Gates arrest shines the light on a deep dark issue.

I've alternately lampooned it and pontificated about it on various forums, but it's time to take a longer look at the arrest of Professor Gates this past week. Let me begin by saying I do not know Professor Gates nor Sgt. Crowley personally. Never met either of them to the best of my knowledge. The media has beaten this thing to death to the point that the President of the United States felt compelled to weigh in and then later to try to excuse himself from the fray. Usually I long for the media to leave celebrity stories alone quickly. Not because this story does not merit attention but because the media has a way of twisting a story until it becomes a perverted mess. It is my sincere hope that this one won't end up that way. It's too complex and important. Some might ask why it's so important. Well sit back and relax and I will explain.

To jump right into the meat of the matter. The Gates case has an opportunity to effect significant change in how men of color are treated by law enforcement in this country. The Gates incident involved a celebrity of sorts, which is the only reason the media gave it even a second thought. Black men are treated with something less than respect by law enforcement every day in this country. This incident brims with the possibility of putting a serious dent in that problem. I don't believe for one second that either Gates or Sgt. Crowley or the president for that matter handled this situation the best way they could have. How ironic that of that threesome, only the President has been humble enough to admit that HE overreacted. Gates and Crowley seem to be dug in, which is unfortunate. The two of them could do a great deal for the relationship between Black men and law enforcement in this country by simply admitting their own culpability in this matter and taking a more conciliatory tone.

As I am a black man, who spent my formative years in the segregated South, and a man who has gone through two separations and one divorce, I am fully able to empathize with Professor Gates' indignation at being treated like an interloper in his own home. I understand what it feels like to have to defend one's presence in one's own house. I've been pulled over for "DWB" a number of times, most of them in "progressive" California. In that context it would be very easy for me to automatically side with Gates and never even consider the cop. But at some point in my maturation process, I learned that cops, for the most part, are decent people trying to do a job. Because they are drawn from the pool known as the human race, some of them are jerks, maybe even outright assholes, but coloring them all with the same brush is exactly what led to racial prejudice and racial profiling to begin with. So I learned to treat them with respect and in turn I found out they would gladly reciprocate. Gates should have done exactly this in his situation. If he had thanked the officer for looking into the call and protecting his neighborhood and his home, offered him some coffee and given the identification immediately when requested and without attitude we would never have heard a peep about this. But in his defense, Gates was tired and grumpy from a long trip and clearly annoyed at having to break into his own home. This obviously impaired his judgement momentarily. That could happen to any of us under those circumstances. At the same time, the cop was probably aware of where he was responding to the call. He knew it was the home in the area of where Harvard puts up professors and other staff. He might even have known it was Gates' residence. If you've met many Harvard professors, you would understand how cops might be a little irritated with their elitism and the sense of entitlement and superiority they exude. Well.. not all of them but some.

The lesson that needs to be learned here is that parties in this sort of situation need to ask themselves one simple question before they react and that is simply: What would a reasonable person do here? Reasonable middle aged men don't scream at cops. Reasonable cops don't arrest middle-aged men who prove they're in their own homes and there is are no warrants or restraining orders to service. And certainly a reasonable head of state does not undermine law enforcement off hand without the slightest clue as to the facts. The bottom line is it's high time we in America grew up about race. It needs to stop being a topic that is either completely off limits or spoken of only in hushed tones or in some clinical academic setting. People need to re-learn how to talk to each other. To appreciate each other's differences, and to understand how insignificant those differences truly are in the grand scheme of things. Some of those differences are funny. Others are charming. But not of them really amounts to a hill of beans in the cosmos. In the blink of an eye that is our life span here on this planet, to expend the amount of time and energy we do dividing ourselves based on the .3% (or whatever the number is) of our genetic make-up that is different is beyond ludicrous. Any intelligent life looking in on us would rightfully conclude we are absolute morons.

But I digress. This is about cops and black folk. Black men in particular. Black men need to quit feeling the need to act like one of the "Boyz in the Hood" every time we have to engage a cop and in turn cops should try not to see a character from "Oz" every time he encounters a black male. Yes there will be times when both will be the case.. but those will be the exception and not the rule. Remember the "What would a reasonable person do?" rule. How about we try it, just for a while?