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Overlooked observations from the Harvard encounter
Franklin W Knight
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
The July 16 arrest in his home of internationally established Harvard University Professor Henry Louis 'Skip' Gates on a charge of disorderly conduct still resonates although the principal participants have settled matters between themselves over beer at the White House. The arrest has been much discussed around the world.
Franklin W Knight
It made the BBC World News, and just about every newspaper, including an editorial in this paper. The multimillionaire Gates, friend of President Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey, has an easily recognisable face from his many television documentaries featuring himself. The arrest was guaranteed to make headlines.
President Obama weighed in at a White House news conference on health care by calling the act "stupid". The president, it should be added, admitted that Gates was his friend, and that he did not have all the facts. On his side, though, the president had lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is an expert in constitutional law, and had spent years as a legislator studying police profiling in his home state of Illinois.
The incident itself was extremely curious, and, as expected, all parties presented different perspectives of what occurred.
The Cambridge police claimed they received an emergency call from a neighbour indicating that two black men with backpacks appeared to be breaking into a house in an exclusive residential area close to the elite university. They responded promptly, partly because of the location. James Crowley, leading the police response, entered the house and asked Gates, then inside, to provide identification.
The short verbal impasse between Gates and Crowley ended with the arrest of the former and his being taken to the local jailhouse in handcuffs. The entire Cambridge police department and several across the country immediately went on radio and television to support the action of Sergeant Crowley.
Through her lawyer, and later in person, the woman who alerted police claims that she never mentioned race and did note that the men had suitcases and might have lived at the house. The information filled in by the police reveals much about American society. Race was only one factor.
Gates. broke no law and should never have been arrested in the first place
Gates' story was that returning late from a long and tiresome business trip to China he and his chauffeur found the front door jammed. He entered through the rear door and together with his driver they forced open the front door to facilitate the delivery of his suitcases. As he was calling the Harvard housing folks to inform them of the malfunctioning front door, Crowley appeared inside the house asking for identification.
Gates offered two forms of identification, apparently with little enthusiasm and a monologue about racism and somebody's mother that rubbed Crowley the wrong way. Within hours, loud verbal battle lines were drawn across the country about institutional racism in America, police profiling, and the degree to which the election of President Obama should have made all such arguments moot.
Whatever the facts, the pointless arrest did have to do with race in American society and with police profiling. But those were not the only observations on what President Obama called "a teachable moment" of this interesting Harvard encounter.
Race is institutionalised in American society and represents an inescapable dimension of interpersonal relations. It is an unfortunate legacy of the American slavery experience that for centuries created and propagated mutually reinforcing cleavages of race, colour, condition, occupation and culture. The mental consequence of such mutually reinforcing cleavages is that groups identify one another in negative shorthand terms.
American whites regard unfamiliar blacks as homogeneously suspicious characters with intrinsic bad social habits and evil intentions. The Harvard encounter is a common national experience, especially for minority groups. Hearing of two men on a veranda in a supposedly white neighbourhood, the Cambridge police automatically assumed that the men were black and up to no good. It did not matter that the highly recognisable Gates was in his home.
The mutually reinforcing social cleavages are reflected in patterns of segregated housing, rendering patently false the concept of a 'melting pot' society. America is no melting pot. It is more like a pizza. Melting pot suggests disintegration and reconstitution akin to making soup or a cake where the ingredients meld and merge. In the American reality immigrant sectors fall erratically together like solid toppings on an unmade pizza. Even after baking, the toppings remain distinctively apart.
Despite the 1965 Civil Rights Bill, most American police forces and fire brigades remain overwhelmingly white. Pictures of the Cambridge police department gathered to support their colleague had only token non-white faces. Not only are police forces white, members tend to live outside the areas where they work, giving the impression that they are a foreign invasion force deployed to maintain local law and order. And as with any occupying force, mutual suspicion becomes the unavoidable currency of daily relations.
Another deplorable feature of law enforcement in the USA derives from the low intellectual and social levels of the recruits. Recruited from the lowest ranks of high school graduates, superficially trained and given a legalese as language, they are intellectually insecure. Empowered to be symbols of law and order, police use their authority as instruments to bludgeon civilians into unquestioned acquiescence of their uncomfortable status.
Civilians, therefore, are not allowed to question police even when the police may be off duty or breaking the law. Police officers invariably regard disrespect as civil disobedience. Whatever he might have done, Gates broke no law and should never have been arrested in the first place.
Apparently Crowley neither reads nor watches TV. The pathetic illogic of the American reality is that even a distinguished Harvard professor in his own house may not question an intrusive cop. That arrest was perversely stupid. Speaking ill of the police or even of someone's mother does not constitute disorderly conduct, however uncivil the tone. That sort of speech is protected in good democratic civil society.
Neither Cambridge nor Boston, however, has a reputation for civility. Yet civility alone will not eradicate the indelible stigma of colour and race until police systems change.
