Black Anger Should Be Everybody's Anger

In a NY Times column entitled "Anger Has Its Place," Bob Herbert connects the Henry Louis Gates case to the larger police treatment of African-Americans and Hispanics. The Gates case is only a particularly prominent example of the arbitrary police stops, arrests and disproportionate imprisonment that African-Americans face in cities like New York, Boston, and Cambridge, Mass.

Not former bastions of segregation like Montgomery, Alabama, or Jackson, Mississippi, or Breau Bridge, Louisiana--New York and Boston.

New York City cops make upwards of a half-million stops of private citizens each year, questioning and frequently frisking these men, women and children. The overwhelming majority of those stopped are black or Latino, and the overwhelming majority are innocent of any wrongdoing. A true “teachable moment” would focus a spotlight on such outrages and the urgent need to stop them.

I wrote a number of columns about the arrests of more than 30 black and Hispanic youngsters — male and female — who were doing nothing more than walking peacefully down a quiet street in Brooklyn in broad daylight in the spring of 2007. The kids had to hire lawyers and fight the case for nearly two frustrating years before the charges were dropped and a settlement for their outlandish arrests worked out.

Herbert emphasizes that the only check on the outrages involved in the police treatment of minorities is the anger of minority groups.

Most whites do not want to hear about racial problems, and President Obama would rather walk through fire than spend his time dealing with them. We’re never going to have a serious national conversation about race. So that leaves it up to ordinary black Americans to rant and to rave, to demonstrate and to lobby, to march and confront and to sue and generally do whatever is necessary to stop a continuing and deeply racist criminal justice outrage.

That's unfortunately true, but black anger should really be everybody's anger.

Is Obama Next: Cops Arrest Skip Gates for Breaking Into Own House

Only in America?

Cambridge, Massachusetts police arrested celebrity Harvard professor Henry Louis (Skip) Gates for breaking into his own house.

Police responding to a call about "two black males" breaking into a home near Harvard University ended up arresting the man who lives there –

Henry Louis Gates Jr., the nation's pre-eminent black scholar. Gates had forced his way through the front door because it was jammed, his lawyer said. Colleagues call the arrest last Thursday afternoon a clear case of racial profiling.

Cambridge police say they responded to the well-maintained two-story home after a woman reported seeing "two black males with backpacks on the porch," with one "wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry."

By the time police arrived, Gates was already inside. Police say he refused to come outside to speak with an officer, who told him he was investigating a report of a break-in.

Gates was eventually arrested on a disorderly conduct charge. The arresting cop said that Gates "continued to yell at me, accusing me of racial bias and continued to tell me that I had not heard the last of him."

Who can blame Gates if he did yell at people who were investigating him for breaking into his own house?

If I were Gates, I would have thrown in some obscenities as well.

But the attorney for Gates claims that Gates wasn't yelling at all, that he contracted a viral infection while traveling to China and could barely speak.

Ogletree also disputed the claim that Gates, who was wearing slacks and a polo shirt and carrying a cane, was yelling at the officer.

"He has an infection that has impacted his breathing since he came back from China, so he's been in a very delicate physical state," Ogletree said.

Given the propensity of cops for lying when they're worried about having complaints against them (something which I've seen myself), I'll have to side with Gates on this one.

But I have to disagree with the characterization of Gates as "the nation's pre-eminent black scholar." I've seen some of Gates' writing and he's very good. But there are so many great black scholars that it's just as dumb to identify the "pre-eminent black scholar" as it is to call someone the nation's "pre-eminent white scholar." Some examples of "beyond category" black scholars are bell hooks, Patricia Williams, and Annette Gordon-Reed. Gordon-Reed's work on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings will be shaping our understanding of the founding of the American republic for generations to come.

But there's no gainsaying the prominence of Skip Gates as a Harvard professor and media personality.

If Gates can be arrested while breaking into his own home, one has to wonder how long it's going to be before some enterprising officer arrests Barack Obama for sitting in the Oval Office.