“It seems to me that Dr. Gates was simply arrested for being upset, and he was arrested for being upset because he’s a black man,” said Wayne Martin, 25, an official at the Atlanta Housing Authority, who is also black.
The way Mr. Martin described himself, he could be the very definition of a “post-racial” American. “I have children I’m trying to raise not to see race,” he said. “I’m beyond the whole black-white thing. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Yet Mr. Martin could not think of any other way than racism to explain what had happened to Professor Gates.
Professor’s Arrest Tests Beliefs on Racial Progress
By SUSAN SAULNY and ROBBIE BROWN
CHICAGO — Ralph Medley, a retired professor of philosophy and English who is black, remembers the day he was arrested on his own property, a rental building here in Hyde Park where he was doing some repair work for tenants.
A concerned neighbor had called the police to report a suspicious character. And that was not the first time Mr. Medley said he had been wrongly apprehended. A call Mr. Medley placed to 911 several years ago about a burglary resulted with the police showing up to frisk him.
“But I’m the one who called you!” he said he remembers pleading with the officers.
Like countless other blacks around the country, Mr. Medley was revisiting his encounters with the police as a national discussion about race and law enforcement unfolded after the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard’s prominent scholar of African-American history. Professor Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct July 16 at his home in Cambridge, Mass., as the police investigated a report of a possible break-in there. The charge was later dropped, and the Cambridge Police Department said the incident was “regrettable and unfortunate.”
In interviews here and in Atlanta, in Web postings and on television talk shows, blacks and others said that what happened to Professor Gates was a common, if unacknowledged, reality for many people of color. They also said that beyond race, the ego of the police officer probably played a role.
But more deeply, many said that the incident was a disappointing reminder that for all the racial progress the country seemed to have made with the election of President Obama, little had changed in the everyday lives of most people in terms of race relations.
“No matter how much education you have as a person of color, you still can’t escape institutional racism,” said Keith E. Horton, a sports and entertainment lawyer in Chicago who is black. “That’s what the issue is to me.”
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I Disliked This Article
This is a petulant post from me but I disliked this article. I disliked the equivocating way in which it was written and I disliked the quotes from one or more of the black men who were interviewed. I really don't care if Henry Louis Gates is deserving of a universal embrace to the collective bosom of the Black Electorate or not. I don't care, too, if he violated some unwritten agreement between black folks, especially black men, and white cops that is much more honored by black folks than it ever was by white cops. I also dislike the way that this unwritten rule is written and talked about among some blacks - especially the ones interviewed by the MSM - as if Gates and others lack some essential particle of mother wit or home training that resulted in them violating some acceptable custom or norm.
Gates was arrested, in my opinion, because he refused to show proper deference as a black man to a white cop. Rodney King was beaten down in the streets like a rabid dog because he refused to show proper deference to white cops. All of the talk about how Gates should have acted in his own house is utterly beside the point. Gates had every right, if he chose to do so, to use his cane to break all the crockery and mirrors in his house. He also had a right while in his house to use profane language and to talk about Crowley's mama. If Crowley didn't like what he was hearing, then he should have let the door hit him where God split him. It was Gates' house, not Crowley's.
I grew tired long ago of the essential hypocrisy of the white libertarian-conservative right in this country when it comes to the civil liberties and constitutional rights of black folks. None of these people, including the person who posted on another thread here yesterday defending Crowley, would ever tolerate the police invading their homes and arresting one of them for the alleged crime of being angry. Yet, they believe - to a man and woman - that black folks need to take low and grin and bear it.
I am also tired of so-called liberals and their never ending equivocations masquerading as the intellectual process necessary to make judgments and render justice. These folks will debate the pros and cons of you being lynched while the mob has tied a noose in the rope and is dragging you off the porch of your home. They will tut-tut as you are being strung up and then, later, write histories and do interviews on NPR explaining why, unfortunately perhaps, your behavior was a contributing factor in you being transformed into another piece of strange fruit.
Am I being unfair to some extent?. Damn skippy I am because what happened to Gates happens day-in and day-out in America and folks act as though they are powerless to stop it. Well, the butt-naked truth is that they don't want it to stop. Not now, not ever. They keep looking in the margins for reasons to justify or explain away the most gratuitous assaults on black folks, especially black men. And what is worse, far worse in my opinion, is that we, black folk, are complicit in this madness. We are complicit every time we offer up some trite bromide or prescription as to how black men like Gates are supposed to deal with arrogant cops like Crowley.
President's personal follow-up on kerfuffle
ABC News video (P6 feel free to edit & embed if you're so inclined):
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=8161149
There's also an AP version that pulls quotes from the video, with slightly different perspective:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090723/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_gates
IMO Obama's follow-up remarks are analogous to "condemning the sin but not the sinner" (I didn't mean this cop was stupid but the cop did a stupid thing). This doesn't work very well in the church world either-- I mean, you never totally believe gays are welcome when they say that, and when will the other shoe drop. In this case, I'd say most of us believe Obama really believes the cop was stupid, but we know his nature is to navigate the middle and he just did it.
