About The Hardline
2009
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The arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr., at a minimum, quashes any talk of a post-racial America. It may not be the best example of racial injustice I've ever seen, but it's a great example of how life for black people is often complicated by class and race. If a mild-mannered, bespectacled Ivy League professor who walks with a cane can be pulled from his own home and arrested on a minor charge, the rest of us don't stand a chance.
We all fit a description. We are all suspects.
The Cambridge Police Department was called to Skip's home after a woman, a passerby, reported a man trying to force his way into the house around lunchtime. Skip got locked out of his home like we all do from time to time, but the report says he was in by the time the fuzz rolled up, and once he presented his identification, the cops really had no other business there. This is probably the place where this should have all been quite simple, but race and circumstances may have colored the scenario.
First, an important primer:
In most states, the parameters for disorderly conduct are set as "any person who could cause inconvenience, alarm or annoyance to others." Disorderly conduct could include anything from a ferocious cough, the use of profanity (at any volume, in any context) to break-dancing in your front yard or talking loudly to yourself. Normally, it's the kind of thing you get a ticket for, if that, because cops love donuts, but they hate paperwork. Mostly, you'll get a warning. But the rub is that it falls to the discretion of the responding officer to decide whether or not to throw you in the car. Depending on the officer's mood, you could get a warning, a ticket or a night in jail. According to the police officer's report, Gates "exhibited loud and tumultuous behavior." That's a pretty subjective assessment, by any definition. But it never seems to take much provocation for the rollers to put a man of color in handcuffs, no matter who he is.
Not for nothing, Beantown isn't known as a bastion of racial harmony or model for integration, so it wouldn't surprise me if the officers responded in an agitated state. They were responding to a legitimate call, but would the cops have responded differently to a white guy similarly situated? Almost certainly.
Based on his statement and looking at the police report, it looks like he had too much conversation for the po-po, and they felt the need to make a point. I can empathasize with Skip, but when the cops come to your house, it's never a social call. Offer them coffee and a sweet roll, but this is no time to conversate. If they annoy you, get their unit number off the car and note the time, but there's nothing to argue about because you won't win any arguments with the police. The cops mishandled this situation. Even still, I'm no Harvard professor, but I know there is protocol when detained by the police--even Pookie knows that. In any event, maybe Skip's experience is a Crash Moment for the rest of us who haven't figured that out, even though we may have multiple degrees, live in big houses and we have a black president, class still doesn't trump race. You and Cousin Pookie have more in common than you ever imagined.
Some whites will suggest that Skip is playing his platinum race card in this case, but it's easier for black folks to see his arrest from another angle altogether. I don't know any black man of any age who has not been arrested or detained by the police. If not for the fact that a lot of tiny infractions--loitering, tickets for loud music or reckless eyeballing for instance--often act as pretext for police harassment of blacks, Skip's arrest would be more cut and dry. But it looks as if Skip Gates got hit with the kind of trumped-up charges aimed more at keeping black people in line than keeping the peace. How sad is it that you are a prominent public intellectual, have reams of scholarship on the bookshelves--you've been on OPRAH!--but your 40-year-old white neighbor can't tell you from any other brother walking the streets? It goes to show that from across the street or in the back of a cop car, we all look like Cousin Pookie.
We may have a different president, but it's still the same America.
***UPDATE***The charges have been dropped against Henry Louis Gates Jr.
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...We 'spoze all the nutty, uppity white folks, nice negroes, and others a' that ilk are ALL gonna try n' gloss over "jim crow"ley's lies and omissions in his "police report."
So...who wuz it, again, who got it wrong, jump'd the gun (pun FULLY INTENDED), AND brought his own biases/"police training" 2 bear improperly in THIS situation...az happenz ALL TOO OFTEN across this country 2 Black n' Brown people...?
SAY IT w/ US all u snotty white punks on (yer own) Dope...Yeah, That'z Right...it wuz the "cop". = \
No surprize 2 thoze a' us ALREADY in tha know.
Jump on the HUMANITY TRAIN, people...while u still have time 2 EVOLVE. = )
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No Way should Gates have been arrested. You cannot be arrested for disorderly conduct in Your OWN Home. I believe Gates has a lawsuit, and should pursue it. If this were a gray haired white man walking with a cane wearing glasses, a polo shirt, and khaki pants he would have never been arrested. The cop just got angry and retaliated by arresting Gates. The cop had a point to prove and did it by abusing his authority. I'm sure that if this were a white person's dad relatives would have said the arrest was unnecessary, because it truly was. Mr. Gates cooperated by showing him identification. The cop didn't cooperate when Gates asked for his badge number. No one knows what else that cop said inside the home so why is everyone jumping on his side? "Racism"
One thing that has been left out of the conversation is the fact that Gates has, over the past year, been publicly accused by Houston A. Baker of being a racial sellout--a "centrist," to use Baker's meant-to-be-derogatory term. Baker makes those claims in his 2008 book, Betrayal: How Black Public Intellectuals Have Given Up on the Goals of the Civil Rights Movement. (I think I've got that subtitle right; I'm doing it from memory.)
