And then there are a class of black people, who like other highly accomplished people, have higher expectations, for how the police treat all people, but specifically for how cops treat them. I think it's important to remember, when you hear Barack Obama doubling down on this, exactly what world of black people he's rolling with. It's worth understanding, specifically, the world of Valarie Jarrett. It's worth understanding that Harold Ford isn't just a black guy, he's the scion of a southern political dynasty. This isn't Good Times. Or the Coates family. (Though we are on our way up, Negroes. Hide your debutantes, and guard your grill.)
There's a way of doing this analysis as a criticism--i.e. they only care because it's Gates. Surely class plays a role, but I think seeing it that way is as reductive as a strict race analysis. I also don't want to slip into any lazy-ass bashing of the black upper-middle class. I've got no beef with Jack & Jill. Living in Harlem, I probably wouldn't do it. But if I lived in Colorado, I may well feel different.
Lastly, it's interesting that Mike Barnicle can't acknowledge that this guy made a stupid bust. The whole panel has basically given up the racial profiling theory. But Barnicle can't move an inch. That may be generational. Or ethnic. Or geographical. Or just human.
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Lastly, it's interesting that Mike Barnicle can't acknowledge that this guy made a stupid bust. The whole panel has basically given up the racial profiling theory. But Barnicle can't move an inch. That may be generational. Or ethnic. Or geographical. Or just human.
They come from the same place. Working class, Irish Catholic, Boston-area boys who entered police work and journalism, careers that others from their position have also used to move into (and stay in) the middle classes. Barnicle sees himself in Crowley.
And I think his brother is a long-time Boston police officer. Barnicle has a lot of police and firefighter connections, and built more over his years as a metro reporter and columnist for the Globe.
I mean, yeah, basically. I sort of alluded to this the other day when I said this case was getting to me more than the Walker case was.
MAJeff beat me to it. I have seen Barnicle work the blue collar angle regarding journalism and how journalists used to be more middle class and could therefore relate more to a larger chunk of their readers on some level.
I think he sees himself as one of the few remaining voices of the middle class, even though he no longer is middle class.
Just like Chris Matthews and Tim Russert and Pat Buchanan and Howie Carr....
what is most ironic is that barnicle's own background proves that he is indeed a member of the privileged classes who are not treated like other folks. and especially black folks.
he's a plagiarist who was forced to resign from his job years ago.
if he'd been an african-american journalist, he would have slinked away never to be heard from again, maybe working for some community newsletter in rural alabama.
instead, because his irish mafia boys refused to toss him under the bus, he's a regular on national television, and no one is ever rude enough to even mention that dark period of his history.
privilege, indeed.
Good point. He was forced to resign from the Globe within the same six month period as a black female columnist--Patricia Walker, I think her name was. For the same reason. Has anyone heard from her since?
Don't discount the fact that Harold Ford Jr's family has had a lot of interraction with police officers and not in a good way. Being from Memphis I can confirm that he is from a black political dynasty. But I can also tell you that his family is gully. Now I have been very critical of Ford Jr because he has been a milquetoast on Morning Joe. But that is the Harold Ford Jr I knew growing up in Memphis back in the day and I wish he was like that more often.
I'm hard on Harold as well but you are right Sg. Also, doesn't he have a brother that is sitting in jail RIGHT NOW?
Not sure about his brother because I thought he was out, but of course his uncle is doing major time right now and his uncles AND aunts have been in trouble with the police in the past.
i'm waiting for someone to ask men like ford and carlos watson and even obama whether they've had similar run-ins with police.
i'd be willing to bet that each and every one has indeed had their own run-ins.
carlos watson hesitated when someone asked him why he would not have reacted as gates had reacted and i'd bet that he was recalling his own unpleasant encounter.
of course, if you're an upstanding, well-known guy who has his own cable newshour, or a national politician like obama or ford, you don't like to talk about that kind of stuff, but it would certainly illuminate the discussion if folks would just fess up and add their own stories to the thread.
@frankied
Carlos stated that he has had run-ins with the cops most recently in New Jersey. He also spoke of his father.
Obama has stated that he has had a hard time getting a cab.
Just curious - what is "gully"?
@ jammilah,
thanks for the info.
i missed that.
that makes lots of sense and explains why he is not doing the kind of typical wishy-washy dance most folks typically do in this circumstance.
i give him lots of credit for discussing it publically.
that is the only way that this type of nonsense is going to stop.
Hood. Gangsta..won't take any mess.
Thanks! Appreciate that. Maybe I can find a way to work that new vocab into a conversation soon. Ha.
Mike Barnicle? Mike Barnicle!!?? The same guy that got fired for making up stories in the Boston Globe and presenting them as real? This the same guy? The guy that "knows" what happened on that porch because he covered it for so many years?
please.
That Mika chick just likes guns and everything they represent. She especially likes the guys that own them.
Again. The cops f-cked up. They won't man up and cop to it.
Move along. Nothing to see here.
oops. Should link to the story about Barnicle.
