Patterico writes (emphasis in original), “The Officer Didn’t Stereotype Henry Louis Gates — Henry Louis Gates Stereotyped the Officer”:
Henry Louis Gates stereotyped Sgt. Crowley. He formed an opinion about Sgt. Crowley based on evidence that was far too limited to justify the conclusion. He formed that opinion based on prejudices he had collected over the course of his life about the group to which Sgt. Crowley belonged. That opinion — that Sgt. Crowley was a racist who needed to be educated about racial profiling — turned out to be wrong.
Gates’s mental process was the same mental process that a racist uses to decide that someone like Gates is less than human. It’s an ignorant way of looking at the world, hardly befitting a Harvard professor. Liberals ought not to applaud such stereotyping. They should be fighting it.
AdvertisementIt’s a shame that they don’t. And I don’t think they ever will.
Definitely read the whole thing.
Update: As Michael Barone has noted on a couple of occasions, there’s a definite sense of nostalgia amongst the left these days. Roger L. Simon focuses on one element of that phenomenon, “Gates and Obama’s nostalgia for racism.” Roger adds that “as a sixties civil rights worker, I can empathize with the nostalgia. In those days it was very easy to tell right from wrong and feel good about your actions. These days it’s a lot more complicated.”
We have three observations about the Harvard professor incident:
1. We find it interesting that the fact that this was the professor’s home was evidently not established early on way before the dispute escalated;
2. We find it fascinating that the versions of two members of society, who most would ordinarily view as responsible and honest citizens (this obviously does not include politicians), would vary so dramatically from a factual point of view.
3. Finally, considering that the reading and viewing public were not present at the scene (and thus have no first hand knowledge), and that there is no video tape to our knowledge of the sequence of events and what was said, how so many have formed conclusions, and made assumptions, about who did what and who was wrong.
There are some things which Professor Gates might have considered upon the arrival of the police, no matter how incensed he may have been.
How can they deplore such stereotyping when they have worked so hard to create it?
The biggest gaffe a politician can make is to reveal the truth about his views by mistake.
Obama made a reasonable point. It should be unusual and rare to arrest someone for mouthing off. Obama’s mistake was to say that the Cambridge police department acted stupidly.
If Obama had said only that Crowley had acted stupidly, that is debatable. It is outright group politics to say that the department acted stupidly. Obama has no basis for generalizing to the Cambridge Police Department from the actions of one officer, in one event, where the facts are fuzzy. But, Obama attached the actions of one man, Crowley, to the group he belongs to.
I say that generalizing the actions of one person to some associated group is the basis for identity politics and racism. The US is supposed to treat citizens as individuals, according to their individual actions and merits, not as members of favored or disliked groups. Obama so easily broke that boundary in his offhand analysis.
That is the reason Obama’s remarks were so inflammatory. He revealed to me that he so easily sees people as members of tribes, all members of a tribe being interchangeable.