Posted in faith, media, notes on the human condition, politics, tagged abusive, ACLU, Americans, Arizona, ashamed, badly, behave, bill, border, Cardinal Roger Mahony, Catastrophizing, church, civilians, clash, Communist, comparison, comply, consequences, conservatives, controversy, crime, critic, criticisms, cross, debate, dialog, disappointing, dishonest, divided, divisive, documentation, drug war, ego, ethical, ethnocentric. stereotype, exaggeration, fear mongering, Federal, First Amendment, government, governor, higher calling, illegal immigration, intellectually dishonest, irresponsible, issue, Jan Brewer, law enforcement, leaders, liberals, librals, lies, Los Angeles, Lou Dobbs, Michael Smerconish Program, middle ground, misdirect, mislead, moral, narc, Nazi, neo Nazi, on the books, outcomes, personal, polarized, polemic, police, policy, political temperance, poor example, popularity, pragmatic, predators, prediction, profiling, protests, provocative, public interst, race war, racist, raise the bar, rat out, reality check, Robert Krentz, Roman Catholic, Russell Pearce, safety, SB 1070, senator, set example, shame, smear, speech, statesmanship, status, trash talk, truth, turn in, unfair, unforeseen, victims, violence on April 23, 2010 |
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In a move that has sparked controversy nationwide, Arizona state Senator Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, has successfully promoted a bill that requires state law enforcement, among related jurisdictions, to aid in federal immigration law enforcement. The state senator’s most outspoken critic, Roger Mahony, Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, writes on his blog:
I can’t imagine Arizonans now reverting to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques whereby people are required to turn one another in to the authorities on any suspicion of documentation. Are children supposed to call 911 because one parent does not have proper papers? Are family members and neighbors now supposed to spy on one another, create total distrust across neighborhoods and communities, and report people because of suspicions based upon appearance?
Mahony’s words are provocative — arguably, even, a cheapening comparison to the horrors Communist and Nazi victims experienced. Yet they come on the heels of an audacious personal attack: The Los Angeles Times reports Sen. Pearce told syndicated radio talk show host Michael Smerconish “This guy has a history of protecting and moving predators around in order to avoid detection by the law. He has no room to talk [on the illegal immigration issue].”
Sen. Pearce may be well within the protections of the First Amendment, but he has far overstepped the bounds of responsible speech. Cardinal Mahony, however, has some confession of his own to do: Dredging up a very painful historic reality in contrast to a hypothetical and alarmist outcome.
It’s time for a time-out.
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Posted in notes on the human condition, tagged abuse, academia, accuse, African, American, antidote, ascribe, assumption, assumptions, attitudes, attribute, authority, awareness, background, baiting, barrier, beliefs, belong, black, blame, breakdown, butterfly effect, Cambridge, character, characteristics, Chicago Tribune, circumstances, color, community, connection, consciousness, control, cooperate, creed, dangerous, determinations, detox, difference, door, economic, education, emotional intelligence, ethnicity, expectations, experience, fanning the flames, forget, forgiveness, free, generalizations, get to know, goading, harmful, Harvard, hate, Henry Louis Gates Jr., history, home, hostility, house, hurtful, ideas, identify, identity, individual, influence, interpretation, intruder, law enforcement, letting go, life, limiting, multiculturalism, names, negative, neighborhood, neighbors, next generation, officer, others, ourselves, outcome, outgroup, painful, past, perceived, perception, perceptual filter, perpetuate, person, personal power, plight, police, power, present, professor, profile, profiling, projection, promoting, racialization, racism, rationalize, reality, recognize, recollection, recovery, reinforce, relationships, research, school, self fulfilling prophecy, skew, skin color, society, stereotypes, studies, success, taking charge, teach, transference, transmit, treatment, university, values, vector, victim, victimhood, victimization, views, virus, W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research on July 21, 2009 |
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Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. cried foul when a neighbor’s call to the police resulted in his arrest at the door to his own home, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Refusing, allegedly, to identify himself to a responding Cambridge, Massachusetts police officer didn’t help law enforcement appreciate that the director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research was the rightful owner of the home — a far cry from the intruder his neighbor feared.
Professor Gates Jr. may not have intended to bait the officer into arresting him, but that’s the effect his apparent refusal to cooperate had.
“Is this what it means to be a black man in America?”, the professor rhetorically opined.
If “what it means” refers to negative racial assumptions applied to oneself — ascribing to the color of one’s skin the power to draw negative and unfair treatment — then yes. But in very real way, who or what is proposing the racism — the past or the present? Someone else — or the professor himself?
Psychologists call the phenomena of blurring the lines between the motivations of self and others “transference“. It’s no secret that sometimes we project our own assumptions on others, in this case an officer caught between a nosey neighbor and a prejudicially-minded professor.
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