Huh, there's a class thing going on here too, then. Gates is upper middle class, cop is working class. He's being treated rudely perhaps he thinks, and perhaps Barnicle thinks, because he's low class, historically spat upon in that part of the country. And hey, if you step on the dignity of a police officer he's got the power to do something about it.
But that isn't it, either. People talk trash to the police because they feel they are resisting authority.
But in the end, even Barnicle admitted that the cop wouldn't have arrested a white man under exactly the same circumstances. Watch that part of the tape again--it's like time just stops for a moment.
I think a point that didn't come out was that although there is a higher standard for how we talk to police, there should also be a higher standard for how they behave. Cops are called on to do all kinds of things. What if someone was going to commit suicide by jumping off a building and the police were called to the scene. The cop should know how to defuse that situation. But if the cop can't de-escalate a shouting match with a 60-year old man, with an artifical hip and bronchitis, how can be expected to handle a situation like that or more stressful parts of the job that will inevitably happen? This cop just lost it and slapped the cuffs on---is that the kind of guy you want on the beat in your hood? Forget the racism, the bottom line is that this was substandard policework in every way and that should have been the focus of Barnicle and Mika.
And if this is Harold Ford "animated" then I'd be intersted to see him when he's actually thrilled about something. There's just something about the man that breathes "milquetoast".
He is the chairman on the DCCC! You can't expect a firebrand there. Mika is getting worst. I used to watch her for her looks (great looking MILF!), but she is getting dumber by the day. I can't stand her new hick creed (Love guns, hate tax, have cousins in Red America!)Stop it already.
Not to make too much of the class issue, as you have said this is complex/multifacted, and this could be pure projection on my part but when Ogletree referred to the taxi driver as "his" driver instead of "the" driver it stuck in my craw a bit as an all too familiar gown and town scenario.
If nothing else this is a good example of how there is no ONE reaction to, understanding of any event/issue. And maybe we are a step closer to people no longer asking for THE perspective from any people (to the degree that we can even agree on who is or isn't in an ethnic/racial group anymore) on such matters. I would welcome an end to stereotypes good and bad for clarities sake.
I might be wrong but I thought Ogletree described the driver as "his" driver because Professor Gates used that same car service frequently.
Yeah. I didn't see much wrong with that.
Yeah. I didn't see much wrong with that.
makes sense, as I said the "projection" possibility loomed large but I thought I would throw it out there. Not a phrase that I would have used so I appreciate the clarification.
TNC:
You make a good case about how the "privileged class" has certain expectations in terms of how they should be treated and so forth. (I referenced Ellis Cose's book yesterday, THE RAGE OF A PRIVILEGED CLASS). And in many ways, the outrage that you have seen is mostly being fueled by these people--people who have immediate access to media outlets such as MSNBC, The Nation, and so forth. (Interestingly, it was Stephen A. Smith who gave some perspective on the issue: he spoke with common sense, somewhere between the Gates wing and the Limbaugh wing, and talked about how the Gates thing is really minor compared to what happens to everyday brothers, well, everyday.)
However, I don't see that privileged class thing operative here. Given who Ford is, I think it makes sense to assume that his outrage comes from those class roots. But I think it might be too hasty; he doesn't seem to play up the Gates is famous bit, or the he was a professor thing. He makes the point that it was stupid because he was in his own home--and then applies that to the fact that the arrest would have been an outrage even if it were the garbage collector of Cambridge. I don't think you are giving Ford enough credit.
I should confess that this has been a frustrating case for me personally to follow. Because I am young in my academic career and I travel in these circles (on the periphery), I have to be careful about what I say if I ever want to get tenure, etc. I don't come from these circles; I am come from working class negroes in Baltimore. But I am severely hamstrung in terms of writing and talking about it. (I even refrained from addressing it on my own blog). And, you know, that is another aspect of this privileged class: they are insular, parochial, and it is all about loyalties and who you know and who don't offend. They do not care for honesty or intellectual curiosity. I feel like a straight punk for not saying what I really think of the Gates situation and the post-arrest "outrage."
But yeah, that's who they are: scratching each other's back and believing they deserve special treatment. In fact, there is a kind of initiation that you have to go through. Maybe one day, post-tenure I will write about it
TNC:
You make a good case about how the "privileged class" has certain expectations in terms of how they should be treated and so forth. (I referenced Ellis Cose's book yesterday, THE RAGE OF A PRIVILEGED CLASS). And in many ways, the outrage that you have seen is mostly being fueled by these people--people who have immediate access to media outlets such as MSNBC, The Nation, and so forth. (Interestingly, it was Stephen A. Smith who gave some perspective on the issue: he spoke with common sense, somewhere between the Gates wing and the Limbaugh wing, and talked about how the Gates thing is really minor compared to what happens to everyday brothers, well, everyday.)
However, I don't see that privileged class thing operative here. Given who Ford is, I think it makes sense to assume that his outrage comes from those class roots. But I think it might be too hasty; he doesn't seem to play up the Gates is famous bit, or the he was a professor thing. He makes the point that it was stupid because he was in his own home--and then applies that to the fact that the arrest would have been an outrage even if it were the garbage collector of Cambridge. I don't think you are giving Ford enough credit.
