By Bill Starlin
You live a very charmed life, in a very charmed community. There are many nights where you are lulled to sleep by the bells of the ice cream man, and you often leave your doors unlocked. You’ve done really well for yourself and this lifestyle is one you have earned. You get along great with your neighbors, the school system is awesome and you’re just getting the whole carpool thing down to a science.
One day, you are on your porch, reading the newspaper and watching the sunset. You look down the block and notice something strange: two guys are attempting to pry a door open. When they fail to get in the front door, they attempt to find another entrance to the house. You would hope that your neighbors would not turn a blind eye if someone tried to burglarize your home while you were away. You decide to call the police so that they can investigate. The two gentlemen trying to gain access to the house are African-American. Does this make you a racist?
You face danger for a living in pursuit of “justice.” To your family youre a hero, to the streets, you’re a pig. Unknown to most of the “streets” you actually instruct your prospective academy officers how NOT to racially profile minorities. You get a call while on your route of a possible breaking and entering and you find that two men are in the home in question. They happen to be African-American. Does that make you racist?
The above scenarios are fairly rosy. What we know for fact is that a neighbor saw two men breaking into a home on her block. Sgt. James Crowley, who in fact teaches an academy class on racial profiling took the call and found Henry Louis Gates and a friend at the house, which they managed to force their way into. What happens next is cloudy. Either Gates got incredulous at being asked to prove that he was a resident of the home in question or he politely asked the officer for his badge number and name. Either way he was subsequently arrested, and that arrest caused a firestorm of epic proportions reaching as high as the Office of the President.
President Obama intervened, perhaps spurred by an affinity for a fellow Black Harvard alumnus and friend and castigated the police for arresting Professor Gates, a man often categorized as an elitist. Admittedly, Massachusetts has a spotty history with dealing with athletes such as the great Bill Russell, who won 11 championships for Boston only to have his home broken into and his bed defiled by racists. However that doesn’t cast a shadow on all Massachusetts police for all time.
While President Obama commented on the matter with regards to the severity of an arrest, many sectors pointed to race as a factor in the arrest of Professor Gates. They are barking up the wrong tree. Perhaps the officer had a short temper and was angered that Gates would question him doing his job. Perhaps Gates was angered at having to deal with police after a long flight and doubly frustrated by having key problems. I’m sure that we can identify with both.
The fight to address racism in America is a protest movement. In every protest movement there are three parties: the oppressed, the oppressor, and the audience. The oppressed make their case to the audience which is generally the population at large that their position warrants attention and remedy. The issue with including issues like this in a discussion of race is that it numbs the audience to events in general. In comparison to incidents like the recent Oscar Grant shooting in Oakland and the Sean Bell in New York, this incident is innocuous by comparison. There are actually many factors you can point to that would mute race, or at least offer alternative determinant for what happened.
Issues of class and probably machismo are certainly present.
Screaming racism at every incident not only mutes the cumulative effect of serious events, but also colors the audience against even hearing the case. America’s race issues will not go away, but if every event is attributed to race, the ability to discuss it will be further curtailed because it will prevent people from speaking freely and expressing themselves on the matter.
Recent developments include President Obama inviting both parties to the White House for a conciliatory discussion “over a beer.” It offers perhaps a teaching moment, but more likely it will just be nonsensical fodder for another news cycle and one less opportunity to truly get to the heart of race, not to mention, taking coverage away from Afghanistan, stimulus packages, the dire straits of the global economy and a myriad of more immediate and important issues.
Our collective complicity in this is apparent. We tweet it and we email it until it gets so large that a news industry predicated on ratings and readership have no choice but to cover it. Media’s self interest is self evident and needs no elaboration. Had we all stopped to look at the basic elements of this from it’s initial blip, we would have seen the mitigating factors underlying the event. Poor decisions were probably made on both sides and on a certain level they are probably both to blame for how it turned out. But in the future, before we start calling for smoke in the city, perhaps we should save the fire for people like Oscar and Sean. That’s where the flames of racism is burning.
