| Big hubbub on the 'tubes today about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr, an African-American Harvard professor who was arrested for "breaking in" to his own house. Well, more accurately, he was arrested for disorderly conduct after being accused by a white police officer of breaking into his own house.
But here's the thing: Gates broke no law. He shouldn't have been arrested.
Matthew Yglesias nails it:
Meanwhile, note that racial motivations or there absence have really nothing to do with the nature of Officer Crowley's misconduct. What happened basically is that Crowley accused Gates, whether for good reason or not, of breaking into his own home. Gates, pissed off, offended Crowley. At which point Crowley, even though he was now perfectly aware that Gates was not guilty of anything, decided to exact revenge by manipulating the situation to create a trumped-up disorderly conduct charge. That's not professional policing, and it's not a good use of the City of Cambridge's law enforcement resources. That's why the charges were dropped, and that's why it's fair to say that Crowley was acting stupidly racial issues aside.
It seems clear to me that race did play a part in this arrest: someone called the guy in, probably because of his skin color. No doubt Gates was belligerent and rude. But there's no law against being rude. To me, this is really a story about a minor abuse of power.
Predictably, righties have swarmed all over this story and have created a familiar narrative for the incident. The arresting officer, Sgt. Crowley, is a salt-of-the-earth blue-collar good guy, a hero! For trying to save a black man, even! Mouth-to-mouth! He even taught a class on how not to do racial profiling, fer chrissakes! And then come all these elitist dandies to crucify this poor man and defend the ungrateful privileged uppity black man...it's enough to make yer blood boil, ain't it?
Recognize the pattern? Sure you do. It's the age-old Nixonian strategy of shaving off blue-collar votes by invoking the fear of black privilege. Only these people get to fold a president into their narrative... |