I should confess that this has been a frustrating case for me personally to follow. Because I am young in my academic career and I travel in these circles (on the periphery), I have to be careful about what I say if I ever want to get tenure, etc. I don't come from these circles; I am come from working class negroes in Baltimore. But I am severely hamstrung in terms of writing and talking about it. (I even refrained from addressing it on my own blog). And, you know, that is another aspect of this privileged class: they are insular, parochial, and it is all about loyalties and who you know and who don't offend. They do not care for honesty or intellectual curiosity. I feel like a straight punk for not saying what I really think of the Gates situation and the post-arrest "outrage."
But yeah, that's who they are: scratching each other's back and believing they deserve special treatment. In fact, there is a kind of initiation that you have to go through. Maybe one day, post-tenure I will write about it
Setting aside all of the other meta-discussions on race and class that surround this issue, the thing about all of this that creeps me out the most is that so many people are willing to defend this officer who, assuming the most charitable possible interpretation, arrested a guy because he didn't like his attitude. That is what Barnicle is defending. That is what the execrable Mika Brzenski is defending. That is what I have read numerous commenters on a multitude of sites from the entire political spectrum defend.
They are, as far as I am concerned, defending the indefensible and it is what Carlos and, surprisingly reasonably, Ford was trying to get through in that clip. They were saying that if you cannot agree that arresting Gates was just plain wrong then there is no possibility of moving the argument forward. There is no good faith argument to be had without starting from the point that officers do not get to arrest a guy because he says unkind things to him.
I have decided that I no longer have anything to say to people who can, with a straight face, defend this nonsense. Forget about race. Forget about class. Forget whether or not Gates or Officer Crowley are nice guys who treat their mothers well. The bottom line here is that an officer used the authority of law to restrict the liberty of a man who was expressing displeasure with him. If you think that is right, then you fundamentally disagree with the basic principle of a free society.
That is not hyperbole. If you are willing to grant any individual with a gun and a badge the authority to arrest people because they don't like them, then you and I share no common principle on liberty and the right of people to be free from oppression. None.
Your hitting on a good point. These are the limits of "dialogue." When you see people claiming that this arrest was entirely defensible, and there was nothing wrong, you question whether your having a good-faith discussion. At that point, what else is there to stay? How do you move forward?
Mr. Coates,
While I don't claim the arrest was entirely defensible, I can understand why some might think it is. For instance, have you seen the police report filed by the arresting officer's partner, Officer Figuera? http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/Gates_Arrest.pdf
I think this report sheds some more light on the circumstances of the arrest. Officer Crowley asked for Gate's information which he refused, saying "I will not!" His initial refusal to identify himself somewhat explains Officer Crowley's initial suspician.
Secondly, this report makes it clear that Gates was arrested after coming outside onto his porch, and shouting to several onlookers that he was being discriminated against, and that "This is what happens to a black man in America!"
I think that it is important that we understand that Gates was not inside his house when he was arrested, and he was not arrested for merely insulting Officer Crowley, but for being disorderly in his incitement of onlookers.
Amichel,
It's worth reading through this blog and comments. We've been grappling with this for several days. Every question you've asked here has been addressed. I'd rather not re-summarize.
In addition to this blog, it's also worth having some understanding of the statutes.
http://www.slate.com/id/2223379/
LOL. "Incitement of onlookers?" Really? Inciting them to do what exactly? Were they gonna start rioting? Overturning cars? Raid the police station? Are they gonna go arrest the people? Are the police gonna go arrest the people in Harvard Square protesting against injustice in Myanmar next?
Obviously I am being crudely dismissive, but frankly, it is really quite difficult to read these sort of arguments, which imply that Gates was presenting some sort of real menace to public safety, as anything other than transparently ridiculous. He was speaking his mind so that other people could hear. He wasn't shouting out the recipe to make a bomb.
I will repeat, if you find an arrest warranted in that circumstance, there really is nothing else to say. That's, as they say, a conversation ender.
Yes, because making a cop feel stupid in public should be a punishable offense.
Sorry, but if you're so thinned skinned you can't take being taunted (assuming this is what happened), you're too damned weak to be a cop.
Also, it's worth remembering that the police reports were written to justify the arrest. The reports become evidence in the event of a trial, so if there is any shadow of doubt in the report as to whether the cops actions were justified, then the actions they took aren't defensible in court.
AJH,
Pretty much. Like when Daniels walked Prezbylewski through the b.s., fabricated explanation of why he had to sock that kid at the Towers at 2AM.
It's also worth noting that the prosecutor (City Attorney/DA/whatever) saw the police report and still thought the arrest was unjustified.
yep, if you point this out to them and ask them to clarify their perspective and they just keep repeating themselves that seems to be the beginning of people talking at each other instead of to each other. We need some kind of shorthand for this phenomena, as a polite way to say no disrespect intended but this isn't productive, so see ya at the next posting and we can try again.
Amen, Brent.
