White cops, black suspicion

In his nationally televised press conference last week President Obama said that the white cop who arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. acted "stupidly." The cop, Sgt. James Crowley, rejected President Obama's comments last Thursday, saying he was "way off base" for the accusation of stupidity. Then on Friday, Obama said that he regretted his choice of words and called Crowley to talk it over. Despite this smoothing over, this entire situation has resurrected another conversation in the race debate and has burst the myth of our "post-racial" Obamanation. The officer arrested Gates, in part, because of the statements the scholar made out of anger and frustration, which, candidly, I understand.

Crowley, an 11-year veteran of the Cambridge Police Department, responded to a reported break-in at the professor's home. A neighbor reported seeing two men break into the home. The neighbor was unaware the man forcing his way inside was Gates, who had locked himself out.

When Crowley arrived, he told Gates he was investigating a report of a break-in and asked for his identification. "Why? Because I'm a black man in America," Gates responded according to the police report. Gates initially refused to hand over identification, instead charging the officer of being racist.

If Professor Gates had been white would he have been arrested? Would the call from the neighbor had been made at all? Probably not, many would say. Is a bearded 58-year-old black man at a home in Cambridge suspicious in early in the afternoon? Obviously. The saddest part of the story is that the neighbor called in the afternoon and had no idea who Gates was either. When neighbors don't know each other, unfortunate situations like this happen.

My guess is that Gates will make at least $500,000 from this incident: a book deal, speaking engagements, interviews, etc. I am actually jealous. When I was pulled over in Creve Coeur, Mo., a wealthy white suburb in St. Louis, for a "rolling stop" at a stop sign, the president of the United States never accused the officer acting stupidly when I had to defend how it was that "a guy like [me] could afford a car like this."

Granted, I didn't come to a complete stop at the stop sign (like everyone else) but for the life of me I could not understand why the officer did a walk-around to check the inside of my vehicle and begin to question how a person like myself could afford a brand new Jeep Cherokee. Was it maybe because I was in graduate school and the vehicle was given to me as a graduation present? I'll never forget telling my seminary friends about the line of questioning about my ability to afford the vehicle and many responded, "Well, the Bible does say that Christians will be persecuted."

Since that day, whenever I'm in a neighborhood where I'm not supposed to be---for example in a white middle-class suburb---I get uneasy whenever I see a white cop driving near me. I wonder is this is going to be the day when I'm going to get asked how I could afford my car. Then again, I'm no Henry Louis Gates Jr., with an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English literature from Clare College at the University of Cambridge, a B.A. summa cum laude in history from Yale University, and currently the Alphonse Fletcher University professor and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University.