Just today, Baker essentially accused Gates of aiding and abetting the police state under which he recently seems to be suffering. Here is what Baker wrote on his blog:
"...no black public intellectual in the US has been more complicit in publicizing the myth of “post racialism” as an American reality than Professor Gates. The police spokeswoman from Cambridge said something like: “It is our position that the incident had nothing to do with race.” All I could hear were whisper tones of QVC: “And when you all buy into the Gates/Cambridge ‘race had nothing to do with it,’ we have some fine swamp land in Florida at a great discount. Or, maybe you’d like a bridge?” Remember Malcolm’s question: “Do you know what they call a Negro Ph.D.?” Malcolm’s answer: “The N Word!”
Whew!
I've been puzzling over the question of just why Gates, not somebody prone to playing the race card, would have gone off on the cop with quite so much lack of finesse--as though a button had been pushed. If we look at the EFFECT of this incident, including Gates's seemingly instantaneous expressed decision to transform his experience into a documentary about racial profiling, it's clear that he has, for better or worse, reasserted his bona fides as a Race Man over against the claims of "sellout" that Baker continues to hurl. He's had the crash experience. He can testify. In fact, now that he's been booked, he's got that shocking set of front-view and side-view photos. Even Baker doesn't have those.
One thing that has been left out of the conversation is the fact that Gates has, over the past year, been publicly accused by Houston A. Baker of being a racial sellout--a "centrist," to use Baker's meant-to-be-derogatory term. Baker makes those claims in his 2008 book, Betrayal: How Black Public Intellectuals Have Given Up on the Goals of the Civil Rights Movement. (I think I've got that subtitle right; I'm doing it from memory.)
Just today, Baker essentially accused Gates of aiding and abetting the police state under which he recently seems to be suffering. Here is what Baker wrote on his blog:
"...no black public intellectual in the US has been more complicit in publicizing the myth of “post racialism” as an American reality than Professor Gates. The police spokeswoman from Cambridge said something like: “It is our position that the incident had nothing to do with race.” All I could hear were whisper tones of QVC: “And when you all buy into the Gates/Cambridge ‘race had nothing to do with it,’ we have some fine swamp land in Florida at a great discount. Or, maybe you’d like a bridge?” Remember Malcolm’s question: “Do you know what they call a Negro Ph.D.?” Malcolm’s answer: “The N Word!”
Whew!
I've been puzzling over the question of just why Gates, not somebody prone to playing the race card, would have gone off on the cop with quite so much lack of finesse--as though a button had been pushed. If we look at the EFFECT of this incident, including Gates's seemingly instantaneous expressed decision to transform his experience into a documentary about racial profiling, it's clear that he has, for better or worse, reasserted his bona fides as a Race Man over against the claims of "sellout" that Baker continues to hurl. He's had the crash experience. He can testify. In fact, now that he's been booked, he's got that shocking set of front-view and side-view photos. Even Baker doesn't have those.
I'm not saying any of this is calculated. I'm speaking strictly about facts, and real-world effects. Baker has been on the defensive vis a vis his race-man credentials over the past year. Eric Lott called him out in the pages of PMLA (English professors's leading journal) and Gates was forced to defend himself there, too. Now Gates, for better or for worse, has had a close, hands-on encounter with the criminal justice system. He'll be able to speak to various issues with increased credibility.
Dear Professor Gates and others, google spuglio v. mallory. Class Action Time, I will Join the case as a plaintiff. I had to file a law suit against the Ridley Township Police, located in Pennsylvania and the Holmes Fire Co and others. This was a 1 plaintiff against 6 defendants in this land stealing game. They are power hungry, and will stop at nothing to achieve the goal. Once these thugs make up their tiny minds they will do anything to achieve them, lie, steal, provoke citizens, call them names and yell them selves and berate you, in so to get you to loose control. Can a 57 year old man carry out a big screen tv, this is common sence, something this officer lacks, they all should go through customer service training and mental exams to retain the gun and the badge. The police officer made up his mind long before he got their.
Eugene F. Spuglio