Well, it seems that the tender sensibilities of a famous Harvard professor were offended. He and his driver put their shoulders to his front door. A neighbor called the police. The officer responded and adopted the usual officious and superior manner of policemen. As a man who knows only deference and adulation, the professor lost his temper and shouted insults, pulled rank (“DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”), and accused the policeman of being a moral cretin (“RACIST!”). The confrontation escalated, and the verbally gifted professor launched into a tirade of abuse. The officer did what officers do in order to assert themselves and show that they are in charge: He arrested the professor and took him away.
Call me racially insensitive, but the arrest of Henry Louis Gates had nothing to do with race—except for the fact that Gates decided to mount an all out verbal assault based on his own presumptions about race. No, his arrest was the result of the boorish and arrogant behavior of a very privileged and rich man who is used to getting his way.
I’ve known people like Henry Louis Gates. He is the coddled product of elite American society: Yale undergrad, Cambridge University in England with the support of famous fellowships, back to Yale, then Cornell and Duke, and finally Harvard. Immensely talented, widely recognized, media favorite, friend of the President of the United States—Gates has long been one of America’s golden boys.
Thus his outrage: A policeman with a working class Boston accent and no advanced degrees telling him to show identification!
The Mayor of Cambridge is black. The Governor of Massachusetts is black. The President of the United States is black. It’s time to stop playing the race card, Professor Gates. Face up to the facts. You lost your temper, and from your position of superiority you verbally abused a guy who does the dirty work to protect your privileged position in American society. It’s time to stop posing. Give Sgt. James Crowley the apology he deserves.
July 24th, 2009 | 12:27 pm
You forgot to mention the boorish, puerile, and bigoted behaviour of the POTUS, who also owes Sgt. Crowley a written and public apology.
July 24th, 2009 | 12:31 pm
It’s a good thing there aren’t any coddled products of (300 years of heavy-duty eliteness-possessing) white American society who feel free to speak out about the way American blacks ought to feel when subjected to what they cannot fail to recognize as systematic indignity.
It’s a good thing Gates wasn’t packing a piece, as is his inalienable fundamental ‘right’, according to you folks, in order to ‘defend’ himself against incursions on his HOME property by the intrusive Nanny Police State. Or the officer might be dead.
July 24th, 2009 | 12:35 pm
Reno does not know Gates; he knows people LIKE Gates, he says. He doesn’t know the cop, but he’s pretty sure the guy was a victim. Hey, we have a black President; it’s time to stop playing the race card. By golly, it’s about time First Things started to get involved in some of the last things like an ordinary blog. I had a concealed carry post I was going to use today, but I’ll just link to FT.
July 24th, 2009 | 1:36 pm
According to the Teichman code of conduct, promoting a standard of human civility earns you the description of “coddled” if the author is white. Per Teichman, such author makes up the “white society” from which no good has ever come, and from which, no good should ever be proposed. The surrounding circumstances and specific facts are of no importance when judging right and wrong. “Reno,” says Teichman, “it’s simply a black thing – you wouldn’t understand.”
Let’s not hold a man accountable for his actions, let’s excuse him by the color of his skin (unless, of course, he’s a white cop, a symbol of the oppresive white society, following procedure for which there is no excuse).
July 24th, 2009 | 1:57 pm
H. Teichman, how do you know that “American blacks cannot fail to recognize the Gates incident as systematic indignity”? Are the black police officers supporting the arresting officer insufficiently black or American? Perhaps, their support for the white officer is further proof of the systematic quality of the indignity, “working for the man”, right? Apparently, Reno is too white to have expressed an opinion as to how Gates should have reacted, but it’s perfectly fine for you to express an opinion as to how all black Americans cannot fail to react.
July 24th, 2009 | 2:57 pm
Speaking for all the non-Ivy, have to work 5 days/50 weeks to pay the mortage (no bailout), American people of any color, amen Mr. Reno. Mr. Gates also owes a big thank-you to the neighbor who called in the report — thank you, neighbor, for caring enough about a black man’s property to take action when things didn’t look right. And not just an apology, but a thank you, Officer, for investigating a possible theft of a black man’s property.
Hey, a friend of mine had a similar incident. He locked himself out of his house, and broke in through a window. Neighbor saw and called police. Neighbor was embarrased, yet was able to cooperate with police investigation, all was over in a few minutes. Why was it so hard for Mr. Gates to think it through this way? Ivy obscuring his vision, maybe?
July 24th, 2009 | 4:23 pm
Man, all of these responses (and Reno’s particularly) seem surprisingly judgmental. Because, on the one hand, it is naive to think that the police, in general, treat black and white people the same when confronted with the same circumstances. The truth is, white guys trying to get into their own house, on average, won’t get the cops called on them as often. White guys walking down the side of the street won’t get stopped for no reason: to think otherwise is to deny every study ever done on the subject. I’ve been with black and hispanic friends while pulled over; I cannot imagine police officers talking to me, or any white person, with the kind of condescension and attitude that they consistently treat my minority friends with.
