Who should bother us more?

Whose “impersonation” ought to bother us more – Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., or the woman who runs the Spokane, Wash., chapter of the NAACP?

KIRK: A 'bro' from 'South Side?' Hardly

Then again, who is really doing any impersonating here? And how much should we really care?

PERSONALLY, I’M MORE bothered by what Kirk said this week than the actions of Rachel Dolezal, even though I’m sure the ideologues amongst us will want to claim that she is guilty of a lie, while Kirk is merely guilty of speaking like a fool for a few seconds.

Kirk is the congressman who earlier this week tried to make a joke about presidential dreamer Lindsay Graham, the congressman from South Carolina who happens to be unmarried.

Kirk thought he was being humorous when he referred to Graham as a “bro with no ho.” Apparently some attempt to gain a laugh from a lame attempt at an African-American dialect.

Even though I’m fairly sure no self-respecting black person would ever use that phrase under any context.

DEMOCRATIC PARTISANS HAVE hopped all over this phrase, hoping it softens Kirk up politically to the point where he becomes extremely beatable in next year’s election cycle.

Some have gone so far as to say “ho” is demeaning and sexist to all women – which it certainly is. Although Kirk’s likely opponent in next year’s election, Rep. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., made a point of issuing a statement Friday morning that makes it easy to make a donation to her campaign.

It’s all about the cash for Tammy.
 

DOLEZAL: Do we get to tell her what she is?

I’m actually bothered more by the follow-up line that came from Kirk’s mouth – the bit about how his “ho” comment is “what we’d say on the South Side.”

KIRK COMES FROM nowhere near Chicago’s South Side. His congressional district is the North Shore suburbs – which is about as far removed in character from anything connected to Chicago, let alone the South Side of Chicago.

For all I know, Kirk probably thinks there really is an “east side of Chicago” where his “mama prayed the night Chicago died.” Or so said that silly “PaperLace” song from several decades ago.

It further accentuates the idea that Kirk is talking out of his behind, which is what I’m sure some people want to say about Dolezal.

She is the woman who is coming under ideologue criticism because of reports that say the woman who heads the Spokane, Wash., chapter of the NAACP is a white woman, even though she claims to be a mix of assorted white, black and American Indian peoples.

HER PARENTS HAVE publicly said they think of themselves as white, with an ever-so-slight touch of American Indian in them. The kind of people who are eager to discredit anything that isn’t lily white are anxious to dump all over Dolezal are all aroused by this issue.

Considering how mucked up our society is on the race issue and its ability to deny what it finds too confusing to accept, I’m not so quick to dispute her racial claim. I also wonder how accurate a depiction of the interview a television snippet was – the one that appears to have her say, “I don’t understand the question” when asked what race she is.

The only ones who really seem to have a problem with this issue are those people who can’t comprehend how anyone could not wish they were white – or why anybody would want to be thought of as black.

Which makes me think the NAACP itself had the sensible attitude on Friday when it issued a statement saying “racial identity is not a qualifying criteria or disqualifying standard” for a leadership post.

WHAT DOLEZAL’S VIEW of herself and her racial background (which her parents say was inspired by adopted step-siblings she had and a black man whom she was once married to) really comes off as her business, and no one else’s.

Whereas Kirk’s lame joke comes at someone else’s expense and ought to be regarded as an unwritten rule of political campaigning – “Don’t use racial dialects” ought to go down alongside, “Don’t be photographed wearing a sombrero.”

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Body cams? Not good enough

It sounds like an intriguing idea – officers with the Chicago Police Department will start early next year wearing miniature cameras clipped to the front of their uniform shirts to allegedly provide greater awareness of what police officers do on the job.

Audio and video recorded by the cameras is meant to show the interactions that police officers have with the public. It is meant to reduce the feeling that police aren’t accountable for their behavior on the job.

AND YES, ANY activity captured on camera can, and will, be admissible in a court of law. In theory, it could provide indisputable evidence of what exactly a suspect did wrong to warrant police attention.

Groups such as the ACLU and the NAACP are among the supporters of such cameras, and I don’t hate the idea in theory. It’s just that I’m skeptical of the way these cameras will work.

Because they’re going to try to give us the police view of an incident, when I think we’d be better off getting the outside view.

Give me a camera shot that shows a police officer in action, instead of the officer’s view. I can envision instances where we’d be better off seeing what the officer did to provoke an outburst, rather than seeing an outburst in and of itself.

IF WE’RE GOING to use technology to try to make police more accountable, then let’s do it properly. Let’s train the cameras on the cops. Which is something that any legitimately-behaving police officer ought to welcome.

If they’re really doing nothing wrong, then they shouldn’t fear having a camera trained on them for the bulk of their eight-hour shift (no, I don’t want to see an officer in the process of taking a bathroom break during his shift).

If anything, we’d probably see the tedium of being a law enforcement officer, dealing with the hours of boredom intertwined with the seconds of sheer terror in which someone can get killed if anybody screws up!

Considering that the police are all too eager to have the ability to watch any of us in detail at a moment’s notice, we ought to support the idea of turning the tables. Not just because it’s totally proper to expect police officers to live up to a higher standard than the general public.

PERHAPS IF WE had such video out of Ferguson, Mo., we’d be more willing to accept the officer in question and his account that Michael Brown tried to hit him, thereby causing him to reach for his weapon and fire the shots that killed the 18-year-old.

Without it, there will always be those who are unwilling to accept the account (just as there are those who will always want to believe that certain people “get what they deserve” from police).

It will be interesting to see how this idea gets tested in Chicago. Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said Monday that local officers would begin wearing the recording devices in about 60 days, according to the Chicago Tribune.

But if we start getting too many incidents of officers whose portable cameras “just happen to malfunction” at key moments while on duty, it is going to create a level of distrust amongst the public.

THIS COULD BE a way of bolstering the level of trust we ought to place in our police department. We have a right to know more about what they do; they are city employees who work for a significant share of our local tax dollars.

But if this comes across as focusing too much on giving police another way to watch the public, it’s going to come across as a massive waste of those municipal funds.

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