This is not a political blog or a news site but…ever notice how black intellectuals keep getting arrested by over-zealous cops at elite learning institutions where the President used to study or teach? When it’s a Professor that’s one thing, you are getting paid and are a grown man. When it’s a student that’s something else.

Those of you in the know are aware of the situation at the University of Chicago but for everyone else:

http://www.chicagomaroon.com/2010/2/26/student-arrested-in-reg

The lawyers among you are already debating about whether he should file suit. I have a very different question though…1) is it worth the money and 2) doesn’t anybody know their rights anymore?

Look I travel alot. I know the Southside of Chicago is no joke and alot of perps tend to look a certain way. So they racially profile. But at universities in Lilly white communities minority students tend to stand out all the more so they racially profile. In mixed communities racial tensions tend to be higher so the police have no choice but to…racially profile. Wait a minute…

Look, I’ve been the victim of numerous felonies from grand theft auto to assault and battery but the sum total of those incidents, only one ever having been solved by the Police, do not add up to the mental and emotional damage to my psyche as one of the many incidents where I have been racially profiled. Whereas it would be folly to pay large sums of money to put yourself at risk of violent crime so to is not folly to subject oneself to this? You research everything else about a university but not this crucial stat: number of racial incidents making national headlines? This goes for the lighter nation too- racial publicity is not fun. Just ask a Duke lacrosse player.

Now, to the darker nation I ask, when did we stop teaching our children how to deal with the police? I learned what to say to a cop before I learned to look both ways before crossing a street. By the time I was twelve I had mastered the “innocent whistle” the “yes suh, thank ya suh” and the wandering eye contact that endears members of our nation to the Police. I knew that the only right answer to what I was doing was running an errand for a member of the lighter nation or accepting charity from them.

You can’t fight every battle. If this kid who got arrested doesn’t want to sue and is just trying to graduate he should have OFFERED his ID to the police and with a slight drawl stated he was waiting for Miss Ann, Vice President of the Young Republicans to come tutor him in whatever remedial subject first popped into his head. Stuttering is always a plus. It’s humiliating I know but less so than being arrested in front of half the school and a much better way to go if you decide not to fight a particular battle.

What’s done is done. I say fight. If you don’t you will regret it everytime you make a student loan payment.