Even in the Ivy League, Black Men Are Still Subject to Racial Profiling | TakePart http://t.co/NW8R7d7yR8 — Steven Gray (@StevenGray) January 26, 2015

I first heard of the story above from Washington Post media critic Gene Weingarten on Twitter:

This is a strangely written story. Find the strangeness. http://t.co/WWW5FDucLW — Gene Weingarten (@geneweingarten) January 27, 2015

After some back and forth Tweets, it turned out that what he'd been linking to had been changed by the editors:

@Bobosphere We are talking cross points. Regurgitation is a hilariously wrong word, BUT starting that Suprisingly is bizarre & revealing. — Gene Weingarten (@geneweingarten) January 27, 2015

Here's the original quote:

Surprisingly, Yale’s president, dean and police chief said that they did not think this incident was a regurgitation of what happened to Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., or Eric Garner in New York City. They said that because Blow’s son fit the description of the burglary suspect, down to what he was wearing, Blow’s son’s detainment—save for the drawing of the cop’s weapon—was “reasonable.”

Yale on the Detainment of Charles Blow’s Son: This Isn’t Ferguson In an email sent to the campus community, Yale’s leaders expressed empathy for how closely the incident hearkens to the #BlackLivesMatters movement—but maintained that it’s not exactly that. By: Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele Posted: Jan. 27 2015 8:07 AM

Here's the source, on The, a black site for black readers about black issues:Anyhow, the "Charles Blow’s Son" story is: there was a black burglar at Yale stealing laptops and such. (New Haven has a largish black population, and some black crime .)

Yalies managed to bring themselves to describe the burglar, and the police were looking for him.

Charles Blow's son Tahj is at Yale, either because of sheer merit, or because he's black and his father works for the NYT. (Yale has a small black student population, and some affirmative action.)

So he got stopped by the police because he looked like a specific criminal, and was stopped by the police.

The policeman who stopped him is black himself—New Haven has a largish black population, and some affirmative action.

Charles Blow, the NYT columnist, doesn't mention that in his column complaining about the incident:

Library Visit, Then Held at Gunpoint Charles Blow: At Yale, the Police Detained My Son January 26, 2015

The Yale cop who pulled a gun on an African-American undergraduate and forced him to the ground—because he allegedly matched the description of a burglar who was later caught—is African-American himself. Three Yale officials—President Peter Salovey, Police Chief Ronnell Higgins,[VDARE.com Note: Also black.] and Dean Jonathan Holloway—confirmed that fact in an email message sent to the Yale community Monday night. The trio called for the community to “reflect” on the incident... The Cop Was Black, The New Haven Independent, January 27, 2015

After thwarted theft attempt in Trumbull, YPD arrests intruder By Stephanie Addenbrooke and Joey Ye January 25, 2015

The New York Post story manages to actually report the racial aspects of the incident. The New York Times and Columbia University Spectator are eligible for some kind of prize–they report the story of black professor punching a white woman during a racial argument in a bar on 125th Street…and forget to mention race at all.

So this is a story about young black men, by a black columnist, writing explicitly as a black columnist, about his son having a gun pointed at him, and he can't mention that the gun pointer was black.Then there's the Yale Daily News story, which covers the intruder, the son, the policeman, and the columnist, and doesn't say anyone is black.In a 2009 story which I titled Black Professor Arrested For Punching White Woman In New York Bar (not the kind of headline the MSM gave it) I wrote thatIf there's a prize for this, the Yale Daily News is now the holder.

In summary, a black burglary spree at Yale resulted in a black cop very briefly holding a black student at gunpoint by mistake. Then a black columnist at the NYT complains about this, following the usual NYT style of never saying the gunman is black.

Then the Root writes it up in really bad English, which you might expect from someone named Ozemebhoya Eromosele, but you wouldn't necessarily expect from some one who, like Ms. Ozemebhoya Eromosele, has degrees from Duke and Georgetown.

So my question is—is this a story about embedded structures of racism, or embedded structures of affirmative action?