The Usefulness of Racism

     Some people must be extremely pleased that racism exists.  After all, how else can certain liberals silence their political opponents?  Certainly not with facts or logical arguments!

     Are you skeptical of Global Warming?  You’re a racist.

     Do you want universal tax cuts?  You’re a racist.

     Are you against government bailouts of private companies?  You’re a racist.

     Do you oppose government-run health insurance?  You’re a racist.

     It’s so easy.  It’s so convenient.  It is much less taxing than actually formulating a rational response to conservative viewpoints. 

     I thought that people were happy to have a black president because it represents a move toward equality.  It seems that for some people, it is simply a great opportunity to silence anyone who disagrees with them.  Any and all Democratic policies are off limits for discussion now, because to discuss them makes one a racist.  It is quite a coup for the Democratic Party.  Not only do they have a lot of power right now, they have the perfect way to stamp out opposition. 

     Well, I won’t be deterred.  I have held conservative views for at least 30 years–long before an African-American was the President of the United States.  I am not going to back down just because people call me names, even if they call me a name that is one of the worst that ayone could accuse me of.  They are the ones in the wrong, and I know it.  I also think that they know it.  I think that it is a game to some people, including Maureen Dowd and Presdient Carter.  How good they must feel to look down on other white people as racists!  I wonder what is lurking in their hearts that motivates them to make such accusations.

     I am secure in the fact that I am not a racist, and I will not let false accusations of it keep me from expressing my own views or from criticizing those whose political views differ from mine.  I hate being called a racist, when I have been ardently anti-racist all my life.  It hurts, but I will not cower in some corner and stop expressing my opinions because somebody throws that ugly but false accusation at me.

     Besides if you like President Obama, then you should take his word for the fact that people who oppose his policies are not doing so because of his skin color.

    If equality means anything, then it had better mean that I can disagree with people no matter what their race is, and they can disagree with me no matter what my race is.  I don’t assume that anyone finds faults with my views because I am white, although being white seems to be my worst fault.  It is the only proof offered so far that I am a racist.  Am I weird, or is it actually racism to stereotype me that way?

Whitey Changes His Tune

I’ve tried several ways to make a particular point, but my detractors have not accepted any of them.  I am now going to try another approach.  Preapare for sarcasm.  If you take anything I say literally in the comments section, I will delete your comment as quickly as I can.  This is what I do NOT actually think.

——————–

     I have always been an ardent supporter of government programs.  I have believed thoughout my entire adult life that there is no problem that cannot be fixed if the government provides the solution.  My high school and college teachers remember me as a rabid Marxist bent on revolution and the rise o the workers.  But now. . .

     There is a black man in the White House, and I have completely changed my mind.

     When Hillary Clinton was drafting and promoting a bill to reform the health care industry and health insurance, I was completely in favor of it, because she is white.  I like everything that white people do.  Even if she or her husband had personally aborted babies, I would have adored them, because they are white.  I really liked it when President Clinton had his way with the young intern Monica, because anything white people so is fine with me.  The fact that she is white (does Jewish count as white?) made it even better.

     I like President Clinton very much, because he is white.  I cannot say if I liked him more than George W. Bush, because it is hard to tell which one of them is whiter.  They both looked pretty pasty to me.  In the end I went with Clinton, because Bush did get pretty tan under the West Texas sun. 

     I liked President Carter, too.  I think that he was a really good president, because he was very white.  His teeth were especially white.  I appreciated the rise in inflation and unemployment while he was president, because if it happens during a white man’s administration, it’s okay by me.  I remember long gas lines during one family vaction, but it was okay.  My parents said we should enjoy waiting for gasoline because a white man was our president.

     A white man once told me that I should try heroin.  I thought, “Well, since he is white I had better do what he says.”  If a black man had told me that I would have said, “No way, man!  I won’t do what you say because you are black.”  It’s easy to make decisions that way.

     Of course, it makes it hard to decide on certain issues.  For example, was Clarence Thomas lying or was Anita Hill lying?  Since they are both black I could not make up my mind.  Of course, Hill is a woman, so there you go!  She was obviously not lying, because she is a woman and Thomas is a man. 

     In the O. J. Simpson case it was easy.  He is black; his victim is white.  He obviously didn’t murder her.  (Oh, but she was a woman!  I thought that I was supposed to side with the woman over the man.  I’m so confused.)

