Officer Powell, Part 2

This from the Dallas Morning News (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/football/cowboys/stories/032909dnspo1athomas.3ecf949.html)

Zach Thomas: Same Dallas officer mistreated my wife
NFL linebacker says line was crossed in 2008 traffic stop; Powell's attorney sees no improper actions

11:47 PM CDT on Sunday, March 29, 2009

By TODD ARCHER / The Dallas Morning News
tarcher@dallasnews.com

Maritza Thomas, the wife of NFL linebacker Zach Thomas, saw a familiar face as she watched the video of Officer Robert Powell detaining Houston Texans running back Ryan Moats as he and his family rushed to a hospital to see a dying loved one. That face was Powell's.

On July 27, 2008, while her husband was at training camp with the Cowboys in Oxnard, Calif., Maritza Thomas was pulled over by Powell for an illegal U-turn near NorthPark Center.

Maritza Thomas was issued five tickets by Powell, four of which were later dismissed. Thomas was handcuffed, placed in the back of a police cruiser, spent about three hours in the Dallas County Jail and was threatened with the possibility of spending the night behind bars.

"This in no way compares to what happened to Ryan Moats and his family," said Zach Thomas, who played for the Cowboys last season and is now a free agent. "But we wanted to tell our story, not knowing how many others have been affected by Officer Powell. We know the vast majority of the Dallas police force are good and professional people, but this guy just seems excessive."

The charges that were dropped were failure to show proof of insurance, running a red light, having an improper address on a driver's license and not having a registration sticker on the windshield. She accepted deferred adjudication for the illegal U-turn charge, and her record will be cleared next month.

In total, Maritza Thomas, who is Hispanic, was detained roughly five hours.

"This situation never should've happened," said Maritza Thomas' attorney, Brody Shanklin. "Unless extraordinary circumstances exist, no person should be arrested for a Class C citation. In this case, it was an example of Officer Powell being overzealous and exerting his authority in a manner that he never should have."

Bob Gorsky, Powell's attorney, questioned the timing of Thomas' allegations, saying she had not complained about her arrest until the Moats incident became public.

"After her arrest, she may have mentioned that her husband was a football player, but that played no role in her arrest or the disposition of the case," Gorsky said.

"I do understand that an arrest on multiple traffic charges happens often and is absolutely proper under these circumstances," Gorsky said. "Often, when there are multiple charges, an arrest made and bond posted, some of the charges from a single event are later dropped."

According to Maritza Thomas, a pharmacist with no prior criminal record, Powell would not accept the explanation of where the proper paperwork was before she was taken to jail. Her mother, Teresa Lozano, who was making her first trip to Dallas and speaks little English, was forced to ride with the tow truck driver when the car was impounded. She later posted bail for her daughter's release.

"My mom was begging for him to let her go to the apartment that was five minutes away to get the paperwork," Maritza Thomas said. "He unbuckled his holster, and she got scared."

The Thomases said Powell was dismissive, but they did not allege that he used abusive language. There is no dash-cam video available of the incident, but the police report lists the five citations and confirms that Thomas was taken to jail.

Urban League Pressures Obama

The Urban League (remember them?) is pressuring Obama to more directly address the issues (imprisonment, unemployment, affordable housing, etc.) most pressing for blacks. They issued a "State of the Black Union" yesterday and challenged Obama to do more to help African Americans. This is gonna be a tightrope walk for Obama, as it was in the campaign--to remain "black enough" for fellow blacks but not too black for the nonblack public. As far as I know, the Urban League has gotten no response from Obama. Good politics. Good ethics? Now that's another question.

Cop Prevents NFL Player from seeing Mother-in-Law before she died

Here's the story link: http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ap-player-stopped&prov=ap&type=lgns
Houston Texan running back Ryan Moats was stopped for rolling through a red light outside the Plano, Texas hospital where his mother-in-law was dying, and refused to relent from hassling Moats after informed of the situation, using threatening language like "I can screw you over," "shut your mouth" and threats to arrest him and take him to jail. By the time the officer, Robert Powell, was informed by other officers that Moat was telling the truth, it was too late. The dying woman's daughter, Moat's wife, was also in the car but left despite being told by Powell to get back in the car. She saw her mom before she died.

Of course, Moats is black; Powell is white. The Dallas police chief is siding with Powell after watching a videotape of the incident. The one point the article doesn't make: how much publicity would this have gotten had Moats not been a famous professional athlete? Would the police chief ever even have gotten involved? What do YOU think?

RIP John Hope Franklin

Perhaps the greatest African American historian, and the greatest historian of blacks, died yesterday. I just attended a conference on race at Duke last weekend that was in Franklin's honor, but he was unable to attend. One of my heroes. May God comfort his family, and may Franklin's life example inspire all of us to work toward justice and understanding between the races.

