Today, Thursday, July 30th, the President of the United States, Barack Obama, will host an informal beer fest meeting between Cambridge, Massachusetts police sergeant James Crowley and Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Public Policy. President Obama and Professor Gates have chosen to live their lives as Black men despite both having White mothers, and will use the occasion as a teaching moment, to show Sergeant Crowley, and the rest of us, the error of his and our White repressive ways. Officer Crowley will be drinking Blue Moon beer, while Professor Gates will be drinking Red Stripe or Beck’s. And so, with deep and heartfelt apologies to Rogers and Hart, here is my version of that hit song of 1935, Blue Moon. Click here to listen to original.
Blue moon, you saw me standing alone
Without a key to my door
Outside the home that I own
And then you suddenly appeared before me
The only one who knew that I was Black
And then you heard me whisper please accord me
A little gentleman’s respect and slack
Blue moon, you need not taken that tack
There was no need to arrest
Except you saw I was Black
And now you suddenly appear before me
Drinking beer and claiming I was wrong
You say the station people did record me
I say you’ve got to listen to my song
Blue moon, I have big friends in high places
They’ve got my front and my back
You’ll disappear without traces
Don’t mess with me ‘cause I’m Black