David Wall Rice, Takeaway Contributor
David Wall Rice is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Morehouse College in Atlanta.
David Wall Rice (Mikki K. Harris)
Disorderly conduct. Charges dropped. Cool, now we can all pretend that we’re post-racial again.
The fact that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested at his own home after being suspected of breaking in is upsetting, but is it surprising? Newsflash – Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is a black man. Sure, he’s the renowned Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard and Director of the school’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research…and he’s black. For real, when I see him on his recumbent bike in Martha’s Vineyard, he’s a black man on a recumbent bike. When he spoke at this year’s Morehouse Commencement, black man in regalia giving a commencement address. And when he was in his home, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, last Thursday allegedly exclaiming, “ya, I'll speak to your momma outside,” to the responding Officer Crowley, he was a black man about to go to jail. ... (continue reading)
Of course, it shouldn’t be the case that race and gender matter so conspicuously for Professor Gates and other anonymous black males throughout the country. It isn’t fair; but “fair” and “shouldn’t” is vocabulary that often doesn’t apply to black men in America. The takeaway for me is the surprise of it all. So many of us have fooled ourselves into thinking that we’re beyond race. We are not. And black males are often litmus for what it is that black folk can and cannot do in this country. To this end, the psychosocial symbolism of President Obama matters. He is the black male stepping into the patriarchy that is white America. The Senate just apologized for slavery, Clarence Thomas is on the bench and all is right with the world. Or not.
These are important moves forward, but the cultural and institutional racialized norms that inform individual behavior are not erased. Profiling exists, the mundane type that will get you a brick-cold walk because you’re unable to hail nine cabs on the way to a studio to record a radio segment in Washington, D.C., the day after President Obama’s inauguration, and the type that will get you murdered with 41 shots, 19 hits in a Bronx vestibule grabbing for your wallet.
But Professor Gates is supposed to be above it all. We’ve placed him there. He’s an affable, non-threatening academician who says stuff like, “If he apologizes sincerely, I am willing to forgive him. And if he admits his error, I am willing to educate him about the history of racism in America and the issue of racial profiling ... That’s what I do for a living,” -- this according to an interview with the Boston Globe.
Thanks. But what of the rest of us, what do we do with that?
To be clear, I’m not trying to paint the victim as at fault. I think Professor Gates was perfectly within his right to bless-out the profiling cops in Cambridge. Nonetheless, the profiling and racist cops are and have been a reality since forever. How is it that we operate off of the wish that black males are safe and unilaterally respected members of American society.
Pragmatism might help here. There is, of course, the faux conceptualization of race, and the very real popular framing of black males as predators. Not as a father, a husband, a son, a citizen, or a champion of social justice, but as a predator. So then, if you’re a black man and you’re not where society, study and popular culture has suggested you need to be, then there could be a problem for you.
This is just real talk.
As Professor Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. so eloquently wrote in his text In a Shade of Blue, “Pragmatism is as native to American soil as sagebrush and buffalo grass. So is white supremacy.”
It becomes our charge to recognize the two as real and to snuff out the latter.
Just a thought.
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Comments [19]
Dear friend,
I feel fine. Please re-read the piece and consider the circumstances. I am not writing to judge, rather to outline that there is very much a racist component of the Gates circus that allows power to be exerted in a way that pulls a Black man out of his home and places him in jail after it is resolved that he lives there.
And please trust, I want police officers not to be racist more than you. But in my reality and with many others who are considered minority in this country it is too often the case that they are.
Be well.
I am white and have had to prove I live at my house. I did and there was no problem. And I never brought the police officer's mother into the conversation.
I am white and have had to prove I live at my house. I did and there was no problem. And I never brought the police officer's mother into the conversation.
Lolz. How do you feel, David Wall Rice, now that the 911 tapes have been released and we all know that there was no profiling going on? You write so elegantly as to all-knowingly judge the police department and racial prejudice, and yet in so clearly jumping to the defense of a guilty man solely due to his skin color, you are the butt of your own criticism. No worries, I won't expect a retraction -- I know that your pride will not allow you to do so.
"This is typical of most black men" writes agyrrhius. What if I wrote, I know how the typical white man thinks and what the typical white man will do. Do I know this? How do I know this? By watching the news or going to the movies? Have I ever been a white man so I would know what one thinks? What about the white man standing beside another white man in a coffee shop? Does this white man think the same or will act the same as all white men? In fact, why do white men have different names, since just by being a white man, I know all about them. Now, substitute "black man" for "white man" agyrrhius. It may be hard to figure out what happened when you think the world revolves around you.
