Thoughts on the Henry Louis Gates incident
Paula: I am curious to have your take on the recent incident in which Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard professor of African-American Studies, was arrested by the Cambridge police as he tried to push open the door of his home, which was stuck, after returning from a business trip. I am unsure as to whether he was arrested because he was suspected of breaking into the home or whether he became disorderly when he thought he was being accused of doing this.
Whatever actually happened, the police officer involved clearly pushed Gates’s buttons. I wonder, though, what his response would have been if his home were actually being broken into by two black men and the police failed to respond with alacrity. Would the police then have been accused of racism for assuming that the perpetrators, because they were black, were friends of Gates? I’m still confused as to what constitutes prejudice and how we know it.
In any case, it seems to me that this is a fascinating event from a media standpoint: the most prominent black intellectual in this country, who also happens to have a reputation for writing superbly about himself and has a platform (The New Yorker and most recently PBS) for doing so, gets arrested for breaking into his own home. One couldn’t put this in a novel; it would defy credibility. I notice that the Philadelphia Inquirer had a picture of Gates in handcuffs (the NY Times did not). Where, I wonder, did that photo come from? I foresee an article by Gates about the incident very soon in The New Yorker. My sense is that every black man in America understands what set Gates off, but I wonder whether you think there is ambiguity in the situation as well.
Robert: This could be a good moment or a wasted moment as far as discussions of race relations go. I saw Gates quoted in a recent story saying the issue really isn’t about him and his treatment, it’s about poor blacks who don’t have the resources he has.
I can understand why Gates would have been furious and why he might have berated the officer. Once the officer knew Gates was indeed the homeowner, why didn’t he have the discipline to back off?
The officer apparently has taught classes to other officers on the dangers of racial profiling. So he most likely is aware of the particular stigma and taint an arrest carries for black people. Obviously, I don’t have all the details, but Gates walks with a cane. I don’t see how the arresting officer could have felt so threatened that he had to arrest him. The arrest just seems to be the most petty and capricious use of his authority. Why didn’t the officer apologize to Gates? Not as in apologize for profiling him, but apologize for making him show ID in his own home?
I am perfectly willing to not think the officer was a “racist,” whatever that means. But he is an idiot if he thinks that a black professional is not going to be enraged about showing his ID in his own home. I mean, any police officer working in a diverse population with black people should know this or submit his badge. To use an analogy, women don’t exactly take well to being patted down and searched by male officers. The officer in this case should have apologized and been mindful of his authority, the authority of the badge, the gun, and the criminal justice system.
There is another aspect of this that troubles me. Who exactly put in the call to the police? Now, Henry Louis Gates is many things, but shy and unfriendly is not one of them. The man is hyper-gregarious. So I cannot understand how any of his neighbors could have mistaken him for a burglar. That’s an aspect of this entire affair that troubles me. Part of me wondered if someone called as a prank to just mess with Gates. And in this case the results were disastrous.
Paula: I’m not buying your last point. It sounds a bit paranoid — but maybe this incident triggers that in people. I find it odd, for example, that Obama made a statement like yours at his press conference. For someone so deliberate and politically astute, it seemed like an uncharacteristic move — after all, he doesn’t have all the facts and the last thing a black president would want, it seems to me, is to alienate white law and order people based on hearsay. But it seems to me that Obama’s reaction was much like Gates’s (and yours regarding the neighbor?) — the issue pressed his buttons, aroused his anger and suspicion, and despite his admirable self-control in most instances, he spoke where he should probably have given no comment.
Robert: Obama has backed off of his criticism of the Cambridge police. But I don’t think my suspicion of the caller who reported Gates is any more bizarre or paranoid than the arrest of Gates at his own home. I assume Obama had his law-abiding black man’s rage stoked in the same way that Gates had his rage stoked. Didn’t we discuss rage about a year ago — in that case the rage of some Hillary Clinton supporters. Cops in big cities should know about black people’s rage and paranoia by now, and they should be able to easily work around it. I’m hopeful they will do so more often after all the discussion of this incident.
