Professor Henry Louis Gates said he hoped his arrest by Crowley leads to greater sensitivity on racial profiling. He described it as a teaching moment, saying that he planned to use his arrest and jail experience as the basis of a documentary on racial profiling.
So what did we learn from the Gates arrest in Boston? For me, it confirmed my belief that many (not all) accusations of racism and racial profiling are excuses for beligerance when someone is in a situation they don’t like.  For many others, the Boston incident taught them that some accusations of racism might be simple grandstanding and can be ignored.
My education along this line began twenty some years ago, when I first met the man that was to become my husband. I remember one incident in particular.  I was paying for a meal at a chain restaurant. The cashier, before taking my check, asked me for some ID.  I pulled out my driver’s license and showed it to her, and we went on our way.Â
Walking out the door, my to-be husband whispered to me that she wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t been standing behind me. He truly believed that the only reason she asked for my ID was because I was with a minority. Nothing could have been further from the truth. I knew that getting carded at a restaurant was nothing new for me. Sometimes they did it, sometimes they didn’t, but it had nothing to do with whether he was there or not. I scoffed at his assumption that it was all about him.
And we had other such “teaching moments” when he needed to learn that it wasn’t all about his skin. He needed to learn that some clerks are just tired or have bad days, just like he does, and if they scowl, it doesn’t mean that they are even thinking about him let alone hating him. I’m a person who falls into deep thought about various issues and I don’t always notice who is around me. If I am lost in my own thoughts, thinking about something difficult or emotional, it frequently shows on my face. It has nothing to do with who is in the room. There are many people in this world just like me. Not every scowl is racially motivated.
When I first met him and he attended a party at my Dad’s house, he gravitated after a short time to the garage and ate his meal out there. This wasn’t because anyone in the house had any animosity against him. It was a reaction born of his own insecurity.
Fortunately, my husband did learn from these teaching moments, and the older he got the more he began to relax around people of “non-color” and even enjoy himself. In his later years, he not only enjoyed people of all heritages, but he felt comfortable standing up and speaking to various politicians about the fallacy of race-based laws (such as ICWA). He even went to DC several times to speak to various Congressmen on issues.
This isn’t to say that we never experienced real racism. On a few isolated occasions, we ran up against the real thing. But now he could tell the difference.
Interestingly, it was because he relaxed and became comfortable with his own thoughts and voice that he himself began to be accused of being a racist by a state Human Rights Network. You see, he was a minority speaking against political correctness. That makes the Left very uncomfortable. They would rather that all minorities stay in neat little, controllable packages.
When he passed away five years ago, his birth family was surprised by the number of people of “non-color” that not only showed up at his funeral, but stood up and spoke of their admiration for him.
Perhaps Professor Gates has spent too much time in his ivory tower and needs to get out more.
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Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackKing Henry – Behind The Castle Gates
As is my customary habit, I am carefully researching an issue which is making the headlines. This issue is the arrest of Henry Gates out of Harvard. My habit is to make sure my thinking is valid and truthful, and my habit is to well arm myself with truth. There is no greater power than truth, I make sure this power is in my mind and flying off my fingertips while I type.
Here are some well hidden truths about “King Henry” I found coming out of Harvard via a little known critique of Henry Gates from a man who helped to hire Gates and to appoint Gates to a professorship position at Harvard.
These are snippets of comments from Harvard Professor Martin Kilson who is now retired. Kilson is the first black man to earn a full professorship at Harvard where he taught for just over forty years.
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I’ve known Henry Gates as an academic colleague quite well during the past decade of his tenure here at Harvard. I was part of the Afro-American Studies Appointments Committee that selected him in fact….
…I decided to probe Gates’ particular style and modus operandi….I discovered two things that I disliked about Gates’ intellectual discourse. One was an almost neurotic need to couch discourse on African-American socio-cultural and political patterns in what I call “Black put-down terms,”…Second, much of Henry Gates’ discourse on African-American socio-cultural and political patterns exhibits a thoroughly chameleon trait — an almost manic need to produce a discourse on Black realities that migrates between a “Black put-down” or “Black-averse” mode, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a seemingly redeeming “Black-friendly” mode, though in ultimate essence the redeeming posture is phony.
…What else can explain the unbelievably arrogant irreverence that Henry Gates exhibited at so many levels….
…I’ve known Henry Gates for a decade and I can say that I watched and probed his “MO” as much as any of his Harvard colleagues have. At the center of Gates’ “MO” is a convoluted autocratic component….
…I’ve kept a respectful distance from Henry Gates’ goodies in order to reserve my independence of action. Luckily for me of course, my academic appointment needs and resources needs here at Harvard have not overlapped with “King Gates,”….
So I try to advise my progressive Black intellectual peers especially to be wary of “King Gates” strategic offerings – his fish-hooks, if at all possible.
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Remarkable similarities and parallels between the thinking of Henry Gates and the thinking of Barack Obama, yes?
Okpulot Taha
Choctaw Nation
Smart Girl Politics
Very interesting. Before I got to your last line, I was thinking the same thing; the similarities between Henry Gates, Barack Obama…and the Reverend Wright…
As a white guy, I thank you very much for your story. It’s only when we start trusting each other first instead of judging each other first that success in our efforts for equality will finally be achieved. As I wrote on my blog, nubispertusus.wordpress.com, I am hopeful that Dr Gates will consider doing a documentary about people who have struggled to put racism behind them.
Nubis Pertusus, Pennsylvania
POTUS: “I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department and Sgt. Crowley specifically. And I could’ve calibrated those words differently.”
Translation: I stuck my foot in my mouth and alienated of a lot of America by making racially biased remarks myself. That really burns me up because as a lawyer and politician, I’m supposed to be good at parsing my words.
So now I have to back pedal without ego damage and without an apology…dam mit!
Yes no apology from BHO for maligning police but he’ll apoligize over & over for USA to any country he visits. Though he says white grandma raised him & mom paid for him, he seems to hate whites and females.
What this really taught us is when the police ask you something you really need to cooperate–no matter what race you are or how elitist you think you are.
Amen, Kevin Tipple
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