But like TNC asked, how do you move forward? How can you find any common ground on which to build if there's such a fundamental disagreement over what our liberties mean? You can start a new thread, write a new post, but eventually this question returns.
pg, this is why some issues can only be resolved by "partisan" politics/legislation and courts (there seemed to be some confusion here over legal vs just but TNC wisely shifted us back to the statutes at hand), because there are limits to conversation. As for the blog maybe my suggestion above might help, sort of a one-sided, but well-intentioned, agreeing to disagree.
You can't really dialogue at that point. Some white people just have a problem with "angry black men" and for them, the fact that Gates got "angry" justifies the arrest. For me, it's a simple constitutional issue of privacy. If I was harassed like that in my own house I would respond the same way. Those cops didn't have a warrant; it was obvious a robbery wasn't taking place. They were just some macho dudes that wanted to throw their weight around against a black man who was being "uppity" with them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCxpSmVQIWU
I agree that the idea that someone with a badge has the authority to arrest you just because he/she doesn't like your attitude is a fundamental contradiction to a belief in free speech. I do wonder if the way Gates acted is related to his belief that in the US you cannot get arrested for words because of free speech. Maybe it's because my mother comes from a society where free speech is not a right, but I've always been taught that you do not antagonize the guy with immediate power over you and you do not show that words/insults from such a person bother you. Because of what I've been taught, even if free speech is a right, I don't think that I would dare exercise it in front of a cop.
brent: just a heads-up.
we highlighted this comment over at PostBourgie
(http://postbourgie.com/2009/07/24/quote-of-the-day-3/); it's been retweeted a billion times since then.
That was a very informative discussion.
For instance, I now know that Mike Barnicle's favorite character on The Wire was Herc.
LMAO. This.
Herein I will summarize many of the comments I've recently seen on conservative blogs:
Allow me, a white male, to take this opportunity to use my own highly analogous experience with police to demonstrate that there could not possibly be racism at work in the Gates case.
You see, when I was seventeen, dressed in a t-shirt, jeans, and ratty sneakers, I too suffered unfair police treatment. I was long-haired, jaywalking, and smoking a joint when a policeman a few yards away demanded that I come over to him in a most unkind tone.
"Do you know who my dad is?" I inquired angrily.
The policeman proceeded to call me a "bitch," arrest me, shove me roughly into the back of his squad car, charge me with simple possession and jaywalking. Despite my continued rants about my father's wealth and power, the policeman repeatedly demeaned me with emasculating insults and had me booked.
The fact that I, a poorly-dressed, seventeen-year-old white youth, was treated disrespectfully by the police serves as incontrovertible proof that the arrest of a law-abiding, blazer-wearing, bespectacled fifty-eight-year-old millionaire Harvard University professor inside his own home could not possibly have been influenced by the race of the parties involved.
In fact, I dare anyone to demonstrate even the slightest flaw in my reasoning, let alone suggest that equating my own experience as a spoiled white teenager to the arrest of a world-class black academic might be offensive.
Well, I don't know what websites you are reading, but there is some benefit to anecdotal stories. I HAVE been arrested in a situation similar to the professor's, and frankly, probably more ridiculous. My age, and stutus at the time should have absolutely zero to do with it. Are you suggesting that it makes sense for a white teenager to be arrested for what Gates did?
My personal story doesn't prove that blacks don't get treated unfairly by police officers. It doesn't even suggest that blacks don't get mistreated at a much higher level than whites. However, it does suggest that cops tend to do this type of shit, ALL. THE. TIME.
I'm not arguing that there aren't a lot of people out there who refuse to believe that there are any racial predjudices at all, but I don't think it is fair to dismiss people's own stories out of hand.
Or maybe I'm just defensive, because I'm still pissed about what happened to me, and I've had people blow it off before by suggesting I was a dumb college kid who had it coming.
I won't comment on the racial argument.
However, I wonder how your arrest for jaywalking, and smoking pot, which you admit to actually doing, can be compared to being arrested in your own home for mouthing off at an officer?
There's your flaw. The two situations aren't the same. This case isn't about merely being treated disrespectfully.
Or were you just summarizing what you have read on other blogs? In that case that's my argument towards the blogs.. :)
He was pretending to be a commenter on another blog. It's kind of a strange post.
I'm just poking fun at the numerous police apologists I've seen on various blogs who justify the treatment of Professor Gates by comparing his situation to that of a spoiled white teenager or poor, white redneck. Obviously, if we decide we want to examine the racial element of this through analogy we can only do so meaningfully by comparing Professor Gates to a man of similar wealth, stature, and accomplishment. I find the posts comparing him to an unaccomplished, poverty-stricken white man pretty offensive.
