WASHINGTON--Now that both President Barack Obama and Harvard University Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. have proclaimed Dr. Gates’ run-in with a cop in Cambridge, Mass., a teachable moment, what are the lessons to be learned?Dr. Gates, one of the nation’s most distinguished Black academics, said what happened to him “should be a profound teaching moment in the history of race relations in America.”
A day earlier, President Obama walked into the White House press room and backpedaled on his assertion that police had “acted stupidly” in arresting Prof. Gates while investigating a possible break-in at his house.
According to the police report, Dr. Gates loudly berated Sgt. James Crowley, the white officer who responded to the 911 call.
“Why, because I’m a Black man in America?,” Sgt. Crowley said Dr. Gates responded when the officer said he was investigating a crime and asked Dr. Gates to come outside.
After Sgt. Crowley determined that Dr. Gates was in his house legally, he again asked the irate professor to step outside.
Here’s the teachable moment that tops my list.
It’s hard for a cop to accuse you of disorderly conduct for mouthing off inside your home, but, if he invites you outside where a crowd has gathered, don’t go because he might be trying to get you to a place where he can make that charge stick.
This doesn’t make Sgt. Crowley a racist, but it does suggest Dr. Gates got under Sgt. Crowley’s skin--and the cop decided to get even.
Another thing to learn is that Dr. Gates is not alone.
It’s not just the clashes cops have with poor Blacks that raise the specter of racial bias.
Linda Jones, a former Detroit News reporter, was stopped by two federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents in 1989 at the airport in Birmingham, Ala.
She was covering a group of Michigan schoolchildren visiting civil rights landmarks in the South when she got a toothache and decided to fly home for treatment.
Miss Jones said the agents stopped her in the middle of the airport concourse and rifled through her bags.
When they found no drugs they walked off, leaving Miss Jones’ belongings in disarray and her nerves badly frayed.
Howard Bingham, Muhammad Ali’s personal photographer since 1962, was stopped by an officer in Manhattan Beach, Calif., shortly after leaving a fundraiser for then-President Bill Clinton in 1999.
The cop said Mr. Bingham’s car was swerving. He wasn’t drunk, but the officer arrested him for driving with an expired license, an offense for which California law says no one older than 16 should be arrested or detained.
The cop later said he took Mr. Bingham into custody because he suspected he might be Andre Bingham, a man for whom there was a 22-year-old arrest warrant.
Mr. Bingham said he was arrested even after showing the officer a copy of a 1998 Sports Illustrated.
Mr. Bingham and the boxer were on the cover along with these words: “Who’s That Guy with Howard Bingham? You don’t know Muhammad Ali until you know his best friend.”
Then, there’s the case of Donna Brazile, a Black woman who was Al Gore’s campaign manager in the 2000 presidential race.
In March of that year, she was stopped in a hotel stairwell by Los Angeles police while on her way to help brief the vice president for a debate.
Despite wearing her campaign badge and Secret Service identification pin, Miss Brazile was detained for an hour.
She watched as Mr. Gore’s motorcade left for the debate without her.
The lesson to be learned from all this is that President Obama and Dr. Gates have an awful lot of teaching to do.
