What Professor Gates Won’t Learn at Harvard about Black America
Did you hear that Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is planning to write a book about the harrowing four hours he spent incarcerated by The Man like some common hooligan? He even has a working title: Beluga on Ice.
Ok, that’s not true. Although Gates has said he is thinking about doing a documentary on racial profiling, and he has admitted that he never thought much about the issue until it (supposedly) happened to him.
But the gag about caviar is believable given the elitist and arrogant way that “Skip” Gates has conducted himself since his arrest on his front porch on July 16 by Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department.
To recap, Crowley apparently thought Gates needed an “attitude adjustment” after the professor, according to the police report, called him a racist, tried to go over the sergeant’s head by phoning the police chief amid the confrontation, and finally offered to talk to Crowley’s “mama” outside. Gates denies that he was rude and uncooperative but admits he did say something like “this is what happens to black men in America.”
All due respect, but it’s becoming clear that Gates hasn’t the foggiest idea what happens to most black men in America. Why would he? They don’t teach that in the Ivy League.
For now, apparently, all is well after the so-called “suds summit” at the White House, where President Obama pulled together both Gates and Crowley over cold beers. In fact, while neither man has apologized for his behavior, the two men seem to be BFFs. Boston’s newest odd couple is talking about having dinner together with their families or taking in a sporting event.
At least that’s what Gates recently told a roomful of 150 or so people gathered at the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival, where Gates was enthusiastically hocking his latest book.
“I asked him if he would have lunch with me one on one,” Gates said about Crowley. “I asked him maybe we could go to a Red Sox game together, maybe could go to a Celtic game together, you know, maybe we could have dinner with our families, you know, why not?”
So far, so good. Then Gates ruined it with a dash of condescension:
“I offered to get his kids into Harvard,” he said, “if he doesn’t arrest me again.”
The mostly white crowd (ever been to Martha’s Vineyard?) roared with laughter. From where they sit, skin color isn’t as relevant as class. Gates is one of them. The professor even owns a summerhouse on the island. You can easily imagine that, after Gates’ talk, his fellow Vineyardites approached him and expressed sympathy for the dreadful experience he endured at the hands of a lowly civil servant.
Racism is certainly still alive and kicking in the USA you have 96% of the Black population which voted in a RACIST way for the Black candidate. You have a RACIST President who showed his UNTHINKING UNINFORMED planted knee jerk RACIST contempt for the White Cop. You have the Harvard RACIST professor who thinks its OK to say ‘and Yo Mamma’ to the white Cop. You have the RACIST new Supreme Court Latina Sotomayor who is ‘Much Wiser’ than any white guy could be and also LOVES RACIST Affirmative Action to hell with equality and level playing fields. Oh yes USA Racism lives its just that the practitioners are a protected molly coddled over promoted species. And last but not least you have the Democratic Party who thinks everyone who does not agree 100% with them are RACIST NAZIS.
Our preoccuation with diversity helps to feed the fires that keep racism alive and well.
Circuit Avenue, Oak Bluffs.
http://www.mvtimes.com/news/2007/06/07/the_bluffs.php
Mr. Navarette:
“So far, so good. Then Gates ruined it with a dash of condescension:
“I offered to get his kids into Harvard,” he said, “if he doesn’t arrest me again.””
How sweet of the man to offer a bribe to a sworn law-enforcement officer using Harvard’s good name.
If Professor Gates keeps his nose clean, then perhaps Sergeant Crowley can help HIS kids get on the police force.
And BTW, Mr. Navarette, this was a much better effort than usual screed.
Criminal police perpetrators have “locked up tens of thousands of blacks in American prisons” simply through the use of racial profiling? This is an outrage! These “innocent” people must be released right away and the criminal police perpetrators must be locked up in their place.
