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Snob Robbery, or The Reckless Elitist
Right when we should have been concentrating on the healthcare reform discussion, along comes Officer Krupke and a strange case of life immitating art.
Well I suppose ‘art’ is a little generous, but there was an interesting movie released several years ago starring one of my favorite actors of all time, Samuel L. Jackson. I can’t think of another actor who can go so seamlessly from badass roughian (Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction) to gentle sophisticate (The Red Violin). We got to see the softer Sam in 1993’s “Amos & Andrew” where he played Andrew Sterling, a successful black urbanite writer who buys a vacation home in a small New England resort town. One night, the local constabulary mistakes him for a burglar. Fortunately, the cop in the movie had slightly more sense than the one who confronted Professor Gates. The movie cop knew exactly what kind of mess he’d just made.
We all know what came next in our real-life version. Subsequent right-wing noisemakers, when not honking the ‘behaved stupidly’ horn, are trying to paint this as a classic case of intellectual snob vs. the working class civil servant, (Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Gates of Political Distraction,” July 29). They would have us believe the only racist in the room was Professor Gates. In a phantasmagorical role reversal, the neo-cons attempt to convince us it’s not a race issue at all. The real issue is one of the downtrodden, long-suffering police officer just trying to do his job, which should not include taking verbal abuse from an arrogant, limousine liberal. Really, now. Let’s take a quick inventory of reality, shall we?
Professor Gates has:
- A valid driver’s license
- A Harvard ID
- A set of keys that fit the doors
- Dark skin
- A police officer in his house making absurd accusations
- A perfectly good reason for being a little pissed right now
Officer Crowley has
- A gun, handcuffs, pepper spray, and a big stick
- A small army just a radio call away
- A badge giving him the right to arrest and detain anyone he deems troublesome
- The benefit of being white in a notoriously racist nation
- A possible chip on his shoulder and some heightened anxiety due to the fact than an angry black man is yelling at him
America has
- Cops who go on bizarre power trips on routine traffic stops
- Crowd ‘management’ officers in full-blown riot gear who shoot female lawyers in the head with rubber bullets then laugh about it later
- Deputies who beat the crap out of teenaged girls simply for being petulant
- Law enforcement professionals who will shoot a restrained suspect in the back
Who is more likely to have the advantage? The angry black man, or a white man in a blue uniform with a big stick? We don’t have to page too far back into our collective consciousness to find the answer.
If that’s not enough to prove it’s a race issue, what about this: Would the story have landed above the fold in any pissant newspaper if it involved two white guys? No. Would we have heard about a black officer questioning a white professor? No, because it’s not interesting when a white man breaks into his own home. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that, upon seeing the homeowners ID, a police officer might even HELP a white man get back into his own house.
Of course this is a race issue, people. For pete’s sake.
In a better world, hard-working police officers could protect us without being shot at and killed by crazy people. In a more perfect union, Professor Gates would have been a bit more rational and understanding. He would’ve provided his documents and calmly invited the officer to vacate the premises. First thing in the morning he would have called his attorney, filed a complaint at the Mayor’s office, and composed a letter to the editor of every local news outlet with carbon copies going to the ACLU and NAACP. Then he would have made big money on the lecture circuit and maybe even been asked to head a new federal commission for improved race relations. Heaven forbid, a good teacher might turn this into an educational opportunity…
Sadly, having a black man in the white house for a few months is not going to erase more than 200 years of bigotry and ignorance. We all still have a lot of growing up to do.
