I was not going to comment on the whole Gates/Crowley Affair. Like so many other juicy nuggets, I thought the press had beaten this dead horse enough without needing my help. But then I figured that since I have kept silent on the Michael Jackson media frenzy, I deserved at least a little rant.
Like most things, this is not as simple as it looks. After being spoon-fed way more info than anyone needs to know on this incident, this is my personal conclusion:
A concerned citizen called 911 when she saw what she described as two men breaking into her neighbor’s home, explaining she did not know if they had a key or not, which makes me presume she thought it could be the homeowner but she wanted to play it safe. At one point, she was asked by the 911 operator what race she thought the men were, and she was unsure, stating one was possibly Hispanic. For this, she has been publicly accused of being a racist. What does this teach us? Don’t call 911 if your neighbor’s home is being broken into or you will not be called a good Samaritan, you will be labeled a racist as soon as CNN has a slow news day. Thanks again Mr. Media.
We all know by now what went on inside the home between Gates and Crowley. You can argue for the police that Crowley was doing his job, treating Gates as he would any “person of interest”, and that we should understand he was looking out for the homeowner's as well as his own safety. We can also argue Gates’ side. CNN interviewed an African-American psychologist on this subject and I found his perspective interesting. He said that a black man in America, no matter his class or income or social standing, will usually have an inherent distrust of the police. Men of Gates’ generation grew up in a much different time than today. Perhaps, if we put ourselves in Professor Gates shoes, and see through the eyes of a young black man decades ago, we can see where fear and mistrust would grow and how, even if greatly diminished over time, it could still surface when confronted in his own home, and possibly express itself as it did that night in Mr. Gates’ home?
Lastly, there is President Obama’s media faux pas, which I believe is no more than the man being forced by the media to make a poorly thought out statement before he knew all the facts. Which, by the way, is more the fault of the blood-sucking press than of the president.
I am not taking sides here. I see everyone’s point of view, at least using only the facts I have heard. This was a misunderstanding, probably happens everyday somewhere in the country. The only difference here is that Gates knows the President of the United States personally, that this president happens to be identified as African American, and that the media finally got to do it's first racial litmus test, as I am sure it has been grinding its teeth in anticipation of. I hope this is not shades of things to come, it so diminishes the real racial problems we still have in this country and it also undermines the hopes of racial harmony both blacks and whites are rooting for this president to achieve.
My hope is that a spectacular man-bites-dog story diverts the media soon, we can leave this transparent, overexposed, non-issue to the past, and get on with the business of delving into the Great Depression, Part Two. Now there’s a story!