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As I white man, I can imagine my own reaction to being questioned in my own home to have been outright anger. I would swear a blue streak. Gates had every right to be angry, regardless of his race. I cannot, however, imagine my having been arrested short of my attacking the policeman. I do not believe that level of uproariousness would be required for some white officers to arrest a black man. That’s what this is all about, and Obama was dead on. It was stupid. I hope he doesn’t backtrack any more than he, unfortunately, has.
Robert: I find it unbelievable that you would question the need to show identification under those circumstances.
The officers, called out for a possible burglary in progress, find a man attempting to break in to a home. The man claims it is HIS house. Should the cops, at that point, just walk away?
Don’t be ridiculous! The cops HAD to verify the claims of the man they had found ostensibly committing a crime. If they had walked away and later it turned out that the man had NOT lived there, or that he was a disgrutled neighbor, scorned lover etc, then the cops would have been excoriated for failing to follow through.
I don’t know who is right and who is wrong here, I wasn’t there to watch, but for Obama to stick his two cents in when he didn’t have the facts was irresponsible and was an obvious knee-jerk reaction. As the president, his words carry a lot of weight and the current national furor over this mess is entirely his fault.. I expect more of the president.
Oh, and that lame backtracking was no where near the apology the officers and the department were owed.
“I could have calibrated my words better.”
Sounds like something I would expect to come out of Al Sharpton’s or Jesse Jackson’s mouth.
I think that in any given situation, a prudent man would wait until the facts are in, not jump to conclusions based on prejudice.
Preacher, of course the cop had the right, the absolute duty, to ask Gates to show some i.d. Going further, the cop also had the right to hang out some, to ask more questions, to look around and let his intuition and investigative instincts play out for a little while.
But for the cop to get upset that Gates got upset–well that was idiotic on his part. I specifically meant idiotic as in blind and not racist. I don’t think the guy was necessarily prejudiced. But arresting Gates for being mouthy was completely over the top and an abuse of police authority.
So this cop deserve every bit of grief and criticism that he gets. By the way, I don’t know if anyone is saying the cop is racist. Who cares? He acted stupidly, recklessly in a racially explosive/sensitive situation.
Another issue that strikes me in this case is the difficulty of fully parsing what lies behind Gates’s response. There is his professed and certainly understandable explanation that the cop’s behavior seemed racist, which tapped into his own past and his profound understanding of the way African Americans have been treated by the police in the past. But there may also be an element of Ivy League snobbism involved (see the Salon.com piece by “Phantom Negro” — an Ivy League prof himself, afraid to give his name, for fear of the power of Gates in the academic community). I do think that elite intellectuals have some sense of being above the fray and untouchable. Harvard being the mega-type of the prestige university and Gates, in being very famous, at the top of the heap, even there. From my experience, there’s a tendency of those who are treated very well most of the time to think they should be treated very well all of the time, and to become outraged when they are treated just like everyone else.
But let me take this a step further and say that this is all about insecurity and respect. As much as Gates gets respect in the intellectual community, he no doubt feels that this is not enough. There must be some basic insecurity there or he would not have responded with such volatility. One can put it down to the history of racism that he personally and black people in general have suffered. But one can also put it down to the insecurity that many of us feel who have earned respect in one walk of life but are not convinced either that we fully deserve that respect or that that respect extends into other walks of life. This strikes as a very complicated, psychological business, one that I have tried to understand in myself. Obviously, in Gates’s case, race plays a role. But what about all sorts of other factors: overbearing fathers, difficult mothers, older siblings (and competitive younger ones) that might contribute to our insecurities and cause us to react with unmodulated rage or hurt in certain situations? It’s all there, I think, in this situation–and probably contributing to the cop’s reaction, too. We could indeed go further and analyze why the cop became a cop and why Gates became a prof–what needs these positions served and what wounds they helped to salve. It’s an interesting snapshot of the resentments and lacerations that characterize the human condition, if you’ll forgive my grandiosity.
Paula you seem to be straining to pin this situation on Gates and some deep insecurity regarding his parents.
Gates doesn’t fit your profile. The guy is the most funny, laid-back, charming guy who will talk to white people of all backgrounds. He has no hidden anger in him beyond the residual anger that all blacks have accumulated.
But let’s say he was arrogant and insecure. So what?! Since when is that cause for being arrested?
I might not like it. You may not like it. But arrogance and entitlement are not cause for arrest. Otherwise, half the white world would have spent a night in jail.