     Anyway, back to the topic at hand.  I wish that John Edwards had won the election.  He is very, very white.  If he were president right now, I would have punched those folks at the Town Hall meetings in the face for challenging health care reform under a white president.  As it is, I applaud their efforts to oppose a black man.  I love health care reform and I love white people, so it would have been a winning combination to have John Edwards supporting such legislation.

     And if John Edwards had wanted to ban firearms, I would have volunteered to help round them up.  And if he had imposed a 200% tax increase, I would have voluntarily turned over my bank account.  He’s white, so I would agree with anything he wanted.  I’d even die for a white president if he asked me to.

     For awhile I came under the spell of Alan Keyes.  What was I thinking?  He’s even blacker than Obama.  Even if he could personally close every abortion clinic in America I would be against him, because he is black.  Now that Obama is president, I am staunchly pro-choice.  That’s just how it works for me.  Issues don’t matter, only color.

How Would You Like It?

     Perhaps you were one of the many detractors of George W. Bush.   What if you opposed his policies and actions as president, but everybody dismissed your disagreement by saying that you were just prejudiced against people from Texas or against people named George?  I don’t think you would like it.

     Bill Cosby, Maureen Dowd, Jim Wallis, and Jimmy Carter have all said that President Obama’s detractors are racist or acting out of racial animosity. 

     Yes, yes, yes, some of Obama’s detractors are bigots who hate him because he is black.  Yes, some of them cursed the day that a black man became President.  Yes, some of them will like nothing that he does simply because he is black. 

     However, many people are opposing the President for the same reasons that they opposed Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter himself–they do not agree with left-of-center views.  If Carter and others want to insist that people oppose the Democrats’ health care proposal because of Barack Obama’s blackness, then they had better explain why the same people opposed Bill Clinton’s (rather, Hillary Clinton’s) health care proposal.  Clinton is about as white as can be.  And Carter is pretty white himself–whiter than Clinton, I think–so he had better explain why people opposed many of his policies and actions while president.

     Would the folks who said, “Bush lied, people died,” like it if people dismissed their ideas and called them names?  Or did they want people to listen to them make the case, as they supposed, that President Bush knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but wanted a pretext for attacking them?  How would people who opposed the Patriot Act feel if people said, “Oh, that’s just because of your deep-seated animosity for white men.  You wouldn’t disagree with the Patriot Act if a black man were behind it”?

     You know what Barack Obama has said?  He has said that people oppose the health care reform bill because they have a different view of the role of government in people’s lives.  This is one of the best things that he has said.  Will those who adore him so much accept his word that people have political reasons, rather than racial reasons, for disagreeing with his health care proposals?

Racism, Racism Everywhere

     Former President Jimmy Carter said it.  Columnist Maureen Dowd said it.  Joe Wilson’s son and many other people who know him denied it, as did the White House.  Is Joe Wilson a racist?

     In terms of the debate over health insurance reform, it doesn’t actually matter.  Joe Wilson could be the most hateful racist in America, but the facts about the Democrats’ proposals for reforming the health insurance indutry would still be what they are.  The race card is called that because it is part of a game.  It is a diversionary tactic.

     Pretty much everyone in America is a racist by Carter’s logic, including him.  A lot of people believe that Clarence Thomas lied.  A lot of other people believe that Anita Hill lied.  If calling a black person a liar is racist, then they are all racists. 

     I wonder if Carter has a grand theory as to why Barack Obama has said that some of his critics and political opponents were lying.  Could that be because of racism.  When President Obama called Kanye West a name, was he being racist?

     Can’t we as a nation grow up and talk about things without looking for racism everywhere?

     Please, let’s not get diverted.  Joe Wilson said, “You lie.”  Either the President lied or he didn’t.  It doesn’t matter that Wilson is white and Obama is half black.  Wilson could be black and Obama could be white, and the facts would still be what they are.

     Wilson did not say, “Black people are liars,” or “You lie because you are black.”  If he had, then a discussion about his racism and about racism in general would be warranted.  Because he simply said, “You lie,” then the discussion should be about whether or not the President lied.

     As often happens in politics, the truth is a mixture in this issue.  The most publicized health insurance bill does say that undocumented residents will not be covered by the public insurance option.  However, when Republicans tried to insert a requirement that applicants prove their citizenship it was rejected–several times.  The only reason not to put an enforcement clause into the bill is that you don’t plan on enforcing it.  That is one way that illegal aliens get government benefits now.  Officials simply look the other way.