By the way, my friend and I were pulled over by a Pennsylvania state trooper last week for no apparent reason. We were not speeding, did not make an illegal lane change, nor were we following too closely. The trooper said a small knick-knack attached to my friend’s rearview mirror was a violation of state law. Before pulling us over he drove parallel to us for about two miles (probably looking for a reason to pull us over). After pulling us over, checking both of our driver licenses on his computer, and disrupting our trip he gave my friend a warning. Basically it was a bogus stop. Now, since my friend and I are “European-American”, we weren’t being racially profiled, we were just being hassled by a bored cop. Something that has happened to me several times before even though, as I prviously stated, I am “European-American” and these types of things should just not happen to me.
Mr. Navarette,
While I can agree with some of what you have said, it must be understood that there is also frustration with whites as well. Many whites (including myself) as well as blacks have been the target of unfair police attention. You are correct to say that the teachable moment here is not to mouth off to a policeman. Whites are often chastised as racist by African Americans, and for engaging in cruel stereotypes. And yet it seems that it’s OK for African Americans to stereotype every police officer as racist. Having attended two African American history classes while in college, I can assure you that African American racism is just as present in some sectors of the African American community and just as virulent as anything you’ll find. African Americans are perhaps winning battles but are going to lose the war if they keep raising the specter of racism at every turn. While it is certain that racism is extant, it is not everywhere as is claimed. Most white people don’t think as much about race as some would like to think. I agree with “Jerry” that our preoccupation with diversity feeds this fire because it’s gone off the deep end and is being interpreted as more about how we are different than how we are alike. Also fanning this argument is the changing nature of terminology, particularly the use of the term “racial profiling.” First it is proper to allow that it does exist, but again not to the extent that some would have you believe. Here is what racial profiling is and is not. A burgundy Lexus LS460, Licence plate ABC-123 occupied by three young African American males is driving north on the Turnpike – A trooper notes this, wonders what three young African males are doing in such an expensive car and decides to pull them over = racial profiling. Now, A burgundy Lexus LS460, License plate ABC-123 occupied by three young African American males is driving north on the Turnpike – A trooper receives an alert to be on the lookout for a three African American males who just committed an armed robbery and forced a bank patron at gunpoint to give them the keys to his Burgundy Lexus 460 which they are now suspected of driving. The license plate of the car is unknown. The suspects were last spotted heading for the turnpike. The trooper notes a Burgundy Lexus LS460 going past him on the turnpike. Absent license plate information, he decides to pull the car over. I turns out that the real perpetrators have been pulled over some twenty miles away going southbound. Guess what? Even though the trooper pulled over the wrong car, this is not racial profiling. He had reasonable suspicion to believe that that car contained the occupants of a crime. The trooper should apologize to the occupants of the car, explaining to them why they were pulled over and that should be the end of that. No press conferences with them telling an anxious world how they were shamed by the incident and how the trooper was a racist. It seems now that the ball is being moved yet again and that a racial identifying characteristic of a suspect is racial profiling. Pure silliness!
Navarette, you’re the closes thing here to a writer of average intelligence, which, unfortunately is no compliment. Get your facts straight. The recording has already been released, there is no evidence of Gates’ alleged screaming.
And if the police report is accurate, that could be embarrassing to Gates.
And the police report has already been disputed by at least two witnesses. Gates would have a field day with a lawsuit–its quite clear that he isn’t pursuing it because of the impact it would have now that Obama has been made to be part of the incident [in the most absurd spectacle of racist stupidity that the right wing has yet demonstrated]. I know that the impulse to write unfounded bs must be catching here. I suggest you bail before there’s any further loss of cognitive ability.
That’s the best commentary on Gates-Gate I’ve read yet. Absolutely, spot on. This was about class not race.
If harard employs people as stupid as Gates in a Professorial role would anybody want him to “get their kids in.” LOL
You’re leaving out the third party that made this into a story – the media. I understand the frustration with black columnists at the choosing of this as a “teachable moment”, because this was the wrong teachable moment. Many better ones come along regularly, but never get this level of attention, because the people involved are nobodys, and of no interest to the white liberals (and other colors, for that matter) in the media. Of course, it didn’t help that Obama jumped at the bait and added more entropy to the issue.
The media needs to look in the mirror on this one. They were far less upset that a black man was arrested under unclear circumstances than they were than a Harvard Professor was.
