A Boston police officer, Justin Barrett, who is also a member of the Army National Guard, sent out a mass email obviously angry with the fact that Henry Louis Gates,Jr, a world-renowned and tenured Harvard University professor, called his interaction with the Cambridge Police Department's racial sensitivity trainer, Sergeant Crowley, racial profiling. Yvonne Abraham, a Boston Globe columnist and supporter of Gates' asked the question, "Would you stand for this kind of treatment, in your own home, by a police officer who by now clearly has no right to be there?" Officer Barrett responded with these declarations, as stated in a CNN News article:
...if he had "been the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC (oleoresin capsicum, or pepper spray) deserving of his belligerent non-compliance."
Barrett used the "jungle monkey" phrase four times, three times referring to Gates and once referring to Abraham's writing as "jungle monkey gibberish."
Sounds like somebody should have been signed up for Sergeant Crowley's racial sensitivity course. Officer Barrett is on paid administrative leave pending a termination hearing. Apparently, the Boston Police Commissioner, Edward Davis, was not too pleased with his "characterization," the word his lawyer has used to defend his comments. Barrett says he has friends of all races and cultures and is not a racist. In other words, some of his best friends are black. His lawyer says his comments were, "taken out of context."
For black Americans, these slip-ups and angry tirades are all too familiar territory from authority figures and angry mobs. Ironically, animalistic characteristics were attributed to black people while black women were being raped by slaveowners, families were torn apart on the auction block, and rabid frenzied mobs watched lynchings while picnicking. Throughout our history in this country. rocks were thrown, people's faces were spat on, dogs were used to attack, fire hoses were sprayed, governors resisted federal legislation, all with the salty sting of racist slurs packed into the physical and emotional wounds. A fourteen year old boy was beaten beyond recognition and to death because he supposedly whistled at a white woman. I don't know if they called Emmitt Till a "jungle monkey" while they were beating him to death. However, I've concluded that it's not the word as much as the connotation of the word or phrase, the images that these words bring to mind and the psychological pain that is recalled over and over again. If someone called black people "lollipops," then proceeded to put ropes around our necks and/or drag us to death, castrate/rape us, demean us, and deny us, I would probably develop a nervous twitch every time I saw a Tootsie Roll Pop commercial.
I don't care that this officer is an idiot. I do care that he is a police officer that protects and serves black citizens. I do care that he's in the National Guard protecting and serving the country I live in, as a black citizen. If these "characteristics" he attributes to black people surface in his vocabulary when he's angry, what actions would he take when encountering an angry black person as a police officer or in the Guard? Yes. He should be fired or, at least, relegated to a desk. While he's sitting at his desk maybe he could utilize a thesaurus and start expanding his vocabulary.
Maybe some of his friends with "jungle monkey" characteristics can employ him, if he loses his job as a police officer.
"Boston officer's apparent racial slur may get him fired" http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/30/gates.police.apology/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
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