     It’s too bad that Wilson burst out with his challenge to the President during his speech to the Congress.  Wilson had a valid point to make, but it was not the right time or the right place or the right manner in which to make it.  Now, instead of discussing the President’s speech, we are discussing Wilson’s brief outburst and the fallout from it.  We are talking about whether people are racists, when we should be talking about how much (or how little) government we want in our lives and how we can possibly pay for the ambitious plan being proposed.  We are talking about Joe Wilson instead of talking about the problems with health care in America.

     Let’s get back to business.

“Another Black Man Down. Oh, Goody!”

     Helen Losse wrote that brief, provocative comment on my post about Van Jones.  Her sarcasm is, as usual, sharp and insightful.  I can well imagine that there are people out there who are happy that a black man has been pushed out of a high position.  I wish that it were not so, but I must be honest.

     However, I could not help but imagine Helen’s reaction had Clarence Thomas, a black man, gone down.  She did not seem to be too unhappy when Alan Keyes, a black man, went down, in terms of not getting nominated by the Republican Party.

     Helen claims that skin color is not what matters, but then she writes a comment like that, in which she references only the man’s color.  I don’t get it!  She does not discuss the issues involved or try to refute any of the criticisms of Jones.  The implication, I think, is that because Jones is black, it would not matter what he has said or done.  To me, that is not racial equality, but maybe I’m wrong.

     I like Helen.  She makes me think, and she makes me laugh.  I appreciate her challenges to what I write, because it helps to sharpen my own thinking.  She has taught me what Martin Luther King was really like, and she has caused me to understand better what African Americans feel and what they mean by some of the seemingly outrageous things that some of them say.  I have not changed my mind very much, but I have more understanding than before.

     I said, and I meant it, that I did not care if Jones resigned or not.  If the things said about him were “lies and distortions,” as he claimed in his resignation letter, than he should not have resigned.  If that is the case, then it seems to this white Republican that he was thrown under the bus, and that is too bad.  I hate to see that happen to anyone, but it does seem to be the nature of politics.

     Back to Helen’s sarcastic statement. . . .under her influence I have come to believe that black people in America are entitled to a bit of extra grace in the political and social arenas.  By that I mean that the white community owes it to the black community to be extra tolerant and understanding.  The white community must listen to the justified anger expressed by members of the black community.  If a black man becomes a radical leftist, even a socialist or communist, it is understandable, given our history.  (I think it is a mistake for them to do so, but I understand what compels them to it.)

     By saying that we white people have to be gracious, I do not mean that we have to agree, any more than we have to agree with other white people.  I still feel justified in criticizing Jeremiah White, Louis Farakhan, Jesse Jackson, and a lot of other black people, but I respect their right to their opinions and even understand why they arrived at them.  In general, white people have themselves to thank for the radicalization of black people.  It’s a hard pill to swallow, but we need to swallow it.

Boundaries

     I do not know if Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department is a racist.  I doubt it.  Evern more, I doubt that he would take the chance of arresting somebody simply because he is black.  He seems smart enough to realize what the repercussions of such a racist act would be.  Perhaps he overreacted to a citizen who was annoyed with being confronted by an officer  in his own home.

     I do not know if Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University has a chip on his shoulder and assumes that every white person, or at least every white police officer, is a racist.  I do not know if he was looking for publicity or was trying to become a martyr to gain esteem with his white liberal colleagues.  Perhaps he was just annoyed that he first had to break into his own dwelling and then had to answer for it to a police officer.  Perhaps he was just out of sorts for some unknown reason.

     I will grant the possibility that Officer Crowley acted unwisely.  Perhaps he should have just walked away and let Professor Gates rant all he wanted, if indeed Gates was doing so.  An arrest was possibly not necessary.  However, it is clear to me that Crowley did not track Gates down and single him out because he was black.  He simply responded to a report of a possible break-in.  He started out just doing his duty, as the President has said himself. 

     I assume that Professor Gates would have been glad if the police had apparehended an actual burglar–white, black, or brown–on his property.  I doubt that he would consider it racial profiling then.

    It is extremely unusual for a President to comment on local law enforcement issues.  He considers Gates a friend.  That’s great, but unfortunately he does not have the luxury of shooting off his mouth like most of the rest of us.  As President, Barack Obama must be careful not to speak about his personal opinions now that he is the official spokesman for the United States of America and its chief executive.  He is certainly entitled to his opinions and has the right to express them, but he must do so delicately and cautiously.

