As far as I can tell, anything that makes the evening news at least three times is a cinch these days to be made into a reality show. Since, more than two weeks after the fact, the gum-flapping about the arrest of Professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates shows no sign of abating, you can see where we’re headed. “Elites in Handcuffs” would be an ideological natural for the Fox Reality Channel, or it could simply be spun off “Cops.” As the presumed pilot for the show, “Gatesgate” presents some interesting angles. On the one hand, Professor Gates, once described as the “Michael Jordan of Academia,” (I assume Birkenstock will be introducing a “Skip” super-sandal) is about as close to a celebrity as the ranks of the professoriate have been known to produce and, ipso fatso, therefore and thusly, he is a member of the nation’s much-reviled liberal “elite,” who devote themselves entirely to looking down on all the Sarah Palins and Joe-the-Plumbers among us with ill-concealed condescension and contempt.
Unlike many of those with whom he rubs leather-patched elbows, however, hailing from a blue-collar black family in Piedmont, West Virginia, Professor Gates was clearly not born on third base. (Check out his terrific childhood memoir, Colored People.) After the case broke, Helene Cooper wrote a great “insider” piece about African Americans who rose from definite disadvantage to the peak of celebrity and influence in their professions. For many of them, the result has been a certain, to borrow a term from W.E.B. Dubois, “double consciousness” or “duality” of perspective and identity that can be very beneficial in some ways, especially in terms of an enhanced capacity to see more than one side of a problem or its potential solution. On the other hand, the duality factor can also be a drag because it essentially comes with the built-in challenge of sustaining identities in two radically disparate spheres while appearing at least to be equally comfortable in both. Whether you are sitting in on a big-time powerbroker confab or gnawing on some ribs at your favorite joint back home, there are bound to be a number of times when you have to fight the feeling that you just don’t “belong.” All of us have had that sensation at least once, and I have never heard anyone describe it as anything other than disturbing and unpleasant. In a nutshell, I’m guessing that’s what happened with Professor Gates and maybe even vicariously to his friend in the White House, when Sgt. Crowley challenged the legitimacy of Gates’s presence in his own home.
Let’s face it, in Professor Gates’s situation, after thirty hours on a plane, finding ourselves first locked out of our own house and then accused of breaking into it, not many of us are going to be at the top of our game, self-control-wise. Besides, even if everything the arrest report says Gates did and said is true, which he says it isn’t, arresting him for creating a public disturbance does seem a bit of a stretch. (Hell, he wasn’t even waving a shotgun or threatening to dynamite his ex-wife’s trailer.) Nor can I avoid saying that it’s too bad that once he knew the suspect was actually in his own house, Sgt. Crowley couldn’t muster the patience and restraint simply to walk away from this one. However, although I can’t blame Gates for being honked off, if he did in fact say—as Crowley’s report indicates and the other officer on the scene affirms—anything that sounded remotely like “You don’t know who you’re messing with,” he signed his own arrest warrant right then and there. Professor Gates might be well blessed with book learning, but if he’d spend a little more time reading celebrity arrest reports like the rest of us, he’d know that words to that effect translate immediately in the mind of any policeman into “I dare you to arrest me, you ignorant, insignificant bastard.”
The New York Times’s Bob Herbert effectively conveys a comparably arrogant disregard for the feelings of people who might simply be trying to do their job when he writes, “You can yell at a cop in America. This is not Iran. And if some people don’t like what you’re saying, too bad.” (An aside to “Elites” producers: Get the cops to put a tail on Herbert. He’d be a good subject for an episode. Ditto for his colleague, that smug, self-righeous bastard Paul Krugman, who’d look damn good in orange coveralls mopping his boyfriend’s cell.)
There was, of course, an initial rush to judge this incident as simply another example of racial profiling, rendered all the more outrageous because the alleged victim was one of America’s foremost public intellectuals. I thought at the time, however, that the public's take on Gatesgate would likely shift a bit, and, to my observation, at least, it has. Some of this is a reflection of nothing more than mere racism and partisanship, but some of it is also due to the fact that as this incident has brought him the wider name recognition he perhaps thought he already enjoyed, Gates’s persona and temperament have also come under broader and closer scrutiny. Some of the criticism directed at him by his fellow academics must be discounted against our notorious jealousy of anyone in our ranks who manages to become famous and/or earn good money, let alone both. However, let’s just say that the Skipster himself has given enough evidence on enough occasions (including this one) to suggest that Texas might be a more appropriate symbol for his ego than Rhode Island.
Perhaps struggling with the pressures of the duality thing, in his statements since the incident, he has implied that his victimization by the authorities affords him instant identification with every incarcerated black man in America, while simultaneously vowing to use his credibility as an intellectual and clout as a celebrity to singlehandedly make things right. You can reach your own conclusions from the following comments by the Hardened Con/Avenging Superprof, although the ol’ Bloviator prefers to help you, of course:
“There are one million black men in jail in this country and last Thursday I was one of them,”
“There are approximately 800,000 black men in prison, and on July 16, 2009, I simply became one of them.”
According to his daughter Elizabeth, the latter comment is what “my father said on the plane yesterday morning on our way to the White House.” I wonder if they shared a cab from the airport with other black men just released from confinement and headed for their White House debriefing. Anyway, tell us, Prof. how long was your “jolt” in the Big House?
“I was in jail for four hours.”
They probably worked you over pretty good, though, and I bet you showed ’em they couldn’t break you.
“I told them that I was claustrophobic, that I couldn’t be in this cell. And a very nice police officer said here are some of your friends and I could talk to them one at a time in the interview room until the magistrate came and signed the form allowing me to leave. I was there just between 1:00 p.m. and 5:15 p.m., which is an interminable amount of time. I spent the rest of the time in another room, slightly bigger, and my friends just had to sit there and wait. And it was kind of like a Senate filibuster; we had to tell stories in the prison cell. . . .”
“I was astonished, you know? Your cell phone doesn’t work, and they set it up that way. It’s cold, man.”
Well, I certainly wouldn’t have handled it any better, I’m sure. Still, even if, as you insist, you were the victim of racial profiling, does your relatively humane treatment—by jailhouse standards at least—during your four hours in the slammer really afford you much kinship with all the folks for whom this practice has had such profoundly more serious, sometimes even tragic consequences? In fact, might not all the drama surrounding your story even trivialize theirs?
“I think it’s incumbent upon me to not let it drop—not to sweep it under the carpet—but to use this as a teaching event for the Cambridge police and police in general and for black people—don’t step out of your house. Don’t step onto that porch! You’re vulnerable. And second? To teach the police about the history of racism, what racism is. . . . “
“I am going to devote my considerable resources, intellectual and otherwise, to making sure this doesn’t happen again. I’m thinking about making a documentary film about racial profiling, and I’m in talks with PBS about that.”
OK, Whatever. I do want to say that I think it was good that you could kid around with Elizabeth about what Sgt. Crowley should have done.:
“He should have gotten out of there and said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, good luck. Loved your PBS series—check with you later!’ . . . .If he would have given me his card, I would have sent him a DVD!”
Elizabeth indicated that you both laughed when you said this, but, just for the record, you were kidding, right?