Harvard should Fire him !!! He is a disgrace
The cops should have understood that anyone would be a little emotionally unrationale when someone questions why they are in their own house, so I think Mr. Gates's behavior was excusable in this instance and the cops should have given him leeway, turned the other cheek and walked away once satisfied that he owned the house.
What I am more disappointed in is the behavior of Mr. Gates in the days that have followed after the raw emotion of the moment have worn off. By this time he's had time to learn and digest the fact that the cops were responding to protect his home. Would you want to be called a bigot and have your name defamed throughout the whole neighborhood when you were only acting to protect the homeowners best interest?
An historical perspective of race relations does not give a black man the right to prejudge a person from square one and then defend their actions after the fact once they no longer perceive an immediate threat and they've learned all the facts.
I would justl ike to start by saying that this is no of the few times where I have read blog posting and thought that most of the responses were well thought out and reasonable. That being said, I have to find myself with Prof Gates. Duringy time at HU, I was pulled over and questioned by police for WWB (Walking While Black). I was young and didn't want a night I'm jail so I was very polite. The truth, however, is that there are people on both sides who only see color. What always surprises me is the number of people who can't or won't see it. There are non color blind cops. And there is plenty of evidence to prove that. At some point, we should all see that.
Gates created a national spectacle by not being able to control his mouth. This is typical of most black men and, perhaps to an extent, true of most people in general. Had he invited the officers in for coffee (no pun intended) and a snack, this story would have blossomed like a flower instead of mushrooming into a huge scandal. For all his academic acheivements, Gates' ethical poise is no better than [black]man in the street standards.
I'm sorry but I don't buy that every police officer in the nation is a racist or even that every working-class white cop is a racially biased.
While it's possible that this officer made a prejudgment that was racially motivated, how can you say that Gates did not do the same? Seems to me like he was convinced that this would be a racially motivated event from the start.
The officer had plenty of reason to be there and asking for identification. He was responding to a burglary call at an address that was reported a couple of weeks earlier as being burglarized.
Gates and his cab driver were trying to force open the door of his residence which is certainly suspicious behavior, especially at an address that has been recently burglarized.
Gates at first provided University ID only, something the officer could not verify so he called for University Police. The officer explained that he was responding to a reported burglary in progress.
I also believe that race had not anything to do with this incident. I know that some of our african american (and I am one) leaders are always looking for an example of racism or profiling. Mr. Gates states that this incident made him aware of the many black males who are in prison. He had not thought of it before. We why are these men in prison? Did they actually do a crime? Or were they all profiled? At some poing we have to champion personal resposibity. If Mr. Gates would have not been so dang on rude to the cop and kept being rude after being told to calm down, maybe this would not have happened.
Certainly, I appreciate the different viewpoints and I respect the perspectives of truth that each of you embrace. That said, to extend a thread offered by "facts," it is important to know that there is the fundamental fact that Gates is Black man in America, there is a working-class white cop, and that there is a cultural historical lens through which the psychology of race is important to realize considering these variables. For there to be a dismissal out-of-hand and the suggestion that, "this has nothing to do with black or white" suggests that that there is resistance to many lived truths.
And Mr. Sansom, you're stating my colleague and I as anti-Arab racists re-enforces the fundamental structure of hegemony by pitting one oppression against another. This is both irresponsible and silly.
I am a cop. Do you know how many peoople I have arrested in their own home? Too many to count. The law states that If I am dispatch to a address then that gives me a lawful reason to be there but once I have determinded that the reason for me being there is no longer valid, then I must leave that home is asked to.
It appears to me that Mr. Gates did not want the cop to even talk to him. Its really simple, a cop asks u a question, u simply answer it. This has nothing to do with black or white. Disorderly conduct is a law for a reason. You can not create issues with a cop with your mouth. Its best to respectful and move on.
Down with the White Man !
Your two guests are displaying their own anti-Arab racism by failing -- glaringly -- to note that the one group that can be charged with any crime with NO MAINSTREAM AMERICAN raising a word of protest is the Arab population.
As William Kunstler noted years ago, any Arab can be charged with any crime and he or she *will* be found guilty.
No. Racist fake liberals never do. These people are more insidiously dangerous than David Duke.
And your making the assumption that that the white man in question would have been treated the same? Why do you make that assuption? And why was Prof Gates taken in to custody? I mean he was in his own home? Don't you get it?
Let's look at the facts:
1) Neighbor reports a possible break in
2) Cop respond
3) Cop ask Prof. Gates to identify himself, just to make sure there really wasn't a break in.
If at this point, Dr. Gates had cooperated, the entire thing would be over, but instead he pulls the old "Don't you know who I am?" with a racial twist.
End result: Dr. Gates gets to spend a few hours in jail.
If this had been a white man, then maybe the neighbor wouldn't have reported it, but if she had, the cop would have acted exactly the same.
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