Scratches

Comments on life, the universe and everything from an aging Sixties survivor.

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Location: Massachusetts, United States

Ummm, isn't "about me" part of the point of the blog?

Friday, July 24, 2009

Obligatory Gates Incident thoughts

First, this is an incident. More and more people have lost their perspective totally, especially the media. The last is important for reasons I'm coming to in a bit. This is Henry Louis Gates they arrested, not Kim Jong-Il.

After piecing together the "he said he said" stories, what we have is a situation that neither party will admit to. The police--eventually--got identification from Gates. It's his bad that he didn't provide it up front, because the police have every right to ask for it. That should have been the cue for both parties to chill a little, and I do think neither of them did. It seems that Gates really went off after that. The officer responded to the diatribe with handcuffs, instead of identifying himself and turning his back on a justifiably angry man on his own premises.

Now comes the why. In her comments to this blog post, Andrea hits the nail on the head by pointing out the power of class, rather than race, in fueling this incident. I've always remembered what a criminal justice professor pointed out once to a debating team I was on. Police in general are working class people trying to move up. You have to remember that, and all the sensitivities that go with it, in everything you say and do with them. Does race colour an officer's perception of an incident? Yes. In fact, any perceived difference on the part of a suspect may (not will) influence their response. I'm happy to hear that this officer taught racial profiling prevention, but that may not mean that he forgot his own teachings in an explosive situation.

And I can't think of a situation more explosive than this. An officer who believes himself sensitive to race matters investigates an alleged burglary that turns out to be a mistake. He finds himself being reamed for racism by a black Harvard professor in his own home. The professor is known for being very opinionated, and he doesn't appear to have let up even when the incident should have been closed. Ultimately, the officer who arrested Gates may have been motivated by class resentment that he himself doesn't recognise, and arrested Gates because he could. You can get into some nifty debates in criminal law about the elasticity of a disorderly conduct charge. Police everywhere feel empowered to use the charge against anyone who is pissing them off.

What Cambridge and Harvard ought to do is, first, yank this incident out of the public sphere. Both Gates and the police union will gnaw at it as long as they think they have an audience. Mayor Simmons should silence the police; Dr. Faust should silence Gates. Then sit both parties down. Let them vent, maybe, with the understanding that the venting will be private. Then, when they settle down to mediation, the focus ought to go beyond the obvious. Harvard should consider a bit of consciousness-raising among its faculty and students, to tone down the arrogance that can trigger out of control responses. Cambridge needs to grapple not only with race but with class hostility among its public servants. Now, during a very levelling period economically, would be an excellent time to start.

It would take a broader forum to examine the vagueness of disorderly conduct statutes. This should be less attractive to police as a tool for solving problems. This incident shows clearly that disorderly conduct arrests can create more problems than they solve.

5 Comments:

Blogger malevolent andrea said...

Hearing yesterday that the cop actually taught the racial-profiling-awareness class was the last piece in the puzzle for me.

I mean, c'mon. We all (I daresay) have certain skill sets or islands of knowledge that make us feel particularly good at our jobs, things we consider our own strengths. Having someone imply or outright tell us that we aren't doing our job right is one thing, but when they do so by attacking those things we feel we're particularly good at, watch out.

I can just see the cop thinking, "Wait. You're accusing *me* of harrassing you because you're black? Are you *serious*? I teach other cops how to avoid racial profiling, pal." I think it's pretty impossible for the average human being *not* to have their buttons pushed in that situation. How one deals with having their buttons pushed is a whole nother story, of course.

As you so very rightly point out, one of the problems is that when you push a cop's buttons the wrong way, they have the nebulous disorderly conduct charge to fall back on. It's a little more serious in the scheme of things than the aggreived waiter spitting in your soup or the aggrieved receptionist "accidently" disconnecting you.

8:10 pm  
Blogger Uncle said...

I just watched Ch 2's "Beat the Press" on this. They also wanted to know how this ended up with a man in handcuffs. I think we should get the big bucks, because we may be closer to the heart of the matter than any of the talking heads ;)

One of them did say that the only racial profiling involved here was that of the neighbour who assumed the two black guys were breaking in to the house--and evidently didn't know Gates well enough to recognise him on this "tight-knit" street. The question he raised was why the media haven't pushed harder to talk to that neighbour instead of enabling a food fight. It may be too late: I imagine she's in Tierra del Fuego by know.

11:49 pm  
Blogger malevolent andrea said...

For the love of the sweet baby Jesus, all these TV pundits need to do is spend a coupla days riding the prison bus and closely observing human nature and *then* they'd know what's what. :-) :-)

[Why *isn't* anyone paying us for our trenchant social analysis? It's really a pity.]

1:09 am  
Blogger crispix67 said...

That was my first thought- that the woman who called the cops in the first place was the one doing the racial profiling.

And I have been on the receiving end of a snobby upper class "Im so and so, Im entitled to this, this and this, and how dare you treat me like any other patient you have" She was the governor's niece. I had no idea, yeah, she had the same last name, but so did many others in that area. She was a b***h was all I knew. LOL

1:55 pm  
Blogger Uncle said...

And still more...so the caller did *not*, or maybe did not, offer any racial-ethnic prejudgments on her 911 call. However, it seems she did on the street when the law arrived. And now we hear transcriptions in which Sgt. Squeaky Clean is calling for backup because a 58 year old black guy on a cane is "uncooperative?"

Listen, Mr. President: I've got some roofies (prescription, of course) that you could drop into your guests' beers and get them to really mellow out. I think they need it.

11:12 pm  

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