I don’t know if the police officer who apprehended Harvard’s Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. was racist or not, as the professor is said to have claimed. But this I do believe: If my husband and I – we are white – were spotted trying to get through the stuck door of our suburban New Jersey home, it’s unlikely a passer-by would have summoned the police as happened in Cambridge the other night when a witness reported two black men seemingly trying to break into the home. More likely, our theoretical New Jersey neighbor, uncertain of who we were or what we were up to, would have called out to us – or simply eyed the situation for several more minutes before hailing the cops or, better yet, realizing that this was a benign situation. Reactions to the Gates incident among WSJ.com readers vary from “the cop was just doing his job and Gates declined to cooperate” to “the cop responded to the color of Gates’s skin, not to physical intimidation because he’s a gentle presence” (which he is – I knew him briefly when he taught at my alma mater; he’s also well into middle-age.) I’m broadly sympathetic to the police, who have to deal with the unexpected in even the most ordinary-appearing situations. What intrigues and disturbs me is the witness/neighbor/passer-by who phoned them in the first place, even though Gates himself tells the WSJ he has no trouble with the woman who made the call.
rick
Gerald
Todd
July 21, 2009
It appears that the arrest happened after Prof Gates had provided ID – and on his own property. Here is a cop with what looks like a very safe and stable situation – no crime here. Yet after everything is clear, because Gates challenges a white cop, he’s taken away in handcuffs. Even though the cop knew he was on private property speaking to its owner, with no evidence of a crime, he made an arrest because a Black man had the temerity to challenge his “authority.” I’d very much like to know what disciplinary steps Cambridge intends to take.