Black people don't like to be told what to do. This is a fact and an irrefutable one. They were told to sit in the back of the bus, and refused. They were told to not eat at the same restaurants as others, and they refused.
"The truth is more complicated. There were three people in King's car that night. After the 8-mile high-speed chase on which King led the California Highway Patrol and the Los Angeles police, a CHP officer demanded that everyone get out of the car with his hands on his head. King's passengers did as they were told. King, for reasons that remain mysterious, refused to comply and did not speak intelligibly to the officer. An ex-con on probation, King certainly knew the arrest drill. He says he smoked dope and drank malt liquor that night. The police were convinced that he was high on PCP.
The whole world thinks that the police next engaged in an orgy of violence. But that is because the first 13 seconds of the tape -- which showed King charging at Officer Laurence Powell -- were edited out. The first jury saw the whole tape.
King simply would not get down. The police accordingly escalated their violence. They attempted a maneuver called the swarm, in which four officers would overcome King. He was able to throw them off. Sgt. Stacey Koon, the officer in charge, next attempted to subdue King with a Taser. It had no effect. Frightened now of this large and seemingly preternaturally strong suspect, the officers began to hit him with their batons, all the while shouting for him to get down on the ground. King continued to stay up on all fours. Powell told the first jury that he feared King was going to wrest his gun away from him, leading to a shooting."
"As soon as Officer Crowley arrived and got to the front door, he encountered, standing inside the door, none other than Gates, who instantly began yelling at him in an extremely loud voice that he was a "racist police officer." Instead of defusing the situation by cooperating with the officer, who was, after all, only doing his job, instead of simply explaining politely that he lived in the house and that his house had not been broken into (though it's still not clear who the two young men were), Gates continued his "tumultuous," threatening ("you don't know who I am, you'll be sorry for messing with me"), and extremely insulting behavior for a long time, first inside the house, where his voice was so loud that the officer could not conduct a conversation over his police radio, then outside the house, alarming passersby, until, after warning Gates twice that he was behaving disorderly, Crowley arrested him. And during the whole time Gates kept bellowing that Crowley was a "racist police officer."Also, from early on in the incident, Officer Crowley repeatedly began to leave Gates' house, but Gates stopped him, insisting that Crowley first tell him his name. But each time Crowley gave his name, Gates kept shouting so loudly that he couldn't hear the officer's answer. And when Crowley would again start to leave the house, Gates would again demand his name."
Gates was of course arrested, sparking national coverage of the victim hood of Mr. Gates at the hands of the racist police. In a world run by evil white supremacists - as so many Black people believe America is run by - Mr. Gates would have had a black bag put over head and shot for his insolence. Instead, the truth of Gates' uncooperative attitude with the police has been silenced and the supposed racial angle of the profiling of a Black man - even more so one who is a 'respected' Black scholar - has been the focal point of the story.
Black people do not yet understand that in Post-Obama America, they run the show and call the shots and have a complicit media prepared to cover up any negative portrayal of Black people. The media will showcase only positive images of Black people, even when a prominent Black person does not cooperate with the police. White racism will always be the culcript, not a Black person failing to cooperate with the police and yelling at him and calling him a racist for daring to arrest a great Black scholar.
They can in turn make the story one of racial profiling, instead of yet another example of Stuff Black People Don't Like; cooperating with the police. Even in Pre-Obama America, as evidenced by the Rodney King affair, the truth of any crime and not cooperating with the police was made to look like another example of white racism, not Black people failing to cooperate with the police.