Honesty, I think anybody who decides the cop acted appropriately is bending over backwards to exonerate him. I'm not a cop and I don't hang out with them, but I've known some here and there and I think in the hypothetical they'd all tell you that you don't arrest somebody in his home for yelling at you. I mean who hasn't seen Cops or some such show? Inevitably, the police head over to some house on a complaint and things are a little wild but there's been no crime committed. Then the resident gets mad and starts yelling at the cop. The officer works to deescalate the situation, leaves, and rolls his eyes telling the camera, this is what we get to deal with in Memphis. And it's true. Cops deal with stupid crap in the course of doing their jobs. There's plenty of evidence that Prof Gates behaved stupidly, to borrow a presidential turn of phrase, but that's not an excuse for a cop, a person we pay to exercise judgement about public safety, to overreact.
I not only agree with you, but wanted to thank you for teaching me (to type).
I think this galls the "privileged class" more than the rest of us, precisely because their wealth and status are supposed to insulate them from this type of treatment. Mike Bloomberg would never be accosted by the police, but they'll grab Earl Graves. And it's galling because it's a clear demonstration to them that their wealth and achievement won't protect them because their skin color trumps that.
true.
when it comes down to it, stuff like this simply shows that they're still just a n@gga...
that is undoubtedly a bitter pill to swallow.
I agree with you, dwhite. I feel like there is a sentiment among white people that the real problem now is class, not race, and accusations of racial discrimination are rooted in some sort of inability to let go of the past. Yet, when confronted with a situation like this, when a Harvard professor is arrested for being tumultuous (still love that they used that word, can't explain why), like you said, his skin color trumped everything else.
Also, if I am remembering the story accurately, people are conflating his statement of "you don't know who you are dealing with" into a "do you know who I am?" I see it as him warning the officer that he was not dealing with someone who would cower in front of authority for authority's sake, but would do things like request a badge number and defend his rights, as opposed to the interpretation that he believed everyone in the Cambridge area should know who Skip Gates is. Of course, that is just my personal conjecture.
I think even more so, Gates was letting the officer know that he was sufficiently powerful and connected that his rights are actually his rights and that the cop had better follow the law.
So many people say that the key to dealing with police is to be very polite, comply with everything they say, and essentially allow them to violate our rights. This is necessary, they say, because cops can do whatever the hell they want, make up any story they want, and you'll end up getting arrested and possibly sitting in jail.
This is crap - accepting that the police do not need to respect our rights, and essentially allowing the police to follow a law other than the written one that applies to Americans!
Gates saw the opportunity to make the distinction between the actual law and the law as followed by the police. And he knew nothing bad would ultimately happen to him, and that the police would have to answer for violating the law.
Never forget that Miranda was a scumbag rapist, kidnapper and armed robber who died in a bar brawl. It didn't mean the police could do whatever they wanted to him.
There are 2 issues here - one is that police should respect our rights and the second is that in reality police do not respect people's rights. Cops (and people with power in government in general) are clearly treated differently from others - just look at any of the stories that TNC has posted recently. The police in Gates' case will not likely face any consequences, no matter what the law is. I doubt that Gates' immediate actions will make any difference. It is possible that he will be able to make changes through future work in the Cambridge/Boston community now that he's felt this personally.
And of course, what's the point of having privilege if you're not aware with it and never use it?!
The reason this galls me is that I know of the blood, sweat, and tears that has gone into limiting tyranny -- the arbitrary exercise of authority by the state.
This is, to be sure, a petty incident in and of itself, but it is fascinating in the way that it plumbs people's opinions of the just society. To put it politely, I'm deeply disappointed and angered by the number of people for whom the the major concern is that we not hurt the feelings of the Cambridge police department.
There's a good deal more at stake than Crowley's feelings and self-image, or Gates' and much of it has to do with our willingness to limit state authority.
The reason this galls me is that I know of the blood, sweat, and tears that has gone into limiting tyranny -- the arbitrary exercise of authority by the state.
This is, to be sure, a petty incident in and of itself, but it is fascinating in the way that it plumbs people's opinions of the just society. To put it politely, I'm deeply disappointed and angered by the number of people for whom the the major concern is that we not hurt the feelings of the Cambridge police department.
There's a good deal more at stake than Crowley's feelings and self-image, or Gates' and much of it has to do with our willingness to limit state authority.
Well, even more, Gates is "friends" or has connections with a lot of the black privileged class who has been put in a position to professionally comment on the situation.
So, it's just not that individual members of this so-called class would be reflecting on the issue from their own position and experience but also because they have some connection with the aggrieved individual.
I mean it's fascinating to see his connections, although it's hard to tell just how close some of these relationships are, but the amount of media members who have acknowledged some relationship with Gates, whether it be informally or through Harvard or whatever has been significant.
Then, obviously, he appears to be "friends" with the President of the United States and the Governor of Massachusetts, both who a) may have had or in Patrick's case believe to have had experiences with racial profiling in the past b) both happen to be the first black position holders of their type and c) both went to Harvard.
Both Patrick and Obama would face pressure to remark on the incident because of their positions as "firsts" and also because of their political standings. It's been interesting to watch the difference in how they handle it because Patrick is up for re-election soon and no Governor is really popular when the legislature seems decently corrupt, you've tried to cut back on paid police details, and you have the worst budget crisis in MA history.
There are two things that I think pushed the cop past the point of no return. I'm not excusing his behavior at all. I think it WAS a stupid arrest.
