The Prof and the Cop

This is in response to the news reports of Ms. Whalen, the citizen who phoned the police when she saw what she thought could very well have been the forced entry of a house on the street where she was driving. Her testimony sheds much light on what happened and it turns out that at no point had she raised the issue or mentioned the race of the persons she witnessed. Indeed the only mention of the race of one of the suspected participants was in response to questions by the police dispatcher.

I am saddened by the polls that indicate that a preponderance of people think that Prof. Gates was out of line in this incident and deserved arrest even though the police dropped charges. Ms. Whalen helps put the truth of this matter in better perspective by showing that race had nothing to do with her concern to report what she felt might be a breakin she saw at a house in Cambridge and I think deserves commendation for being a responsible citizen. It is clear that the police dispacther is the only one who raised the irrelevant question of the skin color of those who appeared to be forcing the door. This woman was simply doing what we are all urged to do, notify the police if we think we are witnessing or have seen a crime taking place.

Sgt. Crowley blew his cool and overreacted to what was probably Prof. Gates' obvious irritation at being confronted as a criminal in his own home. When the professor came out on the porch it would have been better for the police to ask that everyone calm down and see if the situation could be sorted out. No weapons were involved, no victims were in danger, there was no time limit on this incident. The basic fact remains and always will, Gates was arrested after he had shown conclusive evidence that he was in his own home. We are left to conclude that this event was tainted by racial bias, not on the part of Ms. Whalen, or for that matter, Gates, but by Sgt. Crowley, and it is he who should step up and redeem himself by apologising to the professor and the public for very unprofessional behavior. Our President was right, Crowley on behalf of his police department can be said to have acted stupidley.

I have been a fan of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. for some time and have enjoyed his televison work on PBS. His edited book, Lincoln on Race and Slavery, is a masterful and balanced presentation, in Lincoln's own words, of our Civil War president's changing and growing understanding of the African American citizens who had been brought to this country in bondage. Lincoln was a man of his time and place and his attitude toward the blacks, slave and free, developed from a position of seeing them only as inferiors and a problem group who would be better sent back to Africa or colonized in some place like South America to arriving at the point where he could issue the two executive orders which changed forever their status in this nation.

The first Presidential order issued in 1862 announced the freedom of all slaves in any of the Confederate states that didn't return to the Union by January first, 1863, the second order of course, the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed over 20,000 enslaved persons. The Proclamation was critisized on all sides, both for turning loose slaves in the ten named states as well as not including slaves in the border states. By the end of the war millions of slaves were freed. In Lincoln's mind, much of this was because of the debt the nation owed to the nearly 200,000 slaves who had voluntarily served the Union forces and made possible the ending of that horrible war.

Whatever our views on racial equality and justice, Professor Gates was in his own home when he was arrested and handcuffed.