For the record, I know how Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates felt — just a little bit — when he was arrested by white police officers for the crime of answering the door in his own home. By now the facts and meaning of Gates’ arrest have become an international incident viewed through the prism of race and resentment, especially after President Barack Obama used the words “acted stupidly” to describe the behavior of the Cambridge, Mass. police in the Gates’ house arrest. Such is the power of race in America to distort and magnify every issue.

So let me tell you my story. This happened in South Philadelphia in the summer of 1996. I had given a friend a ride home to his mother’s apartment in a commercial section along Washington Avenue. We were having a beer inside when there was a knock at the front door. My friend, Bruce, answered and the next thing I know two police officers are standing inside. Upstairs neighbors had heard sounds coming from the usually quiet apartment downstairs and had called the cops. Bruce explained that he was the son of the apartment’s owner and showed the lead officer, a sergeant, his door key. Soon Bruce and I were up against the wall, feet spread, hands high, as police searched the house for sign of a possible break in.

Back-up police arrived. Now there were four cops, three of them female, all of them black. And from where I was standing, feet spread, hands high on the wall, Sarge was enjoying this. He recognized me from my ID, knew I was a reporter (at the time) for a local TV station. I even heard one of the female officers mention my name and where I worked. We leaned against the wall for what seemed like a long time with no sign of common sense entering the front door anytime soon. I was uncomfortable and growing testy with Sarge’s attitude. I felt like he was showing off his power in front of the female officers. That’s when I spoke the magic words — the words you should never say to cops when you are up against the wall — “Officer, you’re making a big mistake.”

On went the cuffs and away we went for a nice five-hour sojourn to a district lock-up filled with young men shades darker than me. It was like a situation comedy only it was real and I wasn’t laughing. I was furious. I blamed Bruce. I thought he set me up — Why, I didn’t know, but why else was I in jail? It all happened so fast. I believed, and still do, that the police had “acted stupidly.” Calmer heads at the police district tracked down Bruce’s mother who verified that he was, indeed, her son and had a key to her apartment. We were released and even given a ride back to Washington Avenue. To this day I believe that I had been racially profiled — middle-aged white guy seen on TV news — by a black police sergeant who was trying to impress three young black female officers. I had a taste (just a taste) of what Henry Louis Gates felt when he was handcuffed in his own home because a well-meaning neighbor reported a possible burglary. And after all these years I can tell you this about that taste — it was bitter.

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