Answering a Question

Reading Star Parker's latest article about the "Beer Summit." Fortunately she doesn't excuse the behavior of the police officer involved, nor does she pander to her audience's racial hangups. Rather she asks a rather pointed question.

So why do blacks, who have more personal experience than any other group in this nation with abuses of such power, consistently support expanding it?

Why is Professor Gates freaked out by the policeman standing on his porch but not by the intrusive expansion of government into his life and the lives of every other American, white or black?

Well I think it probably has to do with the difference between local and federal power. Local power has tended to be much less fair towards African Americans and other "minorities." If it were not for Federal power there would have been no Civil Rights acts, and segregation and even slavery would have taken a lot longer to go away. I know southerners are fond of pretending otherwise; but the evidence is that they were willing to fight like hell to preserve both segregation and slavery. And who was standing up for the rights of black people (whatever other motivations it might have had)? Well in large part it was the Federal government.