One of my best friends spent years as a community organizer for parks in New York City. She is a fountain of funny stories and \u0091on-the-ground\u0092 political wisdom, and one of her truisms is: dog doo ends all meetings<\/b>.
\nThat is to say, much like Godwin\u0092s Law, as soon as dog waste is brought up, the meeting is effectively over. The room divides, the tempers get hot, and constructive discussion flies out the window.
\nI\u0092ll suggest a corollary of this, which is: race ends all Democratic politics<\/b>.
\nIn the discussion of the \u0091Veterans Day\u0092 post below, the thread immediate turned into a race politics thread\u0085who were the racists, and what political power did they have in which party. And constructive discussion sort of petered out.
\nNow, race is a real issue in American life today.
\nYesterday, I had dinner with a friend. I was dropping off a character reference letter for him to give to the sentencing judge next week. He got talked into something stupid, got set up, and got arrested. Another casualty of the drug wars (to his credit, he blames no one but himself\u0085one reason he\u0092s the kind of guy I\u0092d write judge letters for). There\u0092s a chance\u0085a narrow chance\u0085that he will just get probation, which means he\u0092ll get to keep the job he\u0092s had for twelve years.
\nWe were talking about it and he said something that rang my bells pretty hard.
\n\u0093Now,\u0094 he said quietly, \u0093when I get pulled over and they ask me if I\u0092m on probation, I\u0092ll have to say \u0091yes\u0092.\u0094 I looked at him.
\n\u0093Damn,\u0094 I said, \u0093they never ask me that\u0085\u0094 and then the unspoken acknowledgment. He\u0092s black, I\u0092m not.
\nNow I\u0092ve ridden along with cops a fair amount (I also have good cop friends). Without going into a lot of detail about my friend, there are things that would make me look at him twice (things I learned to look for from cops, and which I saw and remarked on when he and I first met\u0085part of how we became friends).
\nBut his matter of fact comment is no less heartbreaking to me because I know that if I was a cop, I\u0092d be asking him the same question. And there, in a nutshell, is the American Tragedy of race.
\nBut\u0085it isn\u0092t the only problem or the only tragedy we face. And the fact that it stops us in our tracks\u0085that it stopped Janice Hahn\u0085that it stops discussion\u0085is a bigger problem. I won\u0092t pretend to lecture anyone on this subject tonight.
\nBut the lecture\u0092s coming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of my best friends spent years as a community organizer for parks in New York City. She is a fountain of funny stories and \u0091on-the-ground\u0092 political wisdom, and one of her truisms is: dog doo ends all meetings. That is to say, much like Godwin\u0092s Law, as soon as dog waste is brought up, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3025"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}