First, given that the cop is considered the Cambridge Police Department's subject matter expert on racial profiling, I suspect that he, consciously or not, moved into arrest mode when Gates said whatever he said that made the cop feel that he was being accused of racism or of committing racial profiling. Gates questioned, even negated, the cop's area of expertise, in front of a number of the cop's colleagues. I don't know about the rest of you, but when the things I think I am best at are questioned or negated, it's really hard to stay composed, move on, and remain open to whatever comes next, especially if this happens in front of a group that also understands me to be accomplished at whatever is being negated or questioned.
Second, I do volunteer work in a local prison here in Boston. In my experience, as a middle-aged white churchlady volunteer, in the midst of a conflict or some sort of tension, nothing gets the guards more agitated than asking for their name and badge number. I don't understand why this is, but on the few occasions when my volunteer coordinator (also a middle-aged white churchlady) has felt the need to do this, it is like a heavy gate or wall drops down and eclipses any rapport we may have had before. Doesn't matter what the color or gender of the guard is.
Aside from those 2 points, my general read of this debacle that you have two men of privilege (Gates with his Harvard professor privilege and the cop with his privilege of uniform, badge, and gun) who are probably more accustomed to the world being deferential to them as a default. When neither got the deference he expects and prefers, testosterone and ego took over. I believe race is undeniably a part of this, and I think the aspects of privilege, class, ego, and, yes, testosterone, were also significant contributors.
"nothing gets the guards more agitated than asking for their name and badge number. I don't understand why this is, but on the few occasions when my volunteer coordinator (also a middle-aged white churchlady) has felt the need to do this, it is like a heavy gate or wall drops down and eclipses any rapport we may have had before."
Do you really find it surprising that implicitly threatening to try to get someone fired reduces your rapport with them?
If you equate holding someone personally accountable for their behavior with getting them fired, then, no, I guess it's not surprising. The public evidence tends to support that the law enforcement class of workers, as a group, generally has to do pretty heinous things to get fired, and they know it. My asking for their badge number because they refuse to let me in if I don't tell them my SSN, after I have already given them my state-issued photo ID, that's hardly grounds for termination, and they know that, too. I suspect that what ruins the rapport is the fact that we would have the gall to assume that they can't just treat us however they want whenever they want, simply by virtue of their uniform.
^^this
Two observations:
(1) I think that much of the mainstream, elite media's reaction to President Obama's comment comes out of a feeling that our president (who has carefully crafted a non-threatening image) somehow betrayed them by speaking up for the black guy who was speciously characterized as "loud and tumultuous" for purposes of a bogus arrest.
(2) I also find it curious that some people in the mainstream media find Gates' allegation of racism is more offensive than the officer's blatant abuse of police power.
I don't think most of the discussion with Obama's comments would be taking place if he hadn't used the word "stupidly" which in politics, at least, is pretty blunt and especially for someone like Obama who has always been extremely careful with his word choice.
What if instead he had said "I think the Cambridge PD should have used better judgment (or discretion)"?
That's certainly a softer way of getting your point across and less likely to fill out television programming the next day.
Regarding assertion (1), I disagree. I think the arrest of Gates was likely stupid as well, even leaving the race issues aside. However, I took offense to Obama stepping into this because it seems like class-based bullying. This cop really did "mess with the wrong guy" in that he upset a member of the elite, and the elite protect their own. I find that offensive.
Did you see Chris Matthews' coverage of this whole issue? He kept worrying that "some people" will think that the president "took the wrong side" on this issue.
I think that it is a little unfair to find offense in Obama 'stepping' in to this debate. He could have said "no comment" but given the history behind this issue (class, racial..and even maybe his own personal experience) I am not surprised he had response.
I don't feel Obama's comment as class-based bullying. Everyone within a group will tend to stand by their group- class, race, family or whatever. A President is not immune to that. Humans aren't. The Pres. stated a fact: police brutality towards blacks and hispanics is disproportionate towards other races. That isn't a class thing.
What should be upsetting, like TNC blogged about earlier is that the media only cares about it because Gates happened to be a friend within the same class. How many countless blacks being harassed by police and how many times is a President asked about it?
i'm watching the press conference offered by the union of the cop.
amazing.
the fact that these folks refuse to deal with the historical context of the cop's actions is not surprising. what is amazing is that supposed bright people attempt to deal with this circumstance without dealing with that context.
now, let's see whether both patrick and obama are wimps or whether they have any cojones.
i'm not optimistic.
i expect the typical obama supplication pretty soon.
i'd bet that it comes out tonight, right after the evening news.
We got a thread going on further up. Most amazing was his contention that the minute Gates didn't cooperate, the cop was within his right to arrest him. That is incredible.
thanks. i'll check that out.
oh yea, i forgot to mention.
his craven apology will be an indication of a fantastically complex, long-range strategy that will take time to unfold.
