(The author is the force behind www.menandmarriage.com)
My, my, this is a troubling matter. On one hand you have a distinguished Harvard educator, Dr. Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr. and, on the other, Sgt. James Crowley, a Cambridge, Mass. cop. By now the incident surrounding these two is well known. A white cop appearing at the door of a black man in his own home asking the homeowner for identification when a neighbor called when she witnessed what she thought was a suspicious entry to the home. The black home owner takes issue with the police presence, makes claims of racism, is belligerent with the white officer and gets cuffed, brought to the station and is eventually released without charge. The black professor happened to be an acquaintance of president Barack Obama who opined on the incident stating that the police had acted “stupidly.â€Â
Obama’s “stupid†conjecture, essentially “stupid†itself, effectively poured a gallon of gasoline on a trash can fire that would have been well enough without his two-bits. So now Obie One wants to have a beer and boys nite at the casa blanca less to heal the racial divide than to rebound from his stupid “stupid†comment and go the long way around the block to avoid actually apologizing for that comment. (Note: Obie One apologizes for America’s behaviors on foreign soil but never for his own torts.)
When we peel back the layers of this incident, things get complicated. For instance, Gates has been the recipient of nearly 50 honorary degrees and numerous academic and social action awards. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1981 and was listed in Time among its “25 Most Influential Americans†in 1997. The guy has some serious cred as an educator.
Yet, Sergeant Crowley is a 42, a decorated 11-year police veteran who grew up attending diverse public schools in Cambridge. All three of his brothers work in law enforcement. He’s an instructor in a police academy class on how to avoid racial profiling. Good cop.
Peel back another layer to those on the periphery. The woman who phoned in the suspicious events regarding home entry was one Lucia Whalen, a 40-year-old white woman who works up the street at the Harvard alumni magazine who reported that she saw a large black man trying to force open her neighbor’s door with his shoulder. She calls 911. The police arrive based on this information- that there may be a burglary in progress. (The man in question was Gates’ service driver who, in fact, was trying to help open Gates’ door forcibly along with Gates when it became jammed.) Not the kind of thing you take lightly as a police officer when they dispatch you to a scene that may or may not end your life. Lucia Whalen is the kind of neighbor we should all benefit from having, one who cares enough about you to watch out for you and yours when she thinks you can’t. I doubt she’ll be getting a thank you from Professor Gates any time soon for her vigilance.
Peel back another layer. Professor Gates, respected though he is and deserves to be, had dedicated his academic life to the black experience. The prism through which he sees everything in life is first through a racial prism, tempered with a history of blacks which unquestionably includes a great deal of unjust treatment (historically.) White cop appears on the porch of a black man, in that black man’s own home, asking for identification of a man who’s cranial catalogue for white abuse of the black man is as over-flowing as Imelda Marcos’ shoe closet. Does anyone need a picture drawn to understand this one?
(Author’s point of inquiry: It seems that Professor Gates’ significant accomplishments throughout his brilliant life and career took place at such waspy institutions as not only Harvard, but Duke and Yale and Cornell. If, instead of a white cop, a white university dean had show up asking about what clearly was a suspicious event at Gates’ jammed front door, would Gates have made the same racist accusations?)
Peel back another layer. A black police officer who was at Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s home when the black Harvard scholar was arrested says he fully supports how his white fellow officer handled the situation. That officer, Sgt. Leon Lashley, asked if Gates should have been arrested, said he supported Crowley “100 percent.”
Since this news cycle, the black-like-me pundits have been all over the airwaves reminding us all of the historical wrongs of white America, often law enforcement personnel, and how this must be dominant in assessing this situation. To which I say “Oh, shut up.â€Â
Let’s say the professor is lecturing in his classroom when he notes disruptive behavior on the part of one of his students during his lecture. He stops what he is doing and uses his appropriate authority to do his duty in maintaining order for the good of all in the lecture hall. Let’s say that the student making the disruption, whose obligation it is to honor the reasonable request of the professor who is the authority in the lecture hall, ‘goes off’ with a twisting of the exchange, making it something that it wasn’t, and protesting on some trumped-up grounds that intends to put the professor at fault with the disruptive student self-anointing himself with victim status. Would the chancellor of the university call the professor “stupid†eventually to invite the student and the teacher to his home for a kiss-and-make-up beer? Hog wash. The student would owe to the professor, in this hypothetical, the same respect for authority that Professor Gates owed (and didn’t give) to Sergeant Crawley.
Here’s a few talking points from a white man on this incident. I realize that there are many ‘takes’ on this, and mine is but one. It is also a widely shared opinion that is not being paraded all over cable television.
1. This business of inappropriately throwing the penalty flag of racism for everything that minority America doesn’t like debases the true seriousness of racism, a heinous thing.
2. We have a black president who couldn’t have won without the significant white vote that he received. You’re welcome.
3. To everyone black who thinks that white cops are their worse nightmare, do your homework. Black on black crime dwarfs white on black crime. Blacks make up nearly half of this country’s murder victims, and nine out of ten times those deaths are the result of a black hand squeezing the trigger of a gun. Justice Department numbers reveal unflattering and embarrassing facts, likely ignored by Professor Gates, that lay out who ‘really’ should be fearful of whom in our society in terms of race. We don’t need to go there, and neither should professor Gates. Whoops! Too late.
Of course, race is an issue and racism still exists, but when the loudest sqawkers ignore credible statistics (Justice Department, FBI, local police departments) because they don’t like the implication while, say, white supremacist and neo nazi groups, in fact, cite these statistics, it boosts the groups with unholy causes and diminishes the ones who, if they were honest with themselves, actually have a cause.
It’s amazing how all the brain power and degrees, all the talking heads on tv, social activists, even the president and darn few people are saying the one thing that is obvious to clear thinking people: the if the professor would have just respectfully produced an ID for the officer, none of this would have happened.  He should have thanked the officers for coming to his home who were, in fact, protecting and serving the professor wether he chooses to see it that way or not.
For every Rodney King there is a Reginald Denny. If you don’t know who Denny is, it’s because there is a slanted presentation of race and crime in America today.  While you’re at it, wicki Damian “football” Williams.  Probably not even a footnote in one of the professor’s many books.  So, professor Gates, this will probably boost your status with other race rabble rousers and fatten what you can get for a lecture, but you get an “F†for common sense.
One more thing, professor. Rent the film “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner.†Fast forward to the part where Sidney Poitier chides his chip-on-the-shoulder father for his truculent, throwback racist attitude, the part when he tells his dad, “You and your whole lousy generation believes the way it was for you is the way it’s got to be. And not until your whole generation has lain down and died will the dead weight of you be off our backs! You understand, you’ve got to get off my back! Dad… Dad, you’re my father. I’m your son. I love you. I always have and I always will. But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man.â€Â
That movie is over forty years old. How much more time are you going to need?