[email protected]
Franklin W Knight
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
The July 16 arrest in his home of internationally established Harvard University Professor Henry Louis 'Skip' Gates on a charge of disorderly conduct still resonates although the principal participants have settled matters between themselves over beer at the White House. The arrest has been much discussed around the world.
Franklin W Knight
It made the BBC World News, and just about every newspaper, including an editorial in this paper. The multimillionaire Gates, friend of President Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey, has an easily recognisable face from his many television documentaries featuring himself. The arrest was guaranteed to make headlines.
President Obama weighed in at a White House news conference on health care by calling the act "stupid". The president, it should be added, admitted that Gates was his friend, and that he did not have all the facts. On his side, though, the president had lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is an expert in constitutional law, and had spent years as a legislator studying police profiling in his home state of Illinois.
The incident itself was extremely curious, and, as expected, all parties presented different perspectives of what occurred.
The Cambridge police claimed they received an emergency call from a neighbour indicating that two black men with backpacks appeared to be breaking into a house in an exclusive residential area close to the elite university. They responded promptly, partly because of the location. James Crowley, leading the police response, entered the house and asked Gates, then inside, to provide identification.
The short verbal impasse between Gates and Crowley ended with the arrest of the former and his being taken to the local jailhouse in handcuffs. The entire Cambridge police department and several across the country immediately went on radio and television to support the action of Sergeant Crowley.
Through her lawyer, and later in person, the woman who alerted police claims that she never mentioned race and did note that the men had suitcases and might have lived at the house. The information filled in by the police reveals much about American society. Race was only one factor.
Gates. broke no law and should never have been arrested in the first place
Gates' story was that returning late from a long and tiresome business trip to China he and his chauffeur found the front door jammed. He entered through the rear door and together with his driver they forced open the front door to facilitate the delivery of his suitcases. As he was calling the Harvard housing folks to inform them of the malfunctioning front door, Crowley appeared inside the house asking for identification.
Gates offered two forms of identification, apparently with little enthusiasm and a monologue about racism and somebody's mother that rubbed Crowley the wrong way. Within hours, loud verbal battle lines were drawn across the country about institutional racism in America, police profiling, and the degree to which the election of President Obama should have made all such arguments moot.
Whatever the facts, the pointless arrest did have to do with race in American society and with police profiling. But those were not the only observations on what President Obama called "a teachable moment" of this interesting Harvard encounter.
Race is institutionalised in American society and represents an inescapable dimension of interpersonal relations. It is an unfortunate legacy of the American slavery experience that for centuries created and propagated mutually reinforcing cleavages of race, colour, condition, occupation and culture. The mental consequence of such mutually reinforcing cleavages is that groups identify one another in negative shorthand terms.
American whites regard unfamiliar blacks as homogeneously suspicious characters with intrinsic bad social habits and evil intentions. The Harvard encounter is a common national experience, especially for minority groups. Hearing of two men on a veranda in a supposedly white neighbourhood, the Cambridge police automatically assumed that the men were black and up to no good. It did not matter that the highly recognisable Gates was in his home.
The mutually reinforcing social cleavages are reflected in patterns of segregated housing, rendering patently false the concept of a 'melting pot' society. America is no melting pot. It is more like a pizza. Melting pot suggests disintegration and reconstitution akin to making soup or a cake where the ingredients meld and merge. In the American reality immigrant sectors fall erratically together like solid toppings on an unmade pizza. Even after baking, the toppings remain distinctively apart.
Despite the 1965 Civil Rights Bill, most American police forces and fire brigades remain overwhelmingly white. Pictures of the Cambridge police department gathered to support their colleague had only token non-white faces. Not only are police forces white, members tend to live outside the areas where they work, giving the impression that they are a foreign invasion force deployed to maintain local law and order. And as with any occupying force, mutual suspicion becomes the unavoidable currency of daily relations.
Another deplorable feature of law enforcement in the USA derives from the low intellectual and social levels of the recruits. Recruited from the lowest ranks of high school graduates, superficially trained and given a legalese as language, they are intellectually insecure. Empowered to be symbols of law and order, police use their authority as instruments to bludgeon civilians into unquestioned acquiescence of their uncomfortable status.
Civilians, therefore, are not allowed to question police even when the police may be off duty or breaking the law. Police officers invariably regard disrespect as civil disobedience. Whatever he might have done, Gates broke no law and should never have been arrested in the first place.
Apparently Crowley neither reads nor watches TV. The pathetic illogic of the American reality is that even a distinguished Harvard professor in his own house may not question an intrusive cop. That arrest was perversely stupid. Speaking ill of the police or even of someone's mother does not constitute disorderly conduct, however uncivil the tone. That sort of speech is protected in good democratic civil society.
Neither Cambridge nor Boston, however, has a reputation for civility. Yet civility alone will not eradicate the indelible stigma of colour and race until police systems change.
[email protected]
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