Good Day and Good Luck
-Bill
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I’m going to have to assume that this article is an illustration of the immature and often insulting way that the media deals with issues of race and law enforcement in this country. The point of dictating what and what not should be considered racist, or what injustice people should get upset over is–dare I say it–stupid, or at least counterproductive. I can get upset over Gates getting arrested in his own home–for no legal reason–and get upset about Bell getting shot. You tell me one takes away from the other, I see them as mutually reinforcing. Do you honestly mean to tell me that Gates’ arrest was not tinged with racism? Now wait, before you get at that, do what you always say and dig a little deeper, think a little harder. Don’t just say, “Well, I don’t know if Officer Crowley’s a racist.” Neither do I, or anyone else around. That’s not the point. The officers that shot Bell, I don’t know if they’re racist, so was his shooting racist? If I asked you that I’d perfectly expect you to smack me. You don’t know who’s a racist per se, and that’s why your first three paragraphs are such a waste of time. Here try this one out:
You’re Batman, you live as a millionaire playboy in the morning, and at night you fight crime on the mean streets of Gotham. You see two black men mugging a little old white lady and you whip their ass. Does this make you a racist?
The racism lies in the system at large, the institutions and halls of government and the soil we walk over. You know the stats about the incarceration rates, the poverty, graduation and so on, and I’m not going to rehash them. Come on Bill, you’re better than this. In 2009 do I really have to sit here and teach you about the underline insidious properties of racism? Nothing is more racist than something else, it simply is racist.
The funny thing is, part of your article gets directly at the racism that is involved in this case, and that is the way in which blacks deal with cops as to how whites deal with cops and vice versa. Let’s not forget one important point: Crowley had no legal right to arrest Gates. Not one. Gates was on his own property. He provided the cop with evidence that he was the owner of the property, and yet he was arrested. As you say:
“Perhaps the officer had a short temper and was angered that Gates would question him doing his job. Perhaps Gates was angered at having to deal with police after a long flight and doubly frustrated by having key problems.”
I honestly think this “both sides” debate is symptomatic of the racism in this country. If Gates were white I don’t think we’d be hearing much of this “both sides” thing. Why? Because, and it bears repeating, Gates did nothing wrong. However when it comes to police, a black person always bears some part of the blame no matter how innocent he or she is. Putting whites aside, how many times, in situations like this have you heard people of color say, “yeah well he (the victim) shouldn’t have done this? Or shouldn’t have done that?” Hell, how many people of color who heard this story thought, “Hey, Gates shouldn’t have been mouthing off to that cop like that.” There goes that ingrained racism again. We have changed our behavior to respond to the racism in our lives and thus perpetuate it. Obama calls Crowley stupid one day, and the next has to apologize for it. In one of the greatest moves of political cowardliness in my lifetime, a President had to call up a cop, not for calling him a racist, mind you, but for saying that his actions were stupid. (Which to me is a nice way of putting it, rather than incompetent or criminal) And why? Because “both sides” had a point. What utter nonsense–nonsense you’re just regurgitating here. Meanwhile do the “birthers” get called one their thinly veiled racism? Or what about when Pat Buchanan goes on NBC and says that the Republicans should make more racial attacks on Obama. Does he get called out? Nah, it’s better (easier?) to call out the people who get upset about Gates arrest for “screaming racism”.
Step the game up.
If you feel that vehemently, get off your ass like you supposed to and write. Get in the game already.
We all know uppity negroes & I think this is definitely a case of Gates overreacting. Your post mentioned that he is a known elitist… I didn’t even know that & thought to myself he probably blew the whole thing out of proportion.
I know a few black people who’ve attended Harvard & knowing how they are, its easy to imagine how over the top a black professor of this prestigious university might behave if he feels insulted.
Crowley however, should have realized he was dealing w/ someone with a sense of entitlement & should have left after he realized it was actuallu Gates’ house. So what Gates asked for his badge number! Give it to him & your superiors will see he’s an ass because all you were doing as an officer of the law is YOUR JOB.
If cooler heads had prevailed that day – on both sides – the nation could have been focused on something a little less ridiculous for the past week.