There’s a back narrative to this story, and to this piece, and that’s about tribes. On a superficial level, this is about racial tribes. But if you take a deeper look, it’s about social tribes; the profesoriate, the media, and the rest of the Boston elite in Martha’s vineyard. It’s also about your tribal identification, which is usually racial, but is also as a member of the media. It’s that other tribe of yours – the media – who made this into the farce that it turned out to be.
Of course, Gates didn’t handle it very well. What did you expect? Is your (collective; referring to the media as a whole) allegiance to the upper class so strong that it never occurred to any in the media that this wasn’t a smoking gun point at the cops?
This would have been limited to a few academic blogs if the media didn’t feel compelled to jump all over it. The left elite media just didn’t want to do due diligence and consider that the narrative of the story might turn out to be anything but “white racist pig cop roughs up black professor”. They just couldn’t imagine anything else.
This is just one more “I don’t know anyone who voted for Nixon” moment for the media.
Okay… What have you done with the real Ruben Navarrette Jr?
Moral of the story: Don’t talk nasty about a cop’s mother when he’s on-scene responding to a call. Second moral of the story: Some people, regardless of how educated they are, won’t learn the first moral.
Isn’t it interesting that Sgt. Crowley proved to be more articulate, wiser, and, yes, smarter that Gates in this whole affair? That speaks volumes about the elitist divide in our culture, which is as destructive, if not more so, than racism currently is.
12, Everybody’s missing the most obvious moral: if you’re a pampered, privileged, spoiled elite brat, don’t try to play the underprivileged victim. Especially when there are real underprivileged victims out there.
Not unless you’ve rehearsed it a lot better than Gates, anyway.
“…Gates hasn’t the foggiest idea what happens to most black men in America. Why would he? They don’t teach that in the Ivy League.”
Well, Ruben, maybe he learned it during his West Virginia boyhood or at Potomac State College, which he attended before transferring to the infernal Ivy League.
Moho:”… Gates would have a field day with a lawsuit ,,,”
Gates is so arrogant and so puffed up with his own wondrousness that he may very well elect to sue. I’m betting that Obama, and the liberal academic establishment are shaking in their shoes and praying that he doesn’t. Remember what happened when Oscar Wilde sued Queensberry? Wilde wound up ruined and had to leave England in disgrace. A public case might similarly expose Gate’s shallow performance as a “scholar.“ He shows himself as early as in his Yale application:
“…As always, whitey now sits in judgment of me, preparing to cast my fate. ”
It would expose to public scrutiny what is taught at Harvard & Yale and what kind of people are entrusted with the education of our children. It would even re-kindle the questions about why Obama refuses to release his academic transcripts. Not to mention adding fuel to the Affirmative Action controversy. The Affirmative Action POTUS knee-jerks support for the Affirmative Action scholar…
Please. Make Sgt. Crowley’s day.
Maybe the troll’s not American. If he were, he should know that in the US, there’s this thing called discovery. CAIR learned that lesson the hard way.
I got a feeling that Crowley snuck in a line along this to Gates: “I’ve had more black women than you have had”!
“President Obama, Professor Gates and Sgt. Crowley will have their beer in the White House,” he wrote, “but it will only be a symbolic gesture, lacking the force to confront the monumental crime of racial profiling by the police perpetrators that has locked up tens of thousands of blacks in American prisons.”
That is, tens of thousands of blacks who don’t know the president,..”
Mr. Navarrette, what are you trying to say by including the above. Are you saying that tens of thousands of blacks are in prison that are innocent? If so, please be more direct.
The unfortunate statistic is that blacks are about 11-13% of the US population, but commit about 40% of the crimes.
Is Navarrette saying that thousands of those in prison are there because of “racial profiling”?
“President Obama, Professor Gates and Sgt. Crowley will have their beer in the White House,” he wrote, “but it will only be a symbolic gesture, lacking the force to confront the monumental crime of racial profiling by the police perpetrators that has locked up tens of thousands of blacks in American prisons.”
That is, tens of thousands of blacks who don’t know the president,..”
