Prominent US black professor Prof Gates is arrested for causing a disturbance. Arresting officer Police Sgt. James Crowley refuses to apologise. Media jumps on to what is potentially a race row. Oh and Obama makes a comment too something to do with stupidity.
OK now I would love to be controversial on this and lean to the side of the policeman. According to this article the arresting officer is a lecturer on racial profiling, was hand picked by former Police Commissioner, a black man, and was previously most famous for trying to resucitate dying NBA star Reggie Lewis. With this kind of previous record why would people then assume that the arrest was racially motivated? Yes of course there have been instances of injustice but what did the professor mean when he asked the office do you know who I am and then follow him to the end of the porch shouting?
I have noticed a number of my contemporaries both here in the UK and USA focus on the racial side of it. One the one hand it is easy to dismiss such an incident as racial based on what we know of the arresting officer and yet given the racially charged nature of arrests for African Americans one can understand why people would see a race angle. Obama’s comment on this issue now, however we interpret it, will also raise this issue as one of race. Personally I would suggest it was more an issue of class, as if he was working class would those charges have been dropped?
Over virtual and real picket fences the discussion of race has raised it’s head again. In absence of all the facts and a refusal for both parties on either side of the issue to back down or apologise this has opened a larger debate about policing and the black community. The thing is this though, can such a conversation or dialogue ever progress if sides are still stuck in the “chip on your shoulder” vs “you don’t know our experience” mentality? Only time will tell.
I don’t think race and class can be separated…
Plus, you ask if he was working class would the charges have been dropped, but the issue is not the dropping of charges but his arrest in the first place. If he was working class, would he have been arrested?
Furthermore, if the issue was about class does that make it any better than if it was about race?
And if your point stands, then in some ways, it’s even more frightening. One of the points of working hard and doing well, esp if you are black, is in order to escape being seen as just another statistic. If you are black and middle/upper class and still treated like a statistic, that’s extremely depressing.
Oh – that second paragraph was meant to say: if he was working class, would he have been arrested and the answer is, most likely, YES.
All points here are very valid. Me, I long for the
day when race, colour and social background
are not relevant. Other than to widen our cultural values.
Was the man doing wrong ?
Yes arrest him
No then don’t
bluring of issues with race, colour and shoe size
is not helping.
I know I’m living in utopia!
@Lola. I think we can separate race and class as they are separate issues. In this issue the likelihood of the charges being dropped was probably more about his class than his race.
Whilst I think it is a quite distressing situation treatment should be fair regardless of status. The notion of not being seen as another statistic I think also applies to other races,e.g. Britney not trying to be seen as a redneck, etc.
@Gary oh yes you are. Fortunately you and I have had time to form a friendship and see each other for who we are, but what of those who make assumptions just based on the narrow filter of media or the social circle they are in?
@Dave – There are a couple of contradictions in what you’re saying…
First of all, surely if his class is the reason why the charges were dropped, what happened to his class when it came to him being arrested? If his class was the determining factor, he should never have been arrested in the first place – unless you believe that police have a prejudice against black scholars?
Secondly, I think the charges were dropped because a) there was no real case in the first place and b) because he is extremely well connected and caused a media storm. The latter isn’t necessarily to do with his class, because if he was Mr Average Middle Class Black Man, he may well be standing in front of a court right now.
Thirdly, I’m sure that people of other races have no desire to be a statistic. However, I have not heard that ‘rednecks’ are disproportionately stopped and searched, incarcerated or racially profiled by the police. All of that adds quite a different dimension to the idea of not trying to be a statistic…
That the police offer lectures on racial profiling is a start, but it doesn’t mean he is free of it himself.
Even if Professor Gates was shouting at the police officer, does this mean the white middle-upper classes never shout at police? His arrest is because he is black.
A white professor *might* have simply gone on and been perceived as a jumped-up snob, but I sincerely doubt he would have been cuffed.
@Lola Adesioye I will tie both your first and second points together. Class brings power. Although the arresting officer ignored his “do you know who I am comment” and arrested his ass anyway, it was his connections which got him dropped. This is why I think it was his class which mattered most. Let’s just say it was a Kennedy would the charges have been dropped because he was white or because he was a powerful middle class male?
My point about the statistic is that you can’t try not to be one. If you are being racially profiled they are going to arrest you anyway regardless of what letters you have behind your name.
Again I reiterate that the reason many conversations around race don’t progress is that both sides colour it with their experiences and apply that experience to other situations which is probably why Obama had to repent at haste over his own comments.
@LoloBloggs.
In absence of all the facts I am reticent to suggest that he was arrested juts because he was black. Whilst racial profiling is an issue that we well know exists in America is there no room to suggest that perhaps Gates was also complicit in his arrest? Or do we just go down the singular route and say it would have never happened if he was white? Hmmmmm…..
That is not the point you are completely obscuring it and missing the point. We live in a white supremacist system, this is upheld by the police who police and harass the working class. Blacks and Latinos bear the largest brunt of that harassment and abuse because they are still by and large locked out of positions of power.
Police enforce laws created by the ruling class. They are mercenaries of the state and do not “sell their labor to someone in order that they make a profit.” They are modern day slave catchers who enforce a social hierarchy. Whether or not a white liberal professor would have been arrested is not really the point. That happens all the time (white liberal professor mouths off to some cop who doesn’t like the tone, makes an arrest…) The point is that we do not live in a post racial society. This case highlights that and only that. It was racial profiling and police engage in this routinely.
IF…. a white professor had been arrested shouting at a cop during some anti war rally that would expose other things that are contradictory about the police. For instance the “ideals” police claim to uphold are a joke. If they really stood for ‘blind justice’ they would arrest members of the white ruling class all the time for breaking laws that they themselves create. In the case of waging war and furthering exploitation of large sections of the population, Murder, extortion, lying, theft, etc… But because laws are written by the ruling class and enforced by its mercenaries, the police, the interpretation of those laws is strictly applied to maintaining a social hierarchy. Not any false pretense of ‘justice’.
understand this, Barack Obama is part of the ruling class who has interest in maintaining the criminal enterprise we know as the United States. Because he is black their are certain contradictions and splits happening within the white establishment, but the mechanisms of power remain largely unchanged.
Police are not now or ever were ‘working class” “wage laborers” “honest working joe’s” or whatever you want to call them. Regardless of the intentions of specific officers or black cops or whatever. The police force was created to murder, harass, and destroy militant unions at the beginning of the 20th century. Before that its closest relative was the 18th and 19th century slave catchers. Conditions have changed, class has changed, wage labor and the proletariat have changed, but the role of the modern police force remains in tact.
Their jobs as pigs, is to defend the white supremacist capitalist system, harass working class communities under the guise of law and order, and control the social order.