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Kathleen Parker is one of America's most popular opinion columnists, addressing the country's mental health through her views on current national ...
Read more about Kathleen Parker.
Kathleen Parker is one of America's most popular opinion columnists, addressing the country's mental health through her views on current national ...
Read more about Kathleen Parker.
Race To Redemption
Kathleen Parker
EDITORS -- Kathleen Parker's e-mail address at the bottom of the
column has changed.
[
WASHINGTON -- People say: Why are we still talking about Crowley and Gates? And then they commence to talk for 15 minutes about Crowley and Gates.
The reason we persist is because the confrontation between a black professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and a white cop, Sgt. James Crowley, is a mother lode of metaphor.
Cambridge -- axis of academia and symbol of American elitism -- is suddenly the Blombos Cave of American culture, exposing millennia of human behavioral history in a pinpoint of light.
And, of course, the president of the United States inserted himself into the mix.
The genie of race was released from the bottle when America elected its first African-American president -- we could finally talk about it. Perfectly, Barack Obama is neither black nor white, but both.
Unfortunately, our little genie is still hostage to old resentments -- haunted by subliminal fears and, like all of us, subject to unconscious motivations. This is why we keep talking about Gates and Crowley -- and why psychologists will never go hungry.
Most Americans are probably relieved to have this conversation, but talk therapy requires honesty. Let's start with this: All races are a little bit racist even as they aim not to be (i.e., we make certain assumptions based on race).
Let's also assume that we're all good people. Crowley is a good man; Gates is a good man. The president said so, so it must be true.
Given those understandings, what happened in Cambridge makes perfect sense from every which way. Gates had every right to be outraged that he was being questioned by a cop for being in his own home. Crowley had every reason to feel outraged that he was being accused of being a racist without provocation or any apparent basis for the charge.
Both men were reacting to their personal and cumulative histories. Blacks are tired of being treated as "black" with all the attendant assumptions. (What's a black man doing in a white neighborhood?) Many, if not most, blacks can justify their resentment with stories of being stopped for "being black."
Was Gates deliberately provocative? Maybe. If you were a professor of black culture -- exhausted from travel and frustrated by events -- might you decide to seize the moment for the larger lesson? Then again, maybe not. Maybe he just lost it.
Was Crowley overreacting to Gates' challenges? Maybe. If you were Crowley -- a good cop who teaches courses against racial profiling -- wouldn't you be offended if someone accused you of being a racist?
Might you be angry enough to teach this fellow a lesson in respect for authority? Uh-oh, dangerous words, those.
That's at the crux, isn't it? Cops have a right to be respected when they're doing their jobs. But private citizens also have a right to be treated sensitively -- even to be forgiven benign hostility -- in their position of temporary subjugation.
Add to the ordinary reflex against authority the confounding factors of black-white history, and what should have been a simple exchange becomes an explosive confrontation. Images of white cops billy-clubbing peaceful black protestors are always at a low boil in American memory. More recent incidents of white cops mistakenly shooting innocent blacks also enter the subliminal equation.
A black man having to bow to white authority in his own home for no reason?
Not this black man, not this time.
The white cop looks out the same window and sees a different landscape. To Crowley's mind, maybe things were beginning to feel out of control. Maybe, too, Crowley was unconsciously responding to his perception of Gates as an arrogant academic who knows nothing of his trials as a working-class stiff -- always potentially facing violence while being treated with contempt by those he's charged to protect.
We weren't there. We're not mind readers.
But we all can see how this happened -- and how fragile is the thread that connects us. How delicately we must tread. Even Obama, who initially said the police "acted stupidly," has learned just how much words matter. His invitation now to share a beer in the White House with Crowley and Gates is revolutionary and potentially healing, a peace pipe for modern times.
When future archaeologists excavate our history, they will doubtless marvel at the symbolism of that simple gesture. Black, white and something in between, elites and working class, American dreamers all -- sipping suds and talking no trash.
Cheers, gentlemen. May wonders never cease.
========
Kathleen Parker's e-mail address is kathleenparker(at)washpost.com
(c) 2009, Washington Post Writers Group
This news arrived on: 07/29/2009
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Posted Comments:
08-02-2009 23:30
wrote:
maybe he just isn't a believer in human rights many aren't
07-31-2009 16:08
JCE wrote:
JK
Well, that is one opinion, one you are entitled to. The facts do speak for themselves, and in my favor.
07-30-2009 14:56
JCE wrote:
When we have moved beyond race, and are professional, we ask for a description. We don't think about race. The way I think, I ask what did they look like, never thinking of were they any race. Maybe I have evolved spiritually a bit more than you. I know that when I think of the people in this thing, I think of race a lot less than many, and think of how that person feels about the whole thing, and how they see it. It truly saddens me to see such racism, rather than humanism.
07-30-2009 08:58
JK wrote:
If you ask the rase of someone beakeing the law it just might help to know who you are looking for. If they are white then you don't have to stop every black or hispanic you see.If they are bkack then you dont have to stop every white you see. Same thing as asking about height. Sorry but not raceism.
07-30-2009 00:25
JCE wrote:
Texas Katie, another thing is that the police report said that the caller mentioned race, when the tapes show that she didn't. So, the police report lied. Add to that the false arrest, Obama is right about the police being stupid, whether or not he should have said it. While I believe that Crowley was extremely wrong, it is just as bad all the idiots calling, harassing, and otherwise threatening the person who called. They do this either not know the facts, or not caring. She is the one person that no fault can be found with.
Per We know that the police lied, that it was a false arrest, and that the caller did no wrong. The tapes show no evidence of Gates doing wrong. It is obvious, that had he been white, it never would have happened. Kathie asks a very good question. Why were the police so worried about race, and showed no interest in the fact that they had luggage and might live there?
This is bringing out the racists in full force. Those attacking the caller, and those attacking Gates. So little support for them. But so much support for the police, who really screwed up, and then issued the tapes to verify it. And so much for Crowley, who made a false arrest. If a white man of Gates stature, in the same situation was falsely arrested, by a non white cop, and spent 4 hours in jail, the racists would really be screaming, and the white man most likely would have pressed his lawsuit and won. This is really highlighting the racism in this country, even more than the Sotomayer Inquisition.
Per We know that the police lied, that it was a false arrest, and that the caller did no wrong. The tapes show no evidence of Gates doing wrong. It is obvious, that had he been white, it never would have happened. Kathie asks a very good question. Why were the police so worried about race, and showed no interest in the fact that they had luggage and might live there?
This is bringing out the racists in full force. Those attacking the caller, and those attacking Gates. So little support for them. But so much support for the police, who really screwed up, and then issued the tapes to verify it. And so much for Crowley, who made a false arrest. If a white man of Gates stature, in the same situation was falsely arrested, by a non white cop, and spent 4 hours in jail, the racists would really be screaming, and the white man most likely would have pressed his lawsuit and won. This is really highlighting the racism in this country, even more than the Sotomayer Inquisition.
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