FROM MUMIA ABU-JAMAL ON DEATH ROW
Beyond a beer with the boys
Published Aug 14, 2009 6:47 PM
Taken from a July 30 audio column heard on www.prisonradio.org. Go to
www.millions4mumia.org to read updates on Mumia’s case.
If the arrest, humiliation and resultant brouhaha over the case of Harvard
scholar Dr. Henry Louis Gates has taught us anything, it is that we still dwell
in separate worlds; ones which rarely meet.
And while some wags have rushed to tell us that the case shows us the
continuous clash of class, I beg to differ.
If anything, it shows us just the opposite. When it comes to Black
people—of whatever wealth, status, class or prominence—the normal
rules don’t apply.
Indeed, Blacks are the ever-present exceptions to the rules.
Consider this: Americans have said and believed for the better part of a
century that saying: “A man’s home is his castle.” Not Black
men. How else could “Skip” Gates get busted on his
doorstep—for disturbing a non-existing peace?
In law, a homeowner’s property rights don’t end at his front door.
They extend to the street, at the curbside. This is an appurtenance.
Imagine if a person slips and falls on the sidewalk in front of a home. That
person has a claim on the homeowner, not the city.
“Skip” Gates was busted not because he violated the law, but
because he violated the emotions of the cop who entered his home. He angered
him when he initially refused to exit his house and he angered him further when
Professor Gates demanded the cop’s ID.
President Barack Obama was right when he called the bust “stupid,”
but, as usual, politics prevailed when American rednecks responded with howls
of protest. One need look no further than the email sent by a Boston cop in
response to the Gates case, where the distinguished educator was described as a
“jungle monkey”; no, a “banana-eating jungle monkey.”
Furthermore, imagine what it takes, not just to write this, but to write this
to a reporter.
They took it personally—just as the cop in Gates’ home took it
personally.
Will a beer with the boys put this fire out?
I doubt it, for it ignores what happens everyday, in dozens of states, to
countless men and women who don’t have Harvard Ph.D.s, or have friends in
the White House.
The sad truth is, being Black in America is akin to being born low-caste in
India, where separate-and-unequal rules remain, despite promises in the
Constitution.
Obama’s election hasn’t changed that reality, but may mask it, by
providing cover for the ugly things that Blacks endure in a nation where the
elites claim a false “post-racialism.”
A few brewskis ain’t gonna change that either.
Order Mumia’s new book, “Jailhouse Lawyers” from
www.leftbooks.com.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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