Mr. Navarrette, what are you trying to say by including the above. Are you saying that tens of thousands of blacks are in prison that are innocent? If so, please be more direct.
The unfortunate statistic is that blacks are about 11-13% of the US population, but commit about 40% of the crimes.
Is Navarrette saying that thousands of those in prison are there because of “racial profiling”?
“Isn’t it interesting that Sgt. Crowley proved to be more articulate, wiser, and, yes, smarter that Gates in this whole affair?”
Then why did he arrest Gates if he was indeed wiser?
Crowley doesn’t care about Gates. He just went to have a beer with the leader of the free world.
Most black criminality is against other blacks. If black victims are getting better justice than white victims because their perpetrators are more likely to go to jail, then there really is a problem of discrimination. It’s just not what the PC narrative thinks it is.
Racism? We have a president who has a health care plan (plot) which will stealthily murder millions of older WHITE people in the years to come. It is no secret that the younger members of the population are increasingly minority and the white replacemenmt rate has dwindled. Race murder is being disguised as “cost containment” or saving money to take care of younger people. If the majority of the senior citizen population were black and a white president was proposing this euthanasia bill, you bet we would hear the screeching and breast beating from coast to coast. But then again, a white president wouldn’t have the gall to propose it because we all know exceptions are made for those with black skin priviledge.
Outrage over racial profiling is self-defeating. It’s a basic police procedure that should be redeemed and placed back into everyday use quickly. We all question and abhor the fact that so many blacks are in prison. If the root cause is masked, no material solutions will ever surface.
I have had some experience with teachers of Victim Studies- African-American, Chicano and even Jewish. They are not very interesting people given their obsession with the very worst they can dig up about the experiences of “their people” in the US. And they do not notice change that is positive- only the negative. They are quite like Al Sharpton. After a semester or two in their classrooms even students who came from middle class homes are ready to go to war -with the white man. That is Gates’ milieu.
This article is confusing. On one hand, we’re convincingly told that the only teachable moment here is about how not to speak to a cop; then we hear that Gates really let down the African-American community by not insisting on turning this into a racial profiling issue. Well, does the author think it was, or it wasn’t, about racial profiling? Of course Gates knows what “ordinary” African-Americans think about racial profiling; that’s why he himself couldn’t correctly evaluate what was bothering Crowley (i.e., Gates’ rudeness and uncooperativeness, not his skin color.) If Gates had insisted on making a public debate out of this, it would only have served as an example of how often what is perceived as racial profiling really isn’t. Which is fine with me, but I doubt if it’s what those African-Americans the author is referring to really want.
“Four legs good, two legs better!”
Sorry to get into proofing errors, but I think the author meant “hawking” his latest book, not “hocking.”
“We all question and abhor the fact that so many blacks are in prison. If the root cause is masked, no material solutions will ever surface.”
Um, let’s see. Me think prison IS a material solution to certain types of crime.
27. Shoshana, thank you for crystallizing the issue. I sensed something like that when I said that this was the wrong teachable moment. Instead of trying to use this particular incident to teach something about a completely different situation, Gates and Obama would have been better off letting the whole affair pass quietly. In fact, the only moral to this story is that when a cop is trying to make sure that your house is safe and secure, don’t get in his face about it.
Surely other teachable moments will come and go that will, in fact, contain lessons about real profiling. And no one will notice, because the anonymous victim doesn’t know the president or anyone in the press.
What an idiot. You would think that a professor that teaches Black Studies at HARVARD would have handled this in a more dignified manner.
Let’s see if I can get everyone here to understand. I am not racist or have anything against any race of people. I have traveled all over this globe.. Though there is a popular concensus in black communities… and this is “FEAR”. Especially in black males, they are simply afraid of police. This fear is not only by those who participate in criminal acts, but this fear is in those who are law abiding citizens. In the black community there is a rule when stopped by a cop while driving. Turn your roof lights on, turn your ignition off, keep your hands on the wheel and look straight ahead. There is a rule if confronted by a police officer while not in a vehicle.. Keep your hands out of your pocket, remain still and keep eye contact. Tell me where did these rules come from??? Every black male knows these rules, because a resignating “FEAR” of being attacked, wrongly accused or even killed. This stems from the generations before when it was okay for police to do whatever they wanted to blacks, and it is still alive in today’s society.