Copyright issues prevent me
Copyright issues prevent me from embedding stuff the publisher doesn't offer up for the purpose. Which is not to say I don't swipe stuff for personal consumption...I got Take This Hammer, for instance...
I Stole This Letter From The New York Times
Anthony Russell wrote:
This incident reminds me of a cold winter's night in Chicago, 1991.
I was looking forward to hanging with some musician friends, one of whom was the son of jazz legend, Ramsey Lewis. As I used a pay phone -- this was 1991, remember -- to call the recording studio where my buddies were assembled, a familiar bright light illuminated my sepia toned skull. A megaphone enhanced voice bellowed, "You on the pay phone. Drop the phone and put your f--king hands up!". I released the phone and, with hands grabbing clouds, slowly turned around. I counted not one, not two but eight locked and loaded weapons pointed in my general direction.
For those of you among us who've never had the pleasure of being on the business end of a firearm let me assure you that whatever horror you imagine it to be, multiply it by a factor of ten. I was duly informed that I -- here it comes, that most cherished phrase of law enforcement vernacular that signals a black male's passage from human to pariah -- "fit the description" of someone who had, literally, robbed the Marriott Hotel a block and a half away only minutes before.
As I attempted to process the fact that my wardrobe, by the cops own admission, did not resemble that of the suspect, coupled with the obvious realization that my skin was bone dry, thereby negating any implication that I sprinted from the crime scene, my blood began to boil. I verbally lashed out in a way that caught every man hiding behind a piece of tin by complete surprise -- I demanded to know my accuser. Where was he/she? You see, like Dr. Gates, I too refused to adhere to this "unwritten code", this sick notion of martial obedience, that black and brown have drilled into them -- from the time that we're knee high -- by parents who quake with fear, wondering whether their sons lives will be arbitrarily taken by some hopped up, badge wearing, gun toting cowboy who believes it his right to snuff out the lives of darker men because he knows he can always file a false report, be debriefed by the benevolent association -- before he speaks to a prosecutor -- and walk under the glow of justifiable homicide.
Given that this episode occurred two nights after Rodney King had his clock cleaned by LA's finest, my sense of the macabre bubbled to the fore. I stood there thinking, "Hell, if I survive a beat down, perhaps I'll get a Jaguar, a Michigan Ave penthouse and a trip to Disneyland out of the deal."
After the police agreed that I was not their guy, they left. I exchanged a weary glance with my actress companion who, by the way, had been propositioned by one of the officers. He recognized her from an episode of a sitcom that she'd appeared on the night before. Talk about cojones. A plan to have a fun night out with friends had been ruined. I just wanted to go back to the apartment and go to sleep.
Black males hold the distinction of being the only group in America who are expected to be responsible full-blooded men and acquiescent boys, simultaneously. While the larger society debates the psychological toll of abuse inflicted upon animals, nary a thought is expended examining the same tariff exacted from the black male psyche. Were the same behaviors and slights propagated against white males, I guarantee you Congressional hearings would be called to investigate such an assault on their manhood and sovereignty.
I've never been one given to displays of blind allegiance to authority, particularly police officers. I don't respect badges and guns but character and the responsibility that comes with having the power to restrict liberty or end a life. However, I am not so naive as to think that their job is not a difficult one. Police officers face situations on a daily basis the likes of which I don't want to deal with, quite frankly. But I also know that every man who shares my pigmentation or genotype is not a criminal. I would hope that this nation's police would eventually come to the same conclusion, where appropriate.
Anthony E. Russell
@P6: Fair (use) enough
P6: Copyright issues prevent me from embedding stuff the publisher doesn't offer up for the purpose.
Thanks for respecting this. I think it's how I would handle it but it's not my space.
@ptc on dual existence as men and boys
NYT letter says: While the larger society debates the psychological toll of abuse inflicted upon animals, nary a thought is expended examining the same tariff exacted from the black male psyche.
Grace Carroll has a book on this "tariff," Environmental Stress and African Americans.
pt, I love your first post, and I am about to post it over at
JJP.
Thank you!
Thank you!
Well, this is funny to an academic.
We're feeing sooooo dangerous these days. Latest "Bad Reporter" comic:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/24/DDASMUSSENBR.DTL
Just wanted to say PT that
Just wanted to say PT that you're in no way, shape or form being unfair. In fact you're being eminently reasonable, moderate and fair-minded, as was President Obama when he called the officer's actions stupid. Neither of you have anything to apologize for, and you should avoid the reflex to offer one. This "spreading the blame" approach to addressing racism in order to salve the the feelings of white folks is servile and equivocal, as you rightly note. If we're going to apologize for not being appropriately meek and submissive, we may as well go ahead and surrender our rights and our manhood.