Why Does This Banana-Eating Jungle Monkey Have to Make Everything About Race?

Jacob Sullum | July 30, 2009

A Boston cop who was suspended for calling Henry Louis Gates a "banana-eating jungle monkey" in a mass email insists, "I didn't mean it in a racist way." Officer Justin Barrett, who sent the message to a bunch of his buddies in the National Guard as well as The Boston Globe, says "the words were being used to characterize behavior, not describe anyone." He allows that it was a "poor choice of words" but says, "I did not mean to offend anyone." His main point, he says, is that people are inappropriately injecting race into the debate over Gates' arrest.