Pamela Geller: Obama's Race Baiting Must End

Monday, July 27, 2009 2:50 PM

The arrest of Black Studies Professor Henry Louis Gates by Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Mass., Police Department became a big issue because the president made a statement inciting hatred on national television. Obama admonished us, warning that this became a big story because it “shows that race is still a troubling issue.” Wrong. It ignited a “national debate” because Obama made it a national debate -- and Americans are sick and tired of the African-American President calling us racists.

Barack Obama is now trying to backtrack on his racist demagoguery. “In my choice of words,” he said Friday, “I unfortunately, I think, gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge police department or Crowley specifically.” But he did not apologize, and invited both Crowley and Gates to visit the White House.

Gates demanded an apology from Crowley. But Sgt. Crowley says he won’t apologize. What should he apologize for? Doing his job? Obama is the one who should apologize. He should apologize both to Crowley and the American people. He should apologize for making this arrest a big issue when he called law enforcement “stupid” and, like the boy who cried wolf, yelled racism. Obama tried to incite racial division and wrongly criticized the police in a press conference. The lapdog media, in what can kindly be described as a docile press conference on healthcare, lobbed Obama a race charged question -- giving him, yet again, an opportunity to whip the American people with the racism charge and demonize law enforcement as racist.

This validates the op-ed I penned on Obama's NAACP speech just days prior to his tongue lashing of law enforcement. The speech was scandalous. The NAACP audience listened to the African-American president of the United States rail against discrimination in the country that elected him. His antagonist in the speech was the big white bogeymen, stealing the very lives and futures of black children, Muslims, Latinos and gays. Demagoguery. Obama complained that "more than half a century after Brown v. Board, the dream of a world-class education is still being deferred all across the country. African-American students are lagging behind white classmates in reading and math – an achievement gap that is growing in states that once led the way in the civil rights movement."

Does Obama believe, and does he expect us to believe, that this "achievement gap" is due to white racism? If there is an "achievement gap," it is because the left seized public education and destroyed it. No one, of whatever color, wants to send his or her kids to a public school. Affluent Americans opt out, and industrious Americans home school. But the Democrats deny school vouchers to the poor, which amounts to denying them an opportunity for a real education. The left wants to keep them down on the farm.

Once again, Obama grabbed the opportunity on national television, in yet another seizure of the airwaves, to divide and create discord. Mind you, that was Obama’s fourth prime time press event in almost as many months -- more than Bush had in his last three years (and the craven networks would not accommodate Bush’s last one, while we were at war). Bush had a total of four in his eight years in office.

The Gates question was the only question not related to healthcare. And when Obama called on Lynn Sweet (the reporter who asked the Gates question) for the last question, there was a mix up: it was another reporter’s turn. But rest assured that Obama made sure he went back to Sweet and gave her the last question. On racism.

Obama kicked off his remarks on the arrest by saying, “Skip Gates is a friend.” So what? Friends of Obama can’t break the law? Friends of Obama (FOO) are above the law?

Then Obama admitted that he had not seen “all the facts,” but still charged that “the Cambridge police acted stupidly,” and played the race card: “what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcing disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”

What does this racism propaganda have to do with the Gates meltdown? Was Gates really railroaded by a racist cop? In reality, Crowley trains other police officers on race issues. And the Boston Globe reported that Crowley once “desperately tried to save the life of Reggie Lewis after the Boston Celtics star collapsed while practicing in the school gym.” The man has a record and a reputation that neither Gates nor Obama could hold a candle to.

Yet in a second press conference Obama continued to preach to us, and obfuscated his remarks in the first one. He admonished us, and telling us the arrest was a teachable moment. Teachable for whom? If anyone ought to learn something, it ought to be him. First, he should learn to stop pulling the race card at every turn. Second, he should not jump to conclusions and blame whitey. Third, he must stop his attempts to divide the American people based on a fallacious, racist narrative.

Obama said Crowley and Gates “both overreacted.” Wrong. Moral equivalency. Further, Obama’s remarks on the arrest angered cops and emboldened criminals. I am thrilled that the Cambridge police unions had a press conference to defend Crowley. They voiced their support for Crowley and said they “deeply resent” Obama’s reckless remarks. They want an apology and they more than deserve one. Considering how brilliantly Obama apologizes to despots, murderers and enemies, it should be a breeze. But it won’t happen. Obama has never apologized to a good guy.

Pamela Geller is the editor and publisher of the Atlas Shrugs website and former associate publisher of the New York Observer. Her op-eds have appeared in the Washington Times, Human Events, WorldNetDaily, the American Thinker, Israel National News and other publications.

© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.