     Had the President been more prudent, he would not have first condemned the police officer and then had to backpedal and praise him.  He would have saved himself some embarrassment and saved the rest of us the endless harping on it by pundits that ensued from his unprepared remarks.  Somebody should tell him, if they have not done so already, “You are the President now.  You cannot just smart off any time you feel like it–especially before you know all the facts.”

     The President should apologize to law enforcement officials everywhere and to Crowley specifically.  Then he should drop it and let the people involved sort it out for themselves.

Race Relations and Me

     I was born in New England.  One of my ancestors fought on the Union side in the Civil War.  As far as I can tell none of my ancestors ever owned a slave, and many of them were strongly opposed to slavery.  In the colonial days, the majority of my ancestors from at least 1640 or so were Friends (Quakers).

     My parents did not know many black people when they were growing up, but they believed absolutely that all people were equal regardless of race. 

     My mother told me many stories about one of her high school teachers, who was an African American man.  He was probably the smartest man in her town, and she never found that remarkable.  Why shouldn’t a black man be erudite?

     My mother and father made friends with an inter-racial couple.  There were not that many mixed-race couples around in those days, and they were often ostracized.  Knowing that they were social outcasts to some degree, my parents were happy to befriend them.

     My parents hated segregation.  Frankly, they did not even understand how anyone could ever make black people sit at the back of a bus or drink from separate fountains.   They were not activists, but in their own quiet ways they simply eschewed bigotry, prejudice, and racism.  Our family attended multi-racial churches.  My parents taught us to respect all people and treat them as equal members of the human race.  Had we ever uttered a racial epithet, it would have been one of the most egregious things we could have done, and I expect my mother would have washed our mouths out with soap.

          Eventually we moved to the South.  I was in seventh grade, and I was dumbfounded to hear my white classmates talk about the time when the “black kids came over to the white school.”  I had gone to school all my other years with black kids and brown kids and with just about every shade of skin that exists among people.  I found that in my new school there was still a lot of tension between the white kids and black kids, but I could also see that things were changing.  As kids played sports together or acted in plays together or played in the marching band together, the prejudices were waning and the tension was easing. 

     During the first week that we were in that school my brother and I missed the bus to go home.  The middle school principal offered to drive us home.  When we got there my mother invited him in for a drink in order to thank him.  “No, ma’am.  You don’t want me to come into your house,” he said, looking around nervously at neighboring houses.  He was black.

     “Oh, yes I do,” my mother answered.  “And I do not care who sees you come in.”

     On one of our band trips in high school, my band director had a huge dilemma.  After grouping every for room assignments, he realized that he would have two black boys left over.  He could not give them their own room, because of budgetary concerns.  He also would have one white boy left over.  He asked me if I would stay with the black boys.  He told me that I was the only one that he knew who would not mind sharing a room with them and who would have the courage to stand up to other students.  Although I was somewhat scared of the repercussions, I agreed.

     During my first two years of college my very best friend was a black guy named John.  Yes, some of my best friends have been black–literally.  It’s not some pathetic cover for my secret alignment with the KKK.  He and I joked with each other very comfortably, and during one Thanksgiving break when he could not go home, I invited him to come home with me.  My family accepted him as one of our own.  Of course.

     I could narrate many other experiences involving people of other races.  I could tell about the time that I fell in love with a black girl.  I could tell about the time that I reprimanded a student for telling a racial joke in an all-white school and how he threatened that his father would come after me for being a “nigger-lover.”  I wanted to  paint a certain picture here.  When I say that I am not a racist, it’s because I’m not.  I never have been.  I will not say that I am, just to satisfy liberal white people’s false guilt or liberal black people’s perpetual victimhood.  I hate racism, and one of the last things on earth that I would ever want to be is a racist.   (Some liberal white people really have been guilty, and some liberal black people really have been victims, but that’s not what I’m talking about.)

     I’m not some person who used to say the N-word but then saw the error of my ways.  I’m not just some cog in the machine of systemic racism.  I know that systemic racism exists, fortunately less than it used to, but I oppose it.  I’m not part of it.  I’m no activist, but I have tried hard to live my life without any taint of bigotry or prejudice.  If everyone just did that, we would not need activism against racism.

     Some people will say that I defend myself too much or that I am in denial.  It’s weird that in our age of psychobabble, denial amounts to proof of guilt.  If I deny that I am an alcoholic, that’s proof that I am.  If I deny that I am a racist, that is proof that I am.  Whatever!

