Henry Louis Gates: Déjà Vu All Over Again

[MrScorpio]

July 24, 2009, 6:18 pm
Stanley Fish

I’m Skip Gates’s friend, too. That’s probably the only thing I share with President Obama, so when he ended his press conference last Wednesday by answering a question about Gates’s arrest after he was seen trying to get into his own house, my ears perked up.

As the story unfolded in the press and on the Internet, I flashed back 20 years or so to the time when Gates arrived in Durham, N.C., to take up the position I had offered him in my capacity as chairman of the English department of Duke University. One of the first things Gates did was buy the grandest house in town (owned previously by a movie director) and renovate it. During the renovation workers would often take Gates for a servant and ask to be pointed to the house’s owner. The drivers of delivery trucks made the same mistake.

The message was unmistakable: What was a black man doing living in a place like this?

At the university (which in a past not distant at all did not admit African-Americans ), Gates’s reception was in some ways no different. Doubts were expressed in letters written by senior professors about his scholarly credentials, which were vastly superior to those of his detractors. (He was already a recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, the so called “genius award.”) There were wild speculations (again in print) about his salary, which in fact was quite respectable but not inordinate; when a list of the highest-paid members of the Duke faculty was published, he was nowhere on it.

The unkindest cut of all was delivered by some members of the black faculty who had made their peace with Duke traditions and did not want an over-visible newcomer and upstart to trouble waters that had long been still. (The great historian John Hope Franklin was an exception.) When an offer came from Harvard, there wasn’t much I could do. Gates accepted it, and when he left he was pursued by false reports about his tenure at what he had come to call “the plantation.” (I became aware of his feelings when he and I and his father watched the N.C.A.A. championship game between Duke and U.N.L.V. at my house; they were rooting for U.N.L.V.)

Now, in 2009, it’s a version of the same story. Gates is once again regarded with suspicion because, as the cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson put it in an interview, he has committed the crime of being H.W.B., Housed While Black.

He isn’t the only one thought to be guilty of that crime. TV commentators, laboring to explain the unusual candor and vigor of Obama’s initial comments on the Gates incident, speculated that he had probably been the victim of racial profiling himself. Speculation was unnecessary, for they didn’t have to look any further than the story they were reporting in another segment, the story of the “birthers” — the “wing-nuts,” in Chris Matthews’s phrase — who insist that Obama was born in Kenya and cite as “proof” his failure to come up with an authenticated birth certificate. For several nights running, Matthews displayed a copy of the birth certificate and asked, What do you guys want? How can you keep saying these things in the face of all evidence?

He missed the point. No evidence would be sufficient, just as no evidence would have convinced some of my Duke colleagues that Gates was anything but a charlatan and a fraud. It isn’t the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate that’s the problem for the birthers. The problem is again the legitimacy of a black man living in a big house, especially when it’s the White House. Just as some in Durham and Cambridge couldn’t believe that Gates belonged in the neighborhood, so does a vocal minority find it hard to believe that an African-American could possibly be the real president of the United States.

Gates and Obama are not only friends; they are in the same position, suspected of occupying a majestic residence under false pretenses. And Obama is a double offender. Not only is he guilty of being Housed While Black; he is the first in American history guilty of being P.W.B., President While Black.

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/henry-louis-gates-deja-vu-all-over-again/#more-791

[eleny]

1. He ties it all together

+5

[Gormy Cuss]

2. But Gates overreacted and was just being too sensitive.

Tag for the obtuse::sarcasm:

[noiretextatique]

3. PWB

:rofl: and there you have that :rofl:

[hlthe2b]

4. This story line hits home with many women, as well...

I know it does for me. It would be interesting to see if more DU women than men were giving the benefit of the doubt to Gates, rather than the cops--at least those DU women of a certain age who have had to deal with this kind of attitude themselves.

[Merlot]

15. Driving while female: I was followed home into my drive way by cops

twice. I lived in a very conservative city, and I was single female with a job that brought me home around midnight (and no, it wasn't a bar). The second time, they pulled into the drive way, got out of their car and asked me what I was doing, and did I live there, etc.

[Odin2005]

17. And with those of us with disabilities.

[hlthe2b]

18. yes... I would imagine so

[Odin2005]

21. Yes, I get sick of being talked to as if I was a child just because I have Asperger's Syndrome.

It drive me crazy. I'm an adult, treat me like one.

[kiranon]

19. White, female and over 65 and I give Gates the benefit of the doubt

Do not believe if Gates had been white that he would have been arrested. The police officer would have helped him and wished him a good day. When I started practicing law in the 70's, whenever I rode the elevator in the large law firms on my way to a deposition, the attorneys in the elevator always asked if I were the court reporter. I always said no and that I learned alot on the way up from their conversations which usually included information not meant for an attorney on the other side to hear. Worked for me. Judges were another problem. Some of them deeply resented women appearing before them and demanded that they never wear pants in their courtroom. One federal judge even instructed me that he would hold no court hearings on November 11th and I should never set a hearing for that date (I hadn't said a word about the date as I stood before him with about 7 other attorneys all male who he did not so address). One of the male attorneys thanked the judge for the information and said, "Your honor, she's the only veteran here." The judge was furious and I was very proud of the male attorney for sticking his neck out on my behalf and he was an attorney on the other side. There are good guys and I think the officer in the Gates matter believes he is a good guy and probably is most of the time but I believe not this time.

[HughMoran]

5. Excellent article - thanks for posting this

We all know profiling and prejudice exist, society simply chooses to believe that it's no longer an issue as we'd like to think that society has progressed a lot in the past 40 years. It has, but not nearly as far as the common illusion would have one believe.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

6. I figured Gates probably flew of the handle a little bit......

But I also figured I was in no position to judge a 58 year old Black Man in his interactions with the police - especially while being "ID'd" as a suspect of burglarizing his own home.

[geckosfeet]

7. Thanks for posting! I maintain that Crowley arrested Gates simply to make a point -

not to protect and serve.

That is an abuse of power.

[dddem]

8. I had a conversation with a woman the other night who personally knows the officer in question,

a woman, btw who has a black child, and she is truly surprised at the allegations toward the officer. She claims that he is the furthest thing from the racist, rogue cop the media would like to protray him as. At the same time, we agreed that Professor Gates, based on personal experience, would assume that race played a part in the situation.
Is it possible, I wonder, if the Professor saw the situation from a completely different point of view than the officer intended? Is it possible that , although the professors view is his truth, that the officer was merely responding to a call, and acted appropriately? I realize it's difficult to imagine both sides to be true and real, but based on life experience, I can easily see how situations can be misconstrued and misunderstood. I wish both of these men peace.

[MrScorpio]

9. All cops are trained to control a situation at all times

However, Crowley was faced with performing this "control the situation" task in Prof. Gates' own home.

And it's quite clear that the Professor resented the officer engaging in this exercise where he lives.

This is source of the conflict.

Once it was clearly established that Prof. Gates was in his own home the officer had lost his control of the situation.

The officer then had to deal with this loss of this control and once the Professor stepped out of his door, the officer was given an opportunity to reestablish control over a contemptuous civilian, for the better or for the worse.

I contend that the arrest, no matter what legal justification portrayed by Crowley and his union, was pretty piss poor idea.

And we had clear example of the Thin Blue Line protecting its actions yesterday, no matter what the circumstances.

The lesson here is that whenever one is confronted by the police, don't trust them and look out for your best interests by covering your own ass no matter how nice the officer seems.

[Merlot]

14. Sometