that will likely reinforce whatever view you already have on the matter.

AP Photo

Robert Cox passes on the story of Demetrius Hazelton, the 17-year-old son a New Rochelle police detective, who is suing said PD after he was arrested after using a  “white racial monotone voice” which police claim is the same voice used by Dave Chappelle “when making fun of white people.”

Bob supplies the following Chappelle video, which is decidedly R-rated:

Dave Chappelle Stand Up – Scared Of The Police

The beginning of the monologue is especially amusing in light of yesterday’s news that Harvard African-American Studies professor Henry Louis Gates was recently arrested for breaking into his own house.

Julian Sanchez argues that, while Sonia Sotomayor was given special consideration because she’s a Latina at various stages in her life, her case is “pretty close to the ideal of how affirmative action is supposed to work.”

From a pool of highly qualified candidates, you let ethnicity act as a tiebreaker. It seems self-evident to me that John Smith with Sonia Sotomayor’s resume would be a reasonable pick for the Supreme Court. I think it’s equally evident that, when it came time to choose from the highly elite people with the requisite experience and qualifications, it mattered that she was a Latina. For an institution like the Supreme Court, I have no serious problem with that being a consideration, provided we’re talking about the choice between candidates who meet the prior threshold of excellence you want any justice to surpass. It’s not like there’s some Supreme Court SAT that lets you objectively rank jurists, such that Sotomayor is “unfairly” promoted ahead of “better” candidates. Once you’re down to that elite pool, the decision amounts to a president’s highly subjective assessment of the specific character, experience, and philosophy of individual candidates, bearing in mind the composition of the rest of the court. And when you’re carrying out that level of individualized analysis, for a job that includes interpreting the meaning of “equal protection” or “hostile work environment” for a diverse population, it’s hardly mysterious why membership in a disadvantaged group might seem relevant—it’s not independent from some external, independent criterion of “bestness.”

Sotomayor got into Princeton despite subpar SATs but excelled once she got there.  She was appointed to the federal bench by George H.W. Bush over more stellar candidates because he was looking for a Hispanic nominee and had a small pool to choose from but she was both demonstrably qualified for the job and performed it well.  Presumably, Bill Clinton wanted to make the appeals courts “look more like America” and tabbed  Sotomayor from, again, a very small pool of qualified Latinas.  Now Obama has done it again.

Sometimes, affirmative action picks are obviously stellar.  Thurgood Marshall had a spectacular resume and would previously have been denied consideration because he was black.

Would Sandra Day O’Connor have been on the short list for the Supreme Court were she Sam O’Connor?  No.  Frankly, there probably wasn’t a woman in the country — let alone a Republican woman — who was superbly qualified for the Supreme Court in 1981.  Most of the law schools had excluded women until not long before then.

Clarence Thomas, were he white?   No, again.  There just weren’t a whole lot of black Republicans to choose from and it would have been politically difficult to appoint a white justice to replace Marshall, thereby turning the court back into an all-white institution.

Both had the requisite skills to do the job and proved to be competent additions to the bunch.   But neither were Antonin Scalia or Louis Brandeis.

My preference would be for every president to swing for the fences with every Supreme Court pick, going for a spectacular legal mind who would have the potential for greatness on the bench.  But I’ve got no real heartburn with affirmative action picks, either, so long as they’re of the type Julian advocates.   All manner of considerations other than intellectual greatness are going to factor in:  party affiliation, ideology, personality, age, and, increasingly, confirmability come readily to mind.  While ensuring diversity of race, ethnicity, religion, and gender isn’t something I much care about (so long as they aren’t negative factors) there’s no reason they can’t be “tiebreakers” or of minor consideration along with the others.

I’m in rare agreement with John Hinderaker in finding Sonia Sotomayor’s explanation for her infamous “wise Latina” line less than plausible.

I want to state up front, unequivocally and without doubt, I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in sound judging. I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge regardless of their background or life experiences.

What — the words that I use, I used agreeing with the sentiment that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was attempting to convey. I understood that sentiment to be what I just spoke about, which is that both men and women were equally capable of being wise and fair judges.

Of course she was disagreeing with Sandra Day O’Connor.  Of course she was arguing that someone with her background would be more able to empathize with women, minorities, and the underprivileged than your average rich white boy who grew up to be a judge.  Why deny the obvious, especially when it’s so obvious as to be banal?

What’s more fascinating to me than this controversy, though, is that so many bloggers and Twitterers are closely following the hearings as if they were other than a mere formality on the road to all-but-certain confirmation.  As Senator Lindsey Graham put it to her yesterday, “Unless you have a complete meltdown, you’re going to get confirmed.”

Why pretend otherwise?

Photo: Reuters Pictures

One wag on Twitter (okay, it was me) asked, “When #Sotomayor is confirmed, will others have to call themselves #wisegringos?” (The annoying hashtags are apparently de rigeur on Twitter as a means of differentiating the cognoscenti from the hoi polloi.)

Thus far, the response has been positive.   For the sheer hell of it, I bought wisegringo.com which, surprisingly, was still available.   No idea what I’ll do with it.  A wise gringo would probably have a plan.

A rather thinly sourced piece in the Philadelphia News alleging racism at a private swim club is getting quite a bit of attention.

More than 60 campers from Northeast Philadelphia were turned away from a private swim club and left to wonder if their race was the reason.

“I heard this lady, she was like, ‘Uh, what are all these black kids doing here?’ She’s like, ‘I’m scared they might do something to my child,’” said camper Dymire Baylor.

So, a kid claims “some lady” was wondering about the presence of black kids at a private club that, one gathers, tended to not normally have large numbers of black kids?

“When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool,” Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. “The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately.”

So, the white kids reflexively exited the pool en masse? Because they’ve never seen black kids before? In Philly?

And pool attendants — in 2009 Philadelphia — not only carried out a policy of excluding blacks from the club but had the incredibly poor judgment to tell the blacks that that’s what they were doing?!

Well . . . maybe:

“There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club,” John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club said in a statement.

Now, frankly, if I’m paying for membership in a private club so that I can take my kids swimming in peace, I don’t want said club to sell season passes to large groups of non-members. Not only does that make the pool more crowded but it rather diminishes the “club” aspect of the experience. Typically, members are vetted and recommended by other members; having a busload of kids coming in from outside the community makes it, in essence, a public pool.

That may be all Duesler is saying. If so, however, the use of the word “complexion” was exceedingly unfortunate.  Especially since, if this screencap is accurate, the club does have a rather light complexion.

Of course, it would be nice to have a link to Duesler’s full statement. (Valley Swim Club’s site is currently down.)

Interestingly, Ed Morrissey says there’s only one listing in the Philadelphia directory for a John Duesler:  “the man who ran the O-Positive Obama campaign blood drive in Philly before Barack Obama’s inauguration.”  If this is indeed the same guy, it would seemingly suggest that either 1) Duesler is not a racist or 2) he’s very confused.

Apparently, this incident occurred several days ago, so it’s not exactly breaking news even though the report came out just yesterday.  It would have been better to hold off reporting this another day or two to get more facts (which, I’m given to understand, is what reporters did back in the old days).  Were I the city desk editor, for example, I’d have asked the reporter to find out 1) what the racial composition of the club is; 2) whether similar incidents have occurred in the past; and 3) whether this sort of thing is common in Northeast Philadelphia or it’s contained in one club.  Perhaps she could try to find out who was at the pool that day and get some quotes from some of the members.  And, certainly, I’d have her follow up with Duesler to see if he’d dig himself any deeper or offer a plausible explanation.  And find out if he’s the O-Positive guy.

President Obama told the AP that the Ricci case “moved the ball” on race relations.

President Barack Obama said Thursday the Supreme Court was “moving the ball” on affirmative action in this week’s decision favoring white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., but he added that the court had not ruled out the use of racial preferences in the future.

In a White House interview with The Associated Press, the president also said, “I don’t think that hiring on the basis of race … alone is constitutionally possible.” Obama, a former teacher of constitutional law, said, “I’ve always believe that affirmative action was less of an issue or should be less of an issue than it has been made out to be in news reports.”

These are very mild comments that, while I disagree, don’t have any problem with.  But I do seem to recall that, not very long ago, Democrats thought it was illegitimate for presidents to criticize the Supreme Court.

By a slim 5-4 margin, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the white New Haven firefighters whose promotions were denied because not enough non-whites passed the promotion exam.  Among those ruling the other way on the lower court was a certain wise Latina.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.  New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide and make it harder to prove discrimination when there is no evidence it was intentional.

“Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer’s reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions,” Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the white firefighters “understandably attract this court’s sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them.”  Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens signed onto Ginsburg’s dissent, which she read aloud in court Monday.

It’s worth noting that the Justice that Sotomayor would replace, Souter, ruled in the way she would reasonably have been expected to and that the outcome of this case would presumably have been the same were she on the Court.

On it’s face, however, Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion is absurd.  The firefighters in question certainly had a right to be promoted under the extant rules of the game.  Promotions were based partly on a test. They did well on the test and would have been promoted but for racial discrimination.  The fact that fear, doubt, and uncertainty yielded a situation where nobody was promoted does not in any way mitigate the harm done to them.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald is right, here, methinks:

In light of today’s ruling, it’s a bit difficult — actually, impossible — for a rational person to argue that Sotomayor’s Ricci decision places her outside the judicial mainstream when: (a) she was affirming the decision of the federal district court judge; (b) she was joined in her decision by the two other Second Circuit judges who, along with her, comprised a unanimous panel; (c) a majority of Second Circuit judges refused to reverse that panel’s ruling; and now: (d) four out of the nine Supreme Court Justices — including the ones she is to replace — agree with her.

Put another way, 11 out of the 21 federal judges to rule on Ricci ruled as Sotomayor did.  It’s perfectly reasonable to argue that she ruled erroneously, but it’s definitively unreasonable to claim that her Ricci ruling places her on some sort of judicial fringe.

Sotomayor is a fairly garden variety left-of-center judge.   Ed Whelan makes the more reasonable argument against her:  the nine Justices all agreed that the 2nd’s summary dismissal of the case was unwarranted.