Gates, Obama, Racial Profiling and Me

It has been interesting to follow the unfolding of this story. (This is just an interesting piece from this morning's NYT on the importance of officers having high tolerance levels; for more on the back story, Google "Henry Louis Gates arrested.") Gates has been accused of over-reacting to police officers asking for ID in his own home (though many have pointed out that the police were, in fact protecting Gates and his property by doing this), the police have been accused of over-reacting by being too hasty in arresting Gates for disorderly conduct (where would you or I draw that line?), and Obama has been accused of over-reacting without sufficient understanding of the situation. So is the whole thing really about over-reaction? Just an instance of flaring tempers that can be forgiven and forgotten?

No.

I have pointed out before that I have no idea what it's like to be gay. Likewise, I have no idea what it's like to be a woman, an African American, Jewish, or Muslim. However, the fact that I don't understand something doesn't make it morally wrong. Rather, it should motivate me to try to understand others' situations as best I can. I can never understand the whole experience, but I can find narratives and slices of those experiences that resonate with me, help me empathize with others' lives, and raise my awareness of important questions I have never asked myself, let alone tried to answer. For example, "Why would an African American man simply assume from the outset that he was being harassed and persecuted by police officers on the basis of skin color alone?" Sometimes you find the answer before you ask yourself the question...

We stopped, and a white police officer approached. Andre got his license and motioned to me to get the registration from the glove box. When I opened it, a switch blade comb fell out. It was like the one the Fonz had on “Happy Days.” They were popular prizes at local fairs and carnivals at the time.

The officer drew his gun. I froze. Then, realizing that it was just a comb, I told him so and pushed the button to make the comb pop up. I thought it was kind of funny. I was the only one. The officer grew irritated. He commanded me to “drop the weapon” and told Andre to exit the car.

Andre insisted on knowing why we had been stopped. The officer gave a reason. It wasn’t true. Then he said something I will never forget: that if he wanted to, he could make us lie down in the middle of the road and shoot us in the back of the head and no one would say anything about it. Then he walked to his car and drove away.

He had raised the specter of executing us. He wanted to impress upon us his power and our worth, or lack thereof. We were shocked, afraid, humiliated and furious. We were the good guys — dean’s list students with academic scholarships. I was the freshman class president. This wasn’t supposed to happen to us.

This stunning op-ed piece from Charles M. Blow in today's NYT illustrates why the Gates arrest is so very, very important. This particular instance likely was a case of over-reactions all round, it will likely be forgiven (charges against Gates were dropped very soon afterwards- the next day, I think), and certainly, given our somnambulistic and amnesic news media, forgotten. But the issue is not this particular instance, it's that the sort of experience described above is one many, if not most, African Americans have shared. I'm not finding biographical details on Mr. Blow, but I think a fair guess on the date of the incident described above would be mid to late 1980's. This is the deep south: "Mr. Blow graduated magna cum laude from Grambling State University in Louisiana," according to his profile at the NYT, and it was approximately 20 years ago. So have things gotten better?

Even so, I committed myself to breaking this cycle when I had my own kids. That became impossible the day after Thanksgiving a couple of years ago. A white police officer stopped me when I was in the car with my children. He said that I was using my cellphone while driving. In fact, I had answered a call at a stoplight. When the light turned green, I put the phone away. I thought this was a case that could be debated, so I debated it. That didn’t sit well with the officer. He went back to his car to write up a ticket. When he returned, he had two tickets. The second one, he told me, was for not wearing a seat belt, that he believed I had only put it on as I was being pulled over. That was not true. My kids were flabbergasted. They knew the officer was wrong, so they began to protest. I quieted them. When the officer drove off, I had a frank talk with them.

I am presuming this is in New York, where Mr. Blow has been working for years. So it's not "just Louisiana." It's not "just a thing of the past." It's directly affecting millions of us, and indirectly all of us. If the police and justice system can't be trusted to treat African Americans impartially, they can't be trusted with anyone. Am I more likely to be harassed and persecuted because I have an unkempt beard and often resemble a street person? Probably, though so far, fingers crossed... Does that mean I understand what it's like being black? No. But it does mean I'm a little closer, that I can relate to another person's experiences, and see a little of their anguish reflected in my own life, making their own life a little more real to me.

And that's a precious gift. Thank you Mr. Blow.

Followup: Apparently, Gates agrees with me (WaPo):

Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. says he is ready to move on from his arrest by a white police officer, hoping to use the encounter to improve fairness in the criminal justice system and saying "in the end, this is not about me at all."