Name-Deaf America?

I came across this Q and A of Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal in Time Magazine, 3-16-09, p. 4:
Q.: Did you make a deliberate effort to transcend race in your political career? asked by Fatima Syed, Richmond, VA
Jindal's A: The great thing about the U.S. is it doesn't matter what your last name is. We live in this diverse pluralistic country where people are accepted for who they are.

The first time I read this, I thought: Just the usual colorblind ideology prevalent in the U.S. these days. Then I noticed Jinal's emphasis on the LAST name not mattering. Ironic. The questioner's FIRST name, too (Fatimah) is "foreign," "nonChristian" sounding. Jindal, on the other hand, changed his from "Piyush" to the inoccuous, even inane-sounding "Bobby." Contrast this with our president, who went by "Barry" to fit in in childhood and adolescence, but made a conscious decision to revert to Barack in college-age, and has stuck with it since. Revealing. Being true to self vs. trying to fit in.

"Ending Racism in About an Hour" of laughs

Was reading a report by Julianne Ong Hing on Color Lines about black comedian Kamau Bell (http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=492). He calls his show "The W. Kamau Bell Curve Show: Ending Racism In About An Hour." Gotta love this guy for that title alone. Then there is this: apparently he offers a deal that allows folks who bring a friend of a different race to get two tickets for the price of one. He does this for a reason: “Most comedy club audiences are white. But there’s a critical mass of brown people who need to be in the room,” Bell says, “or else there are times when it becomes court testimony.”

Among the topics of his show: the tension of needing to be on his best behavior when he is the only black in a room full of whites. "He compared it to acting like Cuba Gooding Jr. ... before multiple slights make him feel more like Samuel L. Jackson, mouth set and shoulders clenched" writes Hing.

For the people of color in the audience, the laughs came from knowing recognition. If the whites in the room felt a little uncomfortable, Bell says that is exactly his intention. 'Sometimes I don’t want it couched in a joke,' he says. 'I want the statement to bounce off their foreheads.'"

As for how Obama's election affects Bell's routine: “The show needs to be even more specific than before, because people think racism is over. I feel the need to say it more directly and more specifically now.”

See his website at wkamaubell.com. I like this kind of honest, squirm-inducing approach to race. Good for breaking through those troublesome, stubborn defenses.

"Resident Evil" goes "Racially Evil"

Resident Evil has been a popular video game franchise since 1996, selling over 12 million untis and producing nearly half a million dollars in sales. Now Resident Evil 5, released today, has raised some controversy among race-sensitive folks, although not apparently among most gamers. What's the problem? The game features the player as a protagonist white male shooting and machete hacking shirtless, ragged, red-eyed African zombies. Yeah, I'd say that might be a problem. THe criticsm started in 2007 when trailer previews were first released, but apparently few changes were made by the mostly Asian and white game programmers. ReporterMike Smith puts it well in this excerpt from http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/resident-evil-5-in-race-storm/1295905:

"Is it racist? Taken purely in isolation, the sight of a white male gunning down hordes of semi-mindless African opponents has provoked many reactions. But although only a few reviews have sneaked out so far, they largely brush off the racism allegations: it's currently scoring 87% at review aggregation site metacritic.com. Even the BBFC, the group responsible for issuing age certifications in Britain, publicly declared the race controversy a non-issue.

Other commentators have been less charitable. One preview on Eurogamer.net slammed the game as playing "so blatantly into the old cliches of the dangerous dark continent and the primitive lust of its inhabitants that you'd swear the game was written in the 1920s".

But most video game critics seem to have ignored the race controversy. "For my money, fun is fun, and RE5 has near infinite ammo in that department," said IGN in this review, which goes on to award it a top score. In fact, it's turning in top scores almost across the board.

Some critics have even pointed (rather accurately, I would judge)to the outbreak of a zombie-like, walking-dead-like infection in poor rural Africa to the AIDS epidemic raging through that continent.

One more note: the protogonist's sidekick is a resident of the area, but is female, lightskinned, straight-haired, and much of the focus is on her booty, not her beauty.

Finally, I looked for a facebook protest group to join. A keyword search of "resident evil racist" brought up a group called "Resident Evil is NOT Racist!" with 617 members and many other smaller groups defending the game. The first one I found protesting it, "Resident Evil 5 is the most racist game ever," is a closed group, apparently because an open group was or would have been overrun with militant defenders of the game, and the closed group has only 9 members. I ended up joining a group called "CAPCOMd is Racist" at http://www.facebook.com/s.php?q=resident+evil+racist&n=-1&k=200000010&sf=r&init=q&sid=f7e2c21bf69fb98fe9c8837b24e5bd0e#/group.php?sid=f7e2c21bf69fb98fe9c8837b24e5bd0e&gid=10417474915

CAPCOM is the game's publisher.