Skip Gates on Race, Class & the Criminal Justice System

"this is how poor black men across the country are treated everyday in the criminal justice system..."

- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

If you haven't heard, one of the most prominent scholars in the world, Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr. of Harvard, listed as one of the 25 most influential Americans in 1997 by Time, was arrested on the porch of his Harvard Square home last week for alleged disorderly conduct. Returning home after a trip overseas to find his front door jammed, he and his Moroccan cab driver were attempting to open it when his neighbor, a white woman employed by Harvard, called the cops over 2 suspicious black men at the house down the street.

Did I mention Gates is black? Anyway, the cop who showed up to investigate pretty much hassled Gates in his own home, which ticked Gates off, who hassled him right back. As Gates followed the cop outside to get his identification, the cop arrested him before a crowd of passersby and other cops and wrote up a report justifying his decision in light of Gates's apparently alarming, "loud and tumultuous" behavior.

Did I mention Gates is about 60, walks with a cane, and is around 5 ft 7?  Ferocious!

This story is ALL over the blogs, especially the black political and cultural blogs I read.  The multiple ironies in this case are almost too much: that this would happen in Cambridge, that bastion of liberal elitism (though the cops have a problematic racial history there), that in our "post-racial" America, an upper crust, African-American distinguished professor would be treated this way.  Cambridge has already dropped the changes, but one wonders if there are any lasting implications from such a high profile, racially charged, humilitating scene that sadly reflects the treatment of so many black (and Latino) men in the U.S.

Gates plans to make the most of it, as only an intellectual can:

"There are one million black men in jail in this country and last Thursday I was one of them," he said in an interview with The Washington Post Tuesday morning. "This is outrageous and that this is how poor black men across the country are treated everyday in the criminal justice system. It's one thing to write about it, but altogether another to experience it."

He was still outraged but he said he has had time to take a step back and will now apply the scholarship that has been his life's work to the issue of race in the criminal justice system.

Here's hoping someone with Gates's stature can shed some light on an enduring, often violent part of our criminal justice system: racial profiling.  I really appreciate that he addresses the class issues bound up here as well:

"I think that poor people in general and black people in general are vulnerable to the whims of rogue cops, and we all have to fight to protect the weakest among us. No matter how bad it was going to get, I knew that sooner or later I would get to a phone and one of my friends would be there to help." ...

He said [a now planned] documentary will ask: "How are people treated when they are arrested? How does the criminal justice system work? How many black and brown men and poor white men are the victims of police officers who are carrying racist thoughts?

"...I think that criminal justice system is rotten."

No doubt, Professor Gates, no doubt.