About the "privileged class" topic.. I wonder what it's like being at that level in the Ivy League for Professor Gates, because he is certainly not *from* a privileged class, he is from Piedmont, West Virginia. Anyone else ever been there? Working class small town that is right near the paper mill (used to be Westvaco) and smells like chemicals from that mill pretty much all the time. I grew up not far away, my dad used to know Prof. Gates a little bit.
And I went to the Ivy League for a while too - Invisman52, I hear you on the points about not offending people & lack of intellectual honesty, at times. I expect most people in the academy do not share Prof. Gates' background, not only race, but class background, and I wonder how that affected his experience there, rising through the ranks. So I wonder if the two of you might not have in common a certain sense of (and frustration with) what one can & can't say, within the confines of the academy.
Gates, at this point, is honorary Black upper class, even though he wasn't born into it. Or that is to say, I think he has been accepted into that group by the members of that group, even in a way that the Obamas probably haven't been just yet (i.e., some of those folks are still talking shit about Michelle Obama's background and humble beginnings.)
"some of those folks are still talking shit about Michelle Obama's background and humble beginnings."
WTF ???? Total fucking assholes.
That's all.
My informal survey of various message boards leads me to conclude that the people who scream and whine most passionately about protecting our freedoms and rights, and claim to be deprived of those same freedoms every time a politician wants to impose a 1% tax on chaw or limit access to hollow points, are most in favor of the police being permitted to arrest a man in his own home for the crime of being rude to a policeman (provided that man is black).
Perfect. I tried to make that point to my fellow Texans yesterday. They can't see it.
Yikes. Barnicle's argument which ends @6:48 gives me the creeps. The miming of the handcuffing was done with a wee bit of relish, me thinks.
I think Obama committed the classic Michael Kinsley Gaffe, he told the truth when everyone expects a politician to weasel out with a non answer.
Lets look again at what he said, he said the cop behaved stupidly, that is it, he didn't say it was criminal, he didn't say the guy should be fired, he didn't even say he should be disciplined, he just said he made a mistake. Given that the Cambridge police immediately dropped the charges and said they regret that the arrest happened what exactly are they disagreeing with? If arresting a guy who immediately is released and then acknowledging that the arrest shouldn't have happened isn't saying the officer messed up what is it?
We've all seen a basketball game where a player is upset about a call and rather than diffusing the situation the referee escalates it and goads the guy into a T. Or a baseball game where the ump baits the manager into getting himself ejected. They are supposed to be bigger men who don't get into it but they often have a chip on their shoulder. My guess is this situation was similar, being an arrogant Harvard professor with a "who do you think your dealing with attitude" meant Gates likely copped some attitude with the cop, but that is where the cop is paid to be the bigger man, he is supposed to know how to calm the situation not escalate it.
I wonder on some level if the issue so many have, possibly subconsciously is the fact that Obama said a white man acted stupidly. If he had said the cop clearly made a mistake would the reaction be the same?
I agree. I think people feel Obama should be that paid personnel who should be bigger than the baiter. The journalist was baiting him and Obama should have 'no commented' her.
I don't agree. I appreciate Obama's comment. Now is that because I agree with Obama? Probably.
Meh. I suspect Obama knew what he was doing. He wouldn't be where he was if he were gaffe-prone.
I should have put gaffe in quotes, in the Kinsley definition that is what he means, it isn't actually a gaffe.
Oh man. I finally just watched this video and it made me sick to my stomach. That Ford and Watson had to sit there and try to educate these people is just so depressing. I have an outrage hangover.
Wow - I turned The Morning Jerks off before this part of the exchange. Believe it or not, I got disgusted with Mika and her buddy Barnicle before they even started this segment of the discussion. Also, Harold Ford stepped up his game as the thing progressed and I've got to give him credit.
Look, the class angle doesn't sell me. If the cop wrongly arrested Skip Gates out of class resentment, I don't think that's better.
And to be honest, I don't think a white man's class resentment of a black man can easily be disentangled from race. But say it was. Do the Cambridge cops get to arrest everybody upper-middle-class whom they consider too arrogant? If they arrest E. O. Wilson or Laurence Tribe tomorrow in similar circumstances, it's still not right.
As for the other angle on class, that it's only a problem when upper-middle-class types get railroaded, I have to admit that I'm an outsider to that conversation. But isn't it just a desire for the same rules to apply to blacks as well as to whites?
You can't tell me that a stereotypical white biker doesn't get treated differently than a stereotypical white banker. Is that right? No. But there's also an element of performance, rather than pure class involved. If you perform law-abiding citizen, you expect the police to register that performance. There's an unjust and inaccurate set of class expectations in that performance. But if you can't get a fair shake even when you're doing the official "right" thing, what the hell are you supposed to do? It's not that Gates, Ford and Watson are endorsing all the rules of the game. They're pointing out that they're not even being allowed to play the game.
I know that if I'm dressed neatly and speak in an educated way, the police will generally treat me better. I know if I grow my hair long and wear a "Born to Lose" T-shirt, police are more likely to misunderstand me. The bar to misunderstanding is much, much lower for African-Americans dealing with the police, and the standards for performing "law abiding" much, much higher. That's wrong. But the solution is certainly not to raise the bar impossibly high even for Harvard professors, MSNBC anchors, and DCCC chairs.