     Sometimes people deny things because they really are not that way.

Justice for Firefighters in Connecticut

     Suppose you were a working class American serving with the Fire Department of New Haven, Connecticut.  You want to get ahead in life, so you study hard for the promotion exam to achieve a higher rank and a higher salary.  Owing to a learning disability, you have to hire somebody to read the study material out loud for you.  You record the material so that you can listen to it for several hours every day.

     Then suppose that when it comes time for the results to be announced, the Fire Department says that the results would not be certified or announced and that nobody would receive the promotions.  They don’t even tell you what your score was, so that you could at least see how well you did.

     That happened to Frank Ricci and to other members of New Haven Fire Department.  The reason that the test results were not certified and announced is that there was a huge disparity between the scores of the Caucasians, the Hispanics, and the blacks who took the test.

     Some background information is very important.  The Fire Department had taken great pains and had spent $100,000 to get a fair test and fair testing situation.  They hired a firm to write the test.  The firm based the test and the study material on interviews with high-ranking officers with the fire department, and they made sure that they included a significant number of minorities in those interviews in order to avoid bias.  For the oral portion of the test they made sure that each panel of judges had a white firefighter, a black firefighter, and an Hispanic firefighter.  The questions were job related and really had no connection to the test-taker’s race or ethnic background.

     The Fire Department and the City of New Haven were stunned when the results were determined.  They would have had to fill almost all the available positions with white people, according to the rules already in place.  They were terrified that the African Americans who took the test would sue them.  They threw out the test.

     So Frank Ricci and nineteen other plaintiffs, including one Hispanic person, sued them instead, believe that they were the ones who had been discriminated against.  The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, agreed with them and overturned lower court rulings in favor of the city and the other defendants.

     The majority members of the court ruled that, according to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, an entity is not allowed to change test results in order to achieve a favorable racial “balance.”  They found that the city and the Fire Department had done everything possible to achieve a fair, unbiased promotional procedure.  They also found that the main alternative proposed, weighting the written and oraltests differently, was not possible.  The city had a contractual agreement with the union to count the written test as 60% and the oral portion as 40%.  They could not break the contract with the union and make the ratio 30/70 as suggested by some of the defendants in the case.  Besides, that would be changing the rules of the “game” after it had already been played and the results were not acceptable to certain players.

     I applaud the Supreme Court.  I would never want any qualified black people being turned down for a promotion because of the color of their skin.  However, I do not want to see any other qualified people turned down for a promotion because of the color of their skin either.  It should be wrong no matter which way it goes.  What would the city say to Mr. Ricci if he got the highest score on the test but was refused the promotion because he was “white”–”Sorry, sir, you are the most qualifed, but you’re the wrong color.”  How would that not be racism?  I put “white” in quotation marks because Ricci is not exactly an Anglo-Saxon name.  I would guess that none of his ancestors were slaveholders, and that they suffered a bit of discriminattion themselves.

News Article:  Supreme Court rules in favor of Conn. firefighters, The Boston Globe

The Decision:  Ricci et al. v. DeStefano et al.

How to Pay for Government Health Care

     So how is it that the government will be able to provide cheaper health insurance than private companies?

     Will they hire fewer employees?  Hardly.  With no profit motive, the government health insurance company will create many new jobs, as government agencies always do.  Does anyone doubt that it won’t become another bloated bureaucracy?  If you do, what do you base your doubt on?  Not real life experience, that’s for sure.

     Let’s say that I’m wrong, and the government will run its health insurance program more efficiently than private companies.  They will hire fewer employees, pay them smaller salaires, and keep administrative costs and overhead to a minimum.  What will that mean in terms of service?  Will a sick person be able to talk to a representative right away?  Will claims be covered in a timely fashion?  Will disputes be settled quickly and fairly?  I’m not naive enough to believe that any of those things would happen.  I have dealt with government agencies.

     Of course the government could charge less if costs go down.  Will doctors suddenly cut their fees?  Will hospitals charge less?  Will drug prices go down?  I don’t think that any of those things is likely.  Unless the government puts a cap on prices and fees, they might even go up, since people will be happy to charge Uncle Sam as much as they can get away with.  In fact, it will be extemely easy for backroom deals to occur between healthcare providers and the government health agency, as they already do with existing government programs.

