A Racial Angle to the Larry Craig Case?

You knew it was coming from me, didn’t you?

Actually, I just wrote that title to provoke. I don’t think there is a “racial angle” to Craig’s arrest in any meaningful sense–I think the crime, arrest, and conviction were pretty well divorced from a racial context (though not a gender one, as I’ve written). But even still, the comment of the cop is illuminating, not that Craig was treated particularly fairly or unfairly, but just as to what sprung to the officer’s mind as a good way of shaming a White, sixty-something US Senator. “You’re acting like a poor Black dude” apparently fit the bill, and it’s interesting that in a case that was so decidedly non-racial, this is what the cop thought of.

Incidentally, I haven’t been following the Craig case very closely, and I didn’t catch this comment myself. The person who first alerted me to its salience is Minnesota Law Professor Dale Carpenter, who, and there’s really no delicate way of putting this, is…a Republican. And yet, despite the fact that a White Republican saying “the racial tinge of this comment seems rather out of place–I wonder what it tells us about racism in America?” should be a heads-up that this isn’t just liberal touchy-touchy, the reactions of his commenters have been much the same as if someone like, oh, me had been the one to raise the issue. That, too, is something I find highly illuminating and a subject I explore in my post.