HarvardGate -- A Scandal in the Making? [by Molly Arden]

Our old friend Molly Arden e-mails us to ask "whether anyone knows the real skinny on the Henry Louis Gates affair -- or HarvardGate as some have dubbed it." Asked to summarize what she knew of this breaking news story, Arden writes:
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Harvard professor Henry Louis ("Skip") Gates, Jr., the acclaimed scholar who heads the university's ambitious African American studies program and is among the nation's leading black literary intellectuals, was apprehended by police last Thursday in his Cambridge house. Apparently Gates, accompanied by a friend, was returning from a trip abroad and encountering difficulty opening his front door. Maybe he forgot his house keys? A nosey parker saw two black men with backpacks forcing their way into the Gates residence and called the cops. When the cops came, a shouting match ensued, and Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct and handcuffed. According to Gates, he produced his ID as requested, proving that the place belonged to him, and was mis-treated by a rogue cop. According to the police report, Gates was uncooperative, behaved abusively, and repeatedly accused arresting office Sergeant James Crowley, 42, of racial prejudice. Crowley maintains that he put Gates under arrest only after he persisted in his "tumultuous" behavior and ignored police warnings to calm down. According to a satirical piece in the Gladfly, a local humor publication, Gates brilliantly staged the whole episode as a dramatic way "to demonstrate the inherent racial bias marking police conduct in the red republic of Cambridge." The piece alleges that a passage in Gates's book Signifying Monkey describes a similar incident. (Diligent research yields no such passage.) According to one blogger, the story tells us what we already knew: that if the police come to your door, it is wise to be as nice and polite as the circumstances allow. According to a Harvard friend, everything depends on your view of Gates: is he a "pompous overpraised egomaniac" or a "major scholar, distinguished professor, prize-winning author, and academic superstar"? President Obama, acknowledging that Gates is a personal friend, said the police acted "stupidly" to arrest a man for lawfully being in his own home. But he wishes cooler heads had prevailed on both sides. A police academy administrator points out that "you can talk your way into a ticket, or into jail" by antagonizing the police on the scene. The disorderly charges against Gates have been dropped. But the blame game has just begun, and if you worked for PBS, would you assemble a panel consisting of a black law enforcement officer, Al Sharpton, and Archie Bunker?
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Further details and opinions, anyone?

Comments

[Johanna Cass]

A parable for our times.

[Vincent]

Not Archie Bunker. Rudy Giuliani.

[mitch s.]

i hesitate to comment on this but -- cops cannot tolerate the feeling that they are not in control of a situation and anyone who gives them that feeling is looking for trouble. it doesn't really matter what race you are and it certainly doesn't matter if you're a "distinguished professor." how could somebody who's an authority on any kind of real world experience be this out of touch with how to deal with the police? or is his ego simply too inflated to navigate that situation? it's just really exasperating to read about -- especially when it's blamed on racial profiling and other red herrings. Obviously Gates should stay safely on NPR and PBS and "the Vineyard." Otherwise, as was so eloquently stated by another professor who had a similar experience in the '60s, he might get "kicked and beaten about the buttocks."

[Marissa Despain]

I'm with Mitch on this one, though I understand that taking any stance other than the reflexive one is risky. A lot of the details of this story haven't been circulating, including that someone called the police when they noticed suspicious behavior. I sure wish Obama had stayed out of it.
Marissa

[Richard Garcia]

Of course I don’t know the details of the Harvard case but this is what I do know:

I once saw a man, a white guy, brought into a police station. The story was that he was a driver for a cola truck (he had his uniform on) and his boss, mad at him for goofing off, reported the truck stolen. The cops were a little pushy with him and he pushed back. They got a little rougher and he freaked, screaming and thrashing. Meanwhile, other prisoners in their cells were making fun at him, or yelling at him to shut up. The last I saw of the driver four cops had him by the arms and legs, and took him to a room behind two big steel doors. They used his head to open the doors.

I once had a very angry cop point a gun at my head. They don’t like it when you escape. His face was red, he was trembling and his eyes were bugged out. I smiled at him nice, I was polite, and he did not shoot me.

Moral: when stopped by the cops be nice. Don’t feed into their fears and stereotypes.

[Christopher Yost]

Thank you for filing this report. It's the first I've read that captures some of the humor in the situation. In my humble view, Richard and Mitch are right, as is the official who says that you can talk yourself into a ticket or an arrest.

[Emma Trelles]

It certainly isn't against the law to shout at someone, especially in your own home, but yes, this kind of reaction towards a police officer will likely lead to arrest. I've seen it happen. Like Mitch, I wondered if Prof. Gates was just out of touch with this infuriating reality or simply thought he was exempt from it. I have no idea. I do know that it's utterly ludicrous to be arrested in your own home because you are non-violently angry, and I know that black men are treated shamelessly in cities from coast to coast. And I also know that when a police officer shows up, it's better to stay calm and say as little as possible.

[Sylvie Planet]

je ne toucherais ca sauf avec un poteau de trois metres (dans le sens de la longueur).

[Reggie Greene / The Logistician]

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.

[Laura Orem]

Everything everyone has said here makes sense. I think it's possible and indeed probable that both of these things are true: 1)Prof. Gates lost his temper and 2) the police officer overreacted in response. Once it was established that this was Gates' home, the officers should have just left. I agree with Pres. Obama - the officer acted stupidly. I think the argument can be made that Prof. Gates also acted stupidly, but there is no law against acting stupidly in your own home, which is why the charges were dropped. Nobody comes off looking good here.

[Laura Orem]

Charles Blow in the NYTimes on the issue:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/opinion/25blow.html