Professor Gates and the “Good Officer”: Deconstructing a Teachable Moment

Professor Gates and the “Good Officer”:
Deconstructing a Teachable Moment

It’s been a little over a week since Malcolm X’s rhetorical question concerning what a Black man with a Ph.D. is called in America was answered by news reports that Professor Henry Louis Gates had been arrested on his own front porch by a white Cambridge police officer.

It’s a story filled with conflicting accounts and “expert” analysis arguing what was right and who was wrong and a President firmly weighing in on both sides of the issue.

In another world, this situation never would have happened.

In another world, a white woman would have looked over at two Black men on a porch trying to get the front door open and offered help to her neighbor having problems getting into his home.

In another world, a white police officer responding to a reported break-in would first ask the Black man who answered the door if everything was alright.

In another world, a Black man who committed no crime and had just returned home from an overseas trip would have ended the evening relaxing in his home and not cuffed, booked and cooling his heels in a local jail cell.

But this is not another world.

This is America.

Where a white woman who works for Harvard Magazine at an office located two houses from Professor Gates’ residence would fail to recognize one of the most prominent professors at Harvard University, a man who’s name often showed up in Harvard Magazine, who’s face frequented the Harvard University Gazette and who’s been noted by Time magazine as among the 25 most influential Americans.

Where two well-dressed Black men – one wearing a two-piece black suit, the other in a navy blue blazer with gray trousers – standing on a porch with a bunch of luggage and trying push in a jammed front door – were described as two criminals with backpacks attempting a break-in.

Where the truthfulness of the arresting officer’s version of events are taken as a given by those smugly pointing out the errors of Professor Gates’ ways.

Where a Black man in his own home who exercises his presumed constitutional right NOT to simply “step out on the porch,” and requests an officer’s identification is deemed “uncooperative.”

Where a Black man who complies with a police request for proof of identification, but fails to suffer indignities in silence is hauled off in a police car.

Where the President is pilloried for pointing out the obvious, but praised for backing down and affixing sufficient blame to the victim.

There is much that can be said concerning the events of July 16th on Ware Street in Cambridge.

That police officers actual can lie on the reports they file.

That all of the verbal remarks described in Sgt. Crowley’s report allegedly delivered by Professor Gates in his home and on his front porch – ranging from accusations of racism to a schoolyard crack on the officer’s mother – fell well short of the charges that Professor Gates was engaging in “tumultuous behavior” – words and actions more akin to provoking or engaging in violence and physical mayhem.

That racial profiling is not foreign to Black Harvard professors – as evidenced by the experience of veteran neuroscience professor Allen Counter, who in 2004 was stopped by campus police and threatened with arrest as a robbery suspect.

That just because Sgt. Crowley attempted to save the life of Reggie Lewis, a Black NBA Basketball star, doesn’t mean he can’t harbor racist views or have a problem with a Black professor he considers defiant and ungrateful.

That it seems odd that a police officer who has – as we’ve been repeatedly told – taught fellow officers about racial profiling for five years – would be at a total loss to understand why a prestigious Black professor would be less than amused to be treated as a burglary suspect in his own home.

But when all the information is digested, the views weighed and details boiled down, there remains one essential truth.

Professor Henry Louis Gates, a 58-year old Black man, who simply returned to his legal residence, objected to what he rightfully felt was discriminatory treatment by a police officer, and committed no crime, was arrested, humiliated, and locked up because a white police officer chose to do so.

All his hard work and learned books, brilliant accomplishments and well-earned prestige, his numerous awards and accolades – can’t erase the fact that in this world, in this America, being Black is still a crime.

A beer and chit-chat at the White House won’t make that reality go away.