Of Cops and Black Men

(As dictated to the author by two black guys with backpacks.)

Perhaps it would be best we started this conversation by telling you we think Professor Henry Louis Gates (“Skip” we call him) is the cat’s pajamas. That said, we in no way feel it invalidates our cable-news fatigued thoughts on all this black-man-arrested-for-yelling hullabaloo. All this to say listen to us with bias alert in the on-position. (We vaguely remember our president shared this same disclaimer, while he was talking about health care or something, but unlike him we have no delusions that our words won’t be twisted into a completely tangential context).

Let us all concede this: non-white man plus cop has never been partyfuntime, because we know it’s true and because a few months ago we all thought that Dave Chapelle joke was hilarious. But more important, giant NYPD stick dangling from waist plus unchecked testosterone-fueled authority equals worst Halloween costume for Brooklyn, ever. Black men often do not respect police officers and police officers often shoot black men; balance in absurdity. Ultimately we think this is the lesson here: the refined, discretionary authority some might associate with the police uniform is now locked in Andy Griffith’s Mayberry and in black and white movies (we remember “Forteen Hours,” the one where New York cop Paul Douglas talks average Joe Richard Basehart off a ledge, for like the entire movie. Yes, black people watch TCM).

We love cop shows, we’ve seen them all and, yes, we used to watch New York Undercover (mostly because we liked the rooftop chases), but real cops give us the hibbies. Perhaps we have to also mention we’ve never seen the inside of a jail cell except for that episode of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air were Carlton and Will get arrested for driving while black. If one presidency could fix our at best shady perception of flesh and blood cops it’d be pretty awesome. We had hoped the president’s wading into these waters was an invitation to that conversation. Color us wrong.

We could tell you a host of other things to take away from this splinter of teachable moments – like presidents don’t talk about their buddies at press conferences (particularly press conferences about health care reform that would make us Canadian thin), every college professor has a “yo’ mama” joke waiting to be unleashed so beware, the media is to blame completely for stoking this story in the race direction, arresting men who ride tricycles and walk with canes is never not-stupid, etc.–but most importantly we just wanted to say that for us, the concept of the rational policeman is just a TV show, in technicolor. And we all know black folk look terrible in technicolor.

So if you walk away with any message from this message let it be this: Dave Chapelle, we miss you man. (And yes we saw the Daily Show’s take on this last night…meh).

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