reading between the lines in cambridge: can we honestly discuss the reality of race in america?

despite having elected a black man to the highest office in the land, lets stop pretending that america has moved past its racial problems. and can we please stop talking about being "post-racial" (which is really just a nice coded way of saying "let's get back to the good old days when us white folk didn't think about race because it is an uncomfortable subject to talk about and deal with")? the arrest of professor gates has presented an opportunity that we are completely blowing...a chance to have an honest discussion about race in america and examine ourselves (and we all know how wonderful self-reflection can be...just ask sen. graham). instead, we have white men crowing how unjust it is for the president to point out the obvious...it is ludicrous to arrest a man that needs a cane for, at best, being an asshole to you.

now, none of us know precisely what happened when officers showed up at gates's home after someone in the neighborhood apparently did not recognize him at his own home. you can't fault the police for checking into a reported break-in in progress. if you have any experience with law enforcement you have a pretty damn good idea of what happened next. and it likely involved an accomplished man that felt accosted in his own home by law enforcement (something that right-wing airbags claim to understand). either the officer responded in kind to an emotionally escalating situation, or the officer responded with that condescending "calm" talk from officers that we have all experienced...the same talk that makes even suburban white males like me want to wind up and clock them. personally, I have no doubt that the officer's name and badge number were demanded, and I have little doubt that he refused to provide them. (after all, officers here in albuquerque have a nice tendency of putting electrical tape over their badge numbers and covering their faces when they head out to violate civil rights).

read between the lines of the statements the officer has made:

"I'm still just amazed that somebody of his level of intelligence could stoop to such a level, and berate me, accuse me of being a racist or racial profiling. and then speaking about my mother, it's just -- it's beyond words."

at best, this was an officer that arrested a man because the officer felt he was personally insulted. (I am sick of hearing the same old "its dangerous to be an officer and the old guy could have used his cane or grabbed a gun" argument...fact is the place was surrounded by cops. and if the officer had actually felt threatened you can be damn certain guns would be drawn). having spent a few years pouring over police reports, interviewing officers, comparing their reports to actual recordings and sitting through their subsequent testimony at trial, it seems pretty clear to me that gates was arrested not for disorderly conduct but for P.O.T.C. ("pissing off the cops"). the last sentence tells it all...gates said something about the officer's mom and the officer just felt that was inappropriate so he abused his power to teach this man to respect authority. at that point it becomes necessary to claim the arrest was for one of those fall back offenses that officers always use - disorderly conduct, disrupting the peace, and obstruction. it is absolutely not an arrestable offense to "berate" an officer, call him racist or speak about his mother. in fact...it is pretty much basic protected first amendment speech.

but perhaps the more interesting thing about what the officer has said is that he was surprised that an intelligent black man would react the way that he did. he claimed he was not expecting the response he initially received, which wasn't exactly welcoming. he also claimed surprise that an "intelligent" black man would react the way gates did. even using the age-old bullshit line of "if you have nothing to hide you would cooperate." (side note - cops love that bullshit argument...they don't want you to remember that the constitution gives you the right to tell them to fuck themselves and not cooperate with their investigation. they also don't want you to know that regardless of if you cooperate or not, they've made a decision who will be arrested and you are going down regardless).

this position from the officer is shocking (well, not surprising) to me. imagine how you would feel if an officer showed up at your own home and demanded proof that you actually lived there. unless you are lying to yourself, you would be insulted and feel as though you were being harrassed. if the officer was genuinely surprised by the response he received than he is rather out of touch with just how much americans respect the privacy of their own homes. nobody likes the government intruding past their front door.

but perhaps the most amazing response from the officer is that he was surprised at how a man "of his intelligence" would feel as though race had something to do with this. (did this actually mean "I expect this from the black kid on the street...but smart blacks should know to respect law enforcement?"). and this is where we can actually have an intelligent conversation about race in america...yet next to zero of us (and by us, I mean the white community) are attempting to do so.

now this officer may very well be a fine gentlemen and an honest cop. but his statement of surprise at gates's reaction means one of two things: (1) he is lying about how the situation went down and even he recognizes it had something to do with race; or (2) as a white man he just doesn't have a clue. although by virtue of the badge I tend to think it is a combination of the two...let's discuss the latter.

first, because I will inevitably hear from people about how this cop is so not racist that he taught a course on profiling and tried to save a famous black athlete, I will address these two points. initially...even racist crackers love the black athlete. thanks to systemic racism, athletics is deemed by white society as an appropriate place for the black male. harvard professorship? not so much. second, courses taught at the police academy aren't exactly rigorous exercises in critical thought. there just isn't the time. not only that, but I personally put together materials for the department of homeland defense's course for training first responders in potential suicide bomb attacks. my role was to examine racial profiling laws throughout the united states and determine which actions the law would and would not allow. with this in mind, I have serious doubts that any serious discussion of race relations actually occurred in an academy class on racial profiling. now, I am not saying that this officer was racist...but that in no way means that the situation did not have something to do with race.

if anything, the officer's past makes it even more evident that whites need to examine race in a way that the vast majority of us never do. the only reason that a white officer would be surprised at such a response from a black man is that the white officer has never honestly dealt with race in america. that does not mean he is a bad man or a racist, it just speaks to the truth of being white in america - race does not occur to most of us because as the dominant race we aren't forced to examine it. when the systemic racism works in your favor, it is easy to ignore it. which then makes it easy to make such intellectually dishonest comments as references to "reverse-racism" and the plight of the white man in america. if we honestly talked about race relations in this country and examined the historical significance of overt and covert racism, no white officer would be surprised at being received with hostility for asking a black man to prove he lived in a nice neighborhood. of course the issue instantly became about race for the black man...he is constantly reminded that he is black. after all, even now (and I am guilty of this as well), he is referred to as a preeminent "black" scholar rather than just a scholar. and of course the white man can't understand why it has to be about race...because he has never had to come to terms with race in america. although, if he truly examined his past and the historical mistreatment of irish immigrants in america, I am sure he could begin to understand how gates must have felt, even if it is impossible for him to fully understand.

regardless, this is something that should be discussed. this should be an opening for the white community to get serious about actually confronting what we love to just ignore (shushing children when they ask about race, averting our gaze, remaining quiet when the topic is broached). race matters in america. people of color are not allowed to forget. and just once, I wish that we would not allow ourselves to ignore it either.