Thinking and talking through the “privileged class” aspect of this spectacle is actually useful because it pushes us to think about class in the US, something that isn’t often or easily addressed, and it helps us to see a public display of the very toughness with which racism (at the individual and structural level) keeps its hold because ordinary mitigations associated with class position don’t necessarily hold when it comes to folks of color. In other words, watching the expectations associated with upper middle-classness get up-ended shows us something.
That’s why the fact that Gates is an ivy league academic and black is useful in returning our attention to police misconduct in more general terms. Even if a particular cop is not an active bigot, the spectacularity of this incident at least makes us talk about what US commonsense exists with regard to being subjects of scrutiny by the police. What I hear and see people talking about is how much people are trained to give way to police authority and whether or not that should be the case. What I hear and see people talking about is whether somebody’s class standing successfully exempts them from the automatic cop defence expected by to be shown by everybody. What I hear from some folks is resentment that upper class folks might expect that they shouldn’t bear the costs of police authoritarianism especially if those folks are black or somehow “other.” I’m fascinated by how many people (of various self-described races or ethnicities) in this thread or the earlier one on the Gates incident have talked about what it means that Gates didn’t get the memo on how to survive an encounter with the cops while being not-Caucasian.
And that’s interesting in and of itself given how much many US-ers seem to think (given comments in public forums like blogs) on non-spectacular occasions that our system’s economic mobility means that the US is *not* class stratified. Or, how much many US-ers seem to think, again on non-spectacular occasions, that race constraints only effect ordinary (non-upper class) people.
Oliver Cromwell Cox, a black American sociologist writing in the 1940s, produced stunning work on the intertwining of class, caste, and race in the US; the issue isn’t new. We just seem to have to rediscover it on a regular basis usually in the presence of some kind of spectacle whether a cop shooting of a black unarmed poor immigrant or an arrested black Harvard professor.
"Thinking and talking through the “privileged class” aspect of this spectacle is actually useful "
Since it gives you more ammo to claim the cop is less than human eh'? Prof. Gates erred in his loud and prejudiced assumptions. I can't imagine how anyone not predisposed to particular prejudices against cops or in this case white cops in particular could look at the facts and see anything other than two humans pride butting up against each other.
Systemic racism my ass. The only time I've watched any cop take the kind of abuse and humiliation this guy laid out was when they are trying to look ultra-professional during a COPS filming. Usually somebody goes to to jail no matter what color who is.
Your efforts to be even handed about this are admirable Ta-Nehisi. The title here really nails the crux of the problem in my view.
"The Rage Of A Privileged Class" indeed. I can understand why people who have been pulled over for "driving while black" would read race into this. The trouble is that if you grow up a middle class white person and know folks on both sides of the law you would not expect to be treated any differently. I've seen cops do asinine things in my life and been in a rage about it. Was younger and drove crappy cars I got pulled over and searched spuriously all the time. Its not just black folks that happens to. Its anybody who fits the "suspicious" profile. Sure I could change that and never got pulled over again after I could afford a Volvo.
Some Cops can be officious pricks, aggressively suspicious, racist and every other kind of -ist. That's because they are just people like everyone else and not all of them are one particular way or another. The constant assumptions to the contrary just because one is a white authority figure seem prejudiced to me. Form some quarters that racially prejudiced but I've watched spoiled trust funders talk their way into hand cuffs just as easily as Gates did.
Barnicle's stance is only partly generational. You have to remember that he's a guy with a solid working class upbringing. When I read through the whole incident particularly from the officers perspective in the police report at Smoking Gun http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/0723092gates2.html , the bit where he decides to arrest him really stood out for me. What it reminded me of was the last sentence of Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant".
"I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool."
The problem here was that Gates didn't just act rude. He tried to humiliate the man in front of a crowd of people. That was the point where he got arrested. I'm to lazy to transcribe the key piece but I highly recommend reading the police report and trying to put yourself in the guys shoes for a minute. Maybe you have to have worked at some sort high pressure job involving confrontation to recognize that moment where the cop has to maintain stoic professionalism while being humiliated or do something unprofessional and stupid to feel like he's saving face. Back before all this postmodern focus on feelings that those of use still under forty grew up with a was a rare person who saw the slightest thing wrong with making the kind of decision the officer made here. Now a days more of us could recognize a more rational path path but the person who could manage to not slap cuffs on him is much rarer creature than those that would. While all some people are going to see here is race all a guy like Barnicle is going to see here is the position that Gates' behavior put the man just trying to do his job in. It has nothing to do with race whatsoever but at least something to do with class and everything to do with pride on both sides. Its a proud Harvard professor treating a working class guy with derision due to his own prejudices.
Was it a "bad bust"? It looked barely legal but I suppose that's arguable. Yet I've have seen plenty of less egregious things end with somebody not so privileged as Gates is go to jail. If he wasn't a rich and well known asshole we'd have never heard about it or cared.