     One way to make insurance cheaper is to refuse particular services.  Private insurances companies already try to do that and sometimes actually get away with it.  At least people can sue their insurance company when they are trying to break the law or violate their contract.  Will we be able to sue Uncle Sam?

     Another way to make it cheaper is to charge higher premiums but pretend to charge lower premiums.  How could they do that?  They could do it in several specific ways, but it would generally amount to taking higher taxes from citizens.  It would be just like the bogus claim that ethanol costs less than petroleum, which is true only because the government is subsidizing the entire biofuels industry from the growth of the grain to the processing of the fuel to the distribution of it to fuel retailers.  Everytime you buy gasoline with ethanol, you are paying again for fuel that you paid for with taxes.  Some kind of similar subsidy will be used for a government health insurance program.  Millions of workers will look at the deductions for health insurance on their paycheck and think that they are getting a good deal, not realizing that they are paying even more for it out of their regular income tax.

A more dangerous way to make it cheaper would be to subsidize it but not confiscate more in taxes.  This would amass a huge deficit.  The solution, with Democrats in power, would probably be to just churn out more currency.  Does anyone need me to explain why that is bad?

     I’m not suggesting that our health care system is perfect.  Far from it.  It’s a big mess.  I just don’t want an even bigger mess. 

     Oh, and before you tell me that the British system is better, I want to mention that I have been learning about how great it is.  I am part of an online support group for people who suffer from migraine-associated vertigo like me.  In the United Kingdom, many of them have reported that they have to wait for several months for an appointment in a special neurology clinic.  They must be referred by general practitioners, some of whom, reportedly, are reluctant to do so.  The Americans on the board can usually get into such a clinic in the United States in two or three weeks, simply by asking their general practitioner to refer them.  While the British sufferers wait, often unable to work and in misery, their American counterparts are getting thorough tests and helpful drugs.  Oh, and some of the Brits report that they must travel long distances to get to such a clinic, whereas most Americans are within an hour’s drive to one.

More on Alfred Brock

     Apparently the man who was arrested in Washington, D. C., with an unregistered weapon is a black man. How did I know that Alfred Brock was an African-American before I saw a photograph of him?

     It’s not because I automatically assume that crimes are committed by black people.  On the contrary, I know that more crimes in America are committed by white people than by people of any other race.  That’s a given.

     The reason I knew it was that I thought to myself:  How would this story be treated if the suspect is a white man?

     Think about it.  Imagine it with me.  A man from the South shows up in Washington, D. C., saying that he has a delivery for President Obama.  He is toting a .22-caliber rifle and ammunition.  If he were white, how would his arrest be treated by the media?

     I’m quite sure that it would be a top story with his picture posted all over the Internet.  The pundits would talk about racism as being deeply rooted in the hearts of white Americans, particularly white Americans in the South.  They would talk about how there are too many guns, and how Southern white men love their guns too much.  They would talk about how everyone’s worst fears had been realized–someone was attempting to assassinate the historic President Obama.  (And when it turned out that he was just a crackpot wanting to show the President his invention, how would they have handeld the follow-up?)

     Do you doubt my assertion?

     I knew that he was black for the same reason that I know when a corrupt politician is a Democrat.  When a Republican politician is caught in some scandalous situation, his party is written in bold letters in one article after another.  When a Democratic candidate is caught, the story will not be on the first page, and you might not find out that he is a Democrat until the fifth paragraph, which will also mention the last Republican scandal–by way of comparison, of course.

      I knew that Mr. Brock was a black man because none of the news stories said what his race was.  Why didn’t the media outlets report his race?  They usually do when a person is arrested.  They also usually print a mug shot.

     I think, for one thing, that it defied their expectations.  Only a white person from Louisiana could pose a possible threat to the President–not a black person from Louisiana.  I think, for another thing, that they were worried about the consequences of revealing that a black man was arrested for having an unregistered firearm and making what appeared to be a threat (now discounted) against the President.  What would white racist groups and white racist individuals say and do with that news?

     Okay.  Pile on.  I’m sure that some people will say that I am a racist.  I’m just discussing something that I’ve followed in the news and that I find extremely fascinating.  Given the climate in America, I think my fascination is warranted.

Further Reading:

Alfred Brock and The Whispered Fear

In this blog post by an African-American, Brock is assumed to be white and to represent other old white men who want to use violence against the President.

Obama Visitor Arrested at Capitol with Rifle, BET

Notice how the first few comments express outrage because a white man, as they assume, was going to try to kill the President.