Charles Blow Seems Like a Good Dad

Charles Blow is one of the many columnists who reports on race for the New York Times so the people who read the Times can feel appropriately horrible about themselves. It’s all that’s holding circulation together at this point. Charles Blow’s son was detained at gunpoint by Yale University police over the weekend because he fit the description of a ‘tall, African-American, college-aged student wearing a black jacket and a red and white hat’ witnessed burglarizing dorm rooms that same evening. If you’ve ever been to Yale, you know there are hardly any black students. How many are tall and male and wearing a black jacket on any given evening? Charles Blow’s son and the burglar.

The campus cops stopped him, asked a few questions, then let him go. It was just like Eric Garner meets Michael Brown meets the killing of Malcolm X meets Selma. Charles Blow did what any father would do when his son became a victim of the very same police brutality he exposes for a living. He logged into Twitter:

So, my son, a 3rd year chem major at Yale was just accosted – at GUN POINT – by a Yale policeman bc he “fit the description” of a suspect…

He was let go when they realized he was a college student and not a criminal ( he was leaving the library!) He’s shaken, but I’m fuming!

#ICantBreathe #BlackLivesMatter

It’s easy for me pale face to laugh off the outrageous mistreatment of minorities by the wild-eyed Ivy League campus police. Also, easy to see how Blow used the word accosted instead of detained. Or how he reflexively hash tagged popular police brutality memes to try to stand in for an actual well-reasoned point. Being a writer on race issues requires race issues. There are plenty of those,  but they’re complex and a pain in the ass to explain earnestly. Having your own son asphyxiated to death and or questioned by the police for up to several minutes is much simpler. If you only knew how proud you made your dad.

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