I keep reading that Henry Louis Gates Jr., the estimable Harvard scholar, has been the victim of racial profiling—arrested by clueless cops
on his own front porch—and that this outrageous incident proves that even if the current occupant of the White House is a black male, we can forget "all that kumbaya crap," we are
not living in a post-racial America.
I’m certainly not a racial profiling denier, but there are a few things about this story that don’t add up.
Did the neighbor lady really call the Cambridge cops that day because she saw a black man at Professor Gates’ house? Or was it because she saw what looked like someone trying to break into Professor Gates’ house (which is exactly what the professor himself was trying to do)?
Gates is said to have proved to the officers in his kitchen (after declining to step outside) that the house he had just broken into was his own. But then he followed them out to the porch, demanding that they give him their badge number. That’s where they arrested him for something extremely peculiar.
What in the world does “tumultuous behavior” mean? Is that police jargon for being yelled at by a furious middle-aged scholar, armed with a cane, who feels he’s caught someone in the act of committing racism? From the
officer's report: "Gates continued to yell at me, accusing me of racial bias and continued to tell me that I had not heard the last of him."
OK, it’s possible that the cops arrested Gates because they’re the kind of cops (see
The Wire, any season) who respond to being wrong—and especially to being hectored about being wrong—by getting angry.
But it’s also possible that Gates was trash-talking the officers because he
wanted to get arrested. Wanted to prove that he’d been the victim of racial profiling and that we are not living in a post-racial America.
For a guy who’s had a big “he’s not black enough” problem, it’s great publicity and the perfect credential to add to his resume: highly decorated Harvard professor, McArthur genius, public intellectual with 50 honorary degrees, victim of racial profiling. It's a teaching opportunity —"deeply painful and traumatic," Gates called the experience in a
Washington Post interview—and he's already planning a documentary.
I’m with Gates, and his allies on the op-ed pages, when they argue that
racism has not been eradicated in America—far from it—and that a lot of African Americans are subject to unfair arrest. I can see the need, in the wake of the Obama triumph, to remind people that there is still outrageous discrimination out there. But this one looks to me like more hype than humiliation.
