The Gates Affair

I find myself particularly interested in the story of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a Harvard professor of history and friend of Barack Obama's who found himself arrested by a Cambridge police officer, after the officer followed up on a neighbor's complaint that two men appeared to be trying to break into a house (a house that turned out to be Gates's house).

There has been some interesting debate on the nature of the case. Was it racial profiling? Was the Cambridge cop at fault? Is race still a factor in policing in America? (duh).

Here's my breakdown of the situation.

1. If I lived in a house in Cambridge, and I lost my key, or my door was stuck, and I were breaking into my own house, I would surely want a neighbor to call the police. That, to me is a sign of a neighborhood in which people care about crime. In contrast, my neighbor in Las Cruces two doors down has been broken into several times and nobody called the police (probably nobody saw). I'd rather have a two-minute discussion with the police than have all of my things stolen.

2. However, I will fully accept that race placed a role in the neighbor's decision to call the police. So did gender, I assume. I'm thinking nobody seeing a short white lady trying to break into a house would make a phone call. So race was implicated from the beginning, but the other option was for the neighbor to do nothing, and I don't like that either.

3. When the policeman showed up, it is unclear which of the people involved started the pissing contest that ensued--Dr. Gates or the policeman. It is legitimate for a policeman to ask to see ID--but if that ID was shown, that should have ended the matter. If it did not, the policeman ought to have been disciplined and never should have arrested Dr. Gates no matter how huffy he was at that point.

4. But it would not surprise me to find out that this did not happen. Dr. Gates is a scholar of African-American studies, fully steeped in the terrible history of infringements of civil rights in this country. Given that the entire episode was all too familiar to him, he may have assumed bad faith on the part of a police officer who is responsible for an equal-opportunity response to home break-ins. I am not ready to assume bad faith yet, because I would hate for the logical conclusion to be that police officers don't respond to reports of crime for fear of being called out as racist.

I thought the most intelligent comment given so far in this affair was that by the mayor of Cambridge, Denise Simmons, who is herself African-American. She said that she is reserving judgement, waiting to talk to all of the parties involved, and determined to find out how the situation went wrong, so that Cambridge can ensure that the breakdown in communication that clearly occurred doesn't happen again. That's a point of view that I happily endorse.