This blog is designed to give readers a glimpse of our editorial-page operation and how we make our decisions. We’ll let you know who we’re meeting with, what they’re telling us, what events and issues we’re looking at. We’ll also pass on information and observations that may not make our print editions. In addition to the editorial board members who post on this blog, the board includes Publisher David Zeeck, Executive Editor Karen Peterson and Managing Editor Dale Phelps.
Editorial board bloggers
Editorial page editor Patrick O’Callahan oversees the online and printed opinion sections of The News Tribune. He came to The News Tribune in 1987 and has worked at Washington newspapers since 1979. E-mail him at patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com
Editorial writer Cheryl Tucker, in addition to writing commentary, manages the daily production of the editorial and op-ed pages and edits letters to the editor. She began her journalism career in 1974 at a Virginia newspaper and came to The News Tribune in 1978. E-mail her at cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com.
Editorial writer Kim Bradford manages the online opinion section of The News Tribune and writes commentary. She joined The News Tribune in 2005 after working 11 years at newspapers in Washington and Maryland. E-mail her at kim.bradford@thenewstribune.com.
Guest bloggers
Editor emeritus David Seago retired from The News Tribune in 2008 after 41 years at The News Tribune. E-mail him at sds99@harbornet.com.
Richard Davis’ column on state politics frequently runs in the print edition of The News Tribune. He was president of the Washington Research Council, a statewide think tank, from 1986 through 2006. Currently, as a principal with The Simeon Partnership, Inc. he coordinates the activities of the Washington Alliance for a Competitive Economy, a business coalition founded by the Research Council, the Association of Washington Business and the Washington Roundtable.
Karen Irwin of University Place, a mother of four, has been a frequent contributor to The News Tribune's print editions. She has also written for Seattle's Child, Puget Sound Parent, the Tacoma Weekly, the Fayetteville Observer Times and the political blog Right Meets Left. She graduated from California Lutheran University with a degree in English literature and is currently working toward a history degree.
Michael Allen, professor of history at the University of Washington Tacoma, was born and raised in Ellensburg. He served with the U.S. Marines in Vietnam from 1969-70. He has written five books, including the prize-winning "Patriot's History of the United States: From Columbus' Great Discovery to the War on Terror," "Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination" and "Western Rivermen, 1763-1861: Ohio and Mississippi Boatmen and the Myth of the Alligator Horse." Allen lives in Tacoma and Ellensburg and has three children.
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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.
Comments that have been made and the issues that have surfaced over the last few weeks reflect the complexities of race in this country that we’ve never really worked through ...
So said the president who brought Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. and police Sgt. James Crowley to the Rose Garden Thursday for the much-lampooned “suds summit.”
But Barack Obama didn’t utter those words last week. He uttered them as a presidential candidate almost a year and a half ago while trying to extricate his campaign from inflammatory comments made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor.
This time, Obama was doing damage control for his own comment that the police “acted stupidly” July 16 in arresting Gates, a personal friend. Obama quickly swallowed those words, but the world had already seen an American president entangling himself in a front-porch dispute in Cambridge, Mass., that he admitted knowing little about.
It was, as Obama said, “a teachable moment” – for him, for Gates and Crowley, for the country.
White Americans can take one lesson away from this: A black American man can get an Ivy League education, become a constitutional law professor, a U.S. senator and finally president of the United States – and still cringe when he hears of a black friend arrested after an unfounded suspicion of burglary.
That’s a raw nerve rooted in centuries of indignities inflicted on black Americans under color of authority. One Boston police officer’s recent ridicule of Gates as a “banana-eating jungle monkey” shows why the nerve’s going to remain raw for awhile yet.
But old patterns of racism don’t mean Crowley (and his black and Latino backup) “acted stupidly” on Gates’ porch. It should be fairly clear by now that Crowley isn’t a throwback to the bad old days when – in many cities – blacks had to assume the billy clubs had their names written on them.
At the summit, Gates cracked, “We hit it off right from the beginning. When he’s not arresting you, Sergeant Crowley is a really likable guy.”
The “complexities of race” were sitting right at that table alongside Gates, Crowley and the first black head of state elected by any major Western nation – a nation that’s come a long way since the days of Jim Crow.
As for the arrest itself, maybe the best conclusion can be drawn from a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll done last week.
It indicated that 4 percent of African Americans blamed Gates for the clash and 30 percent blamed Crowley. Of whites, 32 percent blamed Gates and 7 percent Crowley.
That’s the familiar old mirror image of racial attitudes. But wait: Those same numbers suggest that more than half of all black and white Americans blame neither Gates nor Crowley, blame both or simply acknowledge not having enough facts to reach a conclusion.
The ones who refuse to jump to conclusions may have the most to teach America in this teachable moment.
