Shelby Steele: all but cop played cultural roles

"Mr. Obama’s “post-racialism” was a promise to operate outside of tired cultural narratives. But he has a demon arm of reflexive racialism—identity politics, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and now Skip Gates. You can only put a demon like this to death by finding out what you really believe. We should hold Mr. Obama to his post-racialism, and he should get to know himself well enough to tell us what he really means by it. As for the odd triad of Messrs. Gates, Crowley and Obama, only Mr. Crowley seems to have functioned outside his cultural narrative."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574322054186035002.html

Obama and Gates: their success exceeds talents

"Obama and Gates have a stake in pushing their vision of the universe. It benefits them -- they make fame and fortune from whites who seek to appease them by providing them opportunities vastly exceeding their qualifications. Their success, however, brings with it a certain cognitive dissonance: While Obama and Gates recognize that they have been successful through preferential treatment, they wish to see their success as a product of their own hard work. The obvious way to resolve this dissonance is to blame white society for its continuing racism. If America is a racist country, any handout is an entitlement rather than an act of charity. Thus, according to this logic, Obama and Gates deserved their success after all."

http://townhall.com/columnists/BenShapiro/2009/07/29/obama,_gates,_and_the_problem_of_black_guilt

Is your home safe from black intellectuals?

IRS audit results in Henry Louis Gates-gate

"A charity headed by star Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. is filing an amended 2007 report to the Internal Revenue Service because $11,000 it paid to foundation officers as compensation was mischaracterized as being for research grants.

Questions about Inkwell Foundation emerged over the weekend, part of a tsunami of attention Gates has received since July 16, when he was arrested at his home by a police officer responding to a report about a possible burglary in progress. The incident ignited a national debate over racial profiling, further magnified when President Obama jumped into it."

http://www.propublica.org/