I can say that the professor was a bit unprofessional, but this is true, I have some caucasion friends who mouthed of to cops and used profane language while I was in the car and the cop simply wrote the spending ticket and let us go… My friend said jokingly if I tried that we’d be going to a funeral or trying to get you bail money, but He was right!
The professor simply felt violated, even after the fact he showed that he lived there, the attempted burglary was out of the window and the officer should have left. Because intiailly the call was for a break in???
It’s great that the president had them over for beers?? I think, don’t know what that was about, but what about all other Americans who had similiar instances, like a ticket for J-walking because of not using the crosswalk..
I see that status plays alot in who will stand up for you and who will protect you.. If this professor was a lowly high school teacher we probably wouldn’t have heard about it and the president wouldn’t have been sipping a Heieneken with him and the officer. He’d probably be in court and have a host of fines/charges.
But nevertheless we live in this world all together and the rules that need to be implied are those set by GOD. The only difference in humams genetically is 6% difference… The only difference in us overall is the difference the person to the left and right sets…
26. mhr:
I have had some experience with teachers of Victim Studies- African-American, Chicano and even Jewish. They are not very interesting people given their obsession with the very worst they can dig up about the experiences of “their people” in the US. And they do not notice change that is positive- only the negative. They are quite like Al Sharpton. After a semester or two in their classrooms even students who came from middle class homes are ready to go to war -with the white man. That is Gates’ milieu.
MHR; it’s not a obsession it’s history! What positive do Jewish people have to discuss, we are talking about millions of people slaughtered. It’s hard to find the positive in that sir/ma’am… it’s not to make people say hate whitey, but for you to understand that any type of injustice, unfairness and wrong doing is wrong. Everything we studied about the caucasian society was stories of triumph and development and creation. There isn’t a glitch in the caucasion history of turmoil. So if anything is dull or a dull people it’s that of the caucasion. What has a caucasion had to go through in life? What has the caucasion race had to have overcome? I can’t think of anything. Who has held the caucasion race back? I’m still stuck. Please don’t say that a race of people are dull, because who wrote the history books, probably a caucasion??? So the curriculum is set. Be respectful and mindful. I am not a Al Sharpton fan, but I am a fan of God!! He created us in his image. No person on this earth had a choice in their gender or race. So please open your eyes to a bigger picture. Lastly, to say that people whom race was in captivity/slaughter for hundreds of years and these people are dull, shows your lack of empathy and disrespect….
Anonymous – I believe you’re missing, (as well as mhr) or grasping at straws regarding your #34 comment.
To say the entire Caucasian race hasn’t had to ‘overcome’ anything? That’s a shallow response.
While I respect your faith, many wars begin due to religious differences. I believe this discussion needn’t involve, need ‘representation’ of God.
The origins of slavery, at least to this point, have been discovered in Egypt – AFRICA of all places.. Code of Hammurabi
Caucasians were used as slaves as well. For hundreds of years. Italy, Greece, Germans, New Zealand, the Nords, et al. Not to mention Japan, Korea, China..
The Portuguese and Spanish were the first to incorporate Africans as slaves for their when expanding European colonialism in the 15th or 16th century – I can’t recall.
Many African countries still practice slavery to this day in most areas in West Africa – Mali, Niger, Togo etc.,
Funny, I still don’t see what caucasians had to overcome…. what race has enslaved caucasians…. I haven’t studied or read any turmoil brought upon caucasians… please enlighten me..!
Funny, I still don’t see what caucasians had to overcome…. what race has enslaved caucasians
Arabs. For centuries.
I believe it was Dr Sowell who wrote a piece on driving while black. His view, and experience were that if you did not give the officer a ration of aggravation, he would not proceed to aggravate you in return.
As to racism, it is alive and well in the US. The left has worked very hard to assure that this is so. It serves their agenda.
The tapes of the incident should have been released so people could judge for themselves. That would be a real teachable moment.