On the other hand, Gates should have realized that there was an easy way out of the situation: cooperate with the cop, show your ID, and move along. He overreacted. Badly. But the insinuation that, because we have a black president, black people aren’t treated differently by the police anymore is simply ignorant.
July 24th, 2009 | 4:44 pm
It should be pointed out that the above description of the events and those within the police report are both products of the police officer in question. While I certainly have my doubts about the way Gates has described the events that transpired, I am still quite hesitant to blindly accept the officer’s rendition. If the events occurred as Gates suggested, then the officer was in the wrong. If they occurred as the officer says, then Gates was in the wrong. Why are individuals so quick to take one side over the other?
July 24th, 2009 | 4:55 pm
We have no chance of solving the very real problems that confront us as a society if we continue to simply retreat into knee-jerk emotionalism along standard (all too standard) politico-ideological lines. It has been noticed that Benedict’s recent encyclical, like other Catholic social teaching, doesn’t fall neatly into the standard American right/left divides (which are to some degree uniquely American). I would like to try to occupy that space, neither knee-jerk right nor knee-jerk left. My posting, perhaps ineptly, was in that spirit.
All sorts of things that I didn’t mean and didn’t say have been read into a very brief comment.
I shall try to paraphrase:
(1) There are a great many white Americans who find it all too easy to dismiss the feelings of blacks when confronted with what really looks like hostile police authority. (Note that I said ‘looks like’; I certainly believe that the police fulfil a necessary and honorable function in society, and that most of the time they deserve our respect.) I think it is worthwhile to try to resist such easy temptations, in deference to the truth about racial problems in the US in recent history.
(2) This Gates affair is a tempest in a teapot, but the fact that it is a hot-button tells us something about our society. Neither man in the incident should evade responsibility for his actions, but neither should be vilified either. I’m not going to venture a judgement about who owes whom an apology, since I wasn’t privy to the event.
(3) I’m no particular admirer of Gates, his opinions, or the cult of the ‘academic superstar’ that he represents. But I never hear the Right blaming some CEO for accepting way too much money for a job poorly done; if Gates played his cards to ‘get to the top’ in academia and is overpaid, that’s just the perk executives all over our business world enjoy all the time.
(4) I have serious Thomistic reasons for thinking that expanded Second Amendment ‘rights’ are dangerous bunkum (besides being totally unjustified by the clear sense of the English sentence that is that amendment). Seriously, it is a very good thing that Gates didn’t have the Right’s common “I’ll blow away any stranger who invades my hearth” attitude, and didn’t have a gun in his hand when he got too hot-headed. And seriously, it’s a very good thing the police officer, who was just doing his job, was not hurt. Maybe they’ll shake hands at some point.
(5) I’ve had some back-channel correspondence with Rusty in the past, and know this posting is not representative of his better instincts.
July 24th, 2009 | 5:04 pm
Robert
Because the story is being used to further agitprop, both ways.
That said, it’s mighty rich to witness so many people who’ve been screaming about governmental tyranny for the past six months suddenly get all warm and fuzzy when it comes to the idea of having a policeman in your own house demanding that you prove who you are. I would have thought more of the screechers – some of whom might have weapons in their homes to protect themselves – might be a little less meek and a little more discomfited, nay, angry.
Me, I think Gates overreacted and has pushed the professionally outraged button. But I think the cops and their defenders have done no less, either.
And I don’t think cops on my own doorstep merit particular deference. Somehow, I thought there were people who have said a free citizenry needs to be prickly about having its hearth and home compromised. Who could they be? They suddenly vanished.
First Things really should have not trafficked in this story, unless it just wants to play a somewhat religious me-to to National Review and Weekly Standard. Show better judgment the next time: don’t pick up all the talking points because they might serve ulterior ends on other issues. People DO notice that, and it’s one warning sign of a brand that is going from thoughtful to ideological (and that’s a downshift in quality).
July 24th, 2009 | 6:21 pm
Rather than jimmy open his door, Prof. Gates should have called his friendly locksmith and saved himself a lot of trouble. Or gone over to his friendly neighbor and ask for ideas. Or have his driver take him to a friendly professor’s house for the evening. They could have talked about what he learned on his trip. But then, of course, Prof. Gates works at Harvard. Common sense, you know.
July 24th, 2009 | 7:39 pm
Teichman: “But I never hear the Right blaming some CEO for accepting way too much money for a job poorly done”
Then I would assume Teichman would either not have read the following or, having read it, pigeon hole Reno on the “Left”, since Reno already has commented on those CEO’s. Tu quoque, anyway.
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2009/02/death-by-bailout
Teichman’s 2nd Amendment comments remind me of an elderly black woman I would check up on in a certain part of Birmingham. She always answered the door holding a handgun behind her back. And when she saw it was me, through the iron bars, she would disarm. So was she, umm, right wing? Judging from what she witnessed in her neighborhood, I don’t blame her one bit for exercising her 2nd Amendment rights.
July 24th, 2009 | 9:46 pm
Mr. Teichman,
I appreciate your response however I still take issue with your approach. You are right that we weren’t there to assess the situation but we can, as in a court of law, weigh the circumstantial evidence and come up with what most likely happened.
In fact, the legal approach is indeed what Reno was carrying out when writing the article, even if unknowingly. He was judging the specific facts he had at his disposal – prior bad acts and historical narrative was inadmissible. In fact, the legal approach, best exemplified in a court of law, holds the most stringent evidentiary standards so that veracity can be best brought out into the light.
Admissible circumstantial evidence: the neighbor of Prof. Gates called 911 to report that 2 black men appeared to be breaking down Mr. Gates’s door. Mr. Gates is extremely popular at Harvard, and he was the caller’s neighbor, yet the caller did not recognize him. The officer responds to an upper-class Harvard neighborhood and approaches the house. He finds this “suspicious person” in the house. He then begins to question this person. He obviously does not recognize Gates, but he does see a older black gentleman that does not fit the profile of your common thief. The officer then asks him for identification.
What is as important as the evidence we do have is the evidence that is lacking. There is no allegation that the officer first cuffed Gates and then began questioning him. There is no allegation that the officer had his weapon unholstered. Such is standard procedure in law enforcement when responding to a burglary (especially if the alleged perp is still on scene). Once Gates shows the officer his license, Gates gets loud and upset and continues to berate him, according to the officer. After this continues on for some time, he finally arrests Gates. Gates says that he was arrested after showing his license for no reason by a racially-charged, profiling white cop. Gates is a provocative professor of race relations. The officer works for a government agency that is subject to 1983 (federal) and state actions and constant political pressure and oversight. Those are the neutral facts.
My summation or closing argument is as follows: the neighbor did not recognize Gates (or the other gentleman) and felt worried enough to call 911; the officer arrived and approached Gates without cuffing Gates or pulling his weapon on him; Gates was perturbed that an officer had been called out to his house; this wouldn’t happen to a white man Gates thought and he therefore was “charged” from the onset; Gates was waiting for one wrong step from the officer; he could be a “martyr” for the cause and not just an intellectual who had never gotten his hands dirty; the officer (based on his actions) likely thought Gates was innocent but in order to be 100 percent sure and avoid liability he asked for his id; the officer wanted to be thorough in order to avoid any liability on behalf of the department were it not the real homeowner; asking for Gates’s id was that wrong step that Gates was waiting for and he set into his tirade; the officer began to speak forcefully to Gates b/c it was his only way to diffuse a situation without using force (that would have been unnecessary); this fueled Gates even more to the point that his unruliness was so bad he had to be arrested; the fact that he was a prominent intellectual wasn’t an excuse to unleash, thought the officer. These are all logical conclusions drawn from the facts. The officer was aware that this was not a burglary and took appropriate means to do his job while accommodating Gates.
I am a prosecutor and therefore work with law enforcement on a regular basis. Not all officers are angels. But most our good decent men who try to do their job and treat people fairly. Most of them are on street patrol at some point and can easily distinguish the good from the bad. They also know what types of lawsuits they can be subjected to if they act out of line. I will be the first to say when an officer has messed up or acted inappropriately. This officer showed no signs of acting in such a way. Again, the circumstantial evidence is too strong to the contrary. All in all to say then that Reno’s article is on-point and appropriate.
Lastly, your second amendment argument seems misconstrued and out-of-place. There is no allegation that the officer barged in on Gates and I don’t believe the pro-gun argument simply justifies shooting any and everyone who knocks on your front door. Most “home protection” laws at least require that lethal force be the result of a perceived danger of serious bodily harm. I doubt this applies to an officer of the law knocking on your door and asking for your id.
July 24th, 2009 | 10:36 pm
Does anyone remember the program (a PBS program I think) that Gates did years ago about looking up his personal ancestry? I am remembering his dismay, or perhaps he said it was his dissapointment, I can’t remember exactly which negative response it was, at discovering he wasn’t 100% African American in origin. That and other comments he made in that program (especially while talking to someone in a very old library in Africa, I believe) gave me a good idea of his thoughts on race. He really seemed to open up his personal thoughts and feelings in that documentary, or else he is a good actor.
July 25th, 2009 | 8:52 am
The case for the arrest was weak – when one read’s the officer’s report, the sense is that the officer deliberately baited Gates to go outside so he could be arrested for disorderly conduct. That Gates has also used the incident in a self-promotional way doesn’t justify an ill-advised arrest (one wrong doesn’t make the other right), and I don’t think Americans are required to be meek and deferential to policemen in their own home when they aren’t doing anything wrong. Our country was founded on that sensibility, lest we forget. In fact, there have been a lot of people on the right for the past six months screeching about our need to be on high alert for overstepping by the government. This applies not only at the level of policy but at the most fundamental level: the right to enjoy the quiet of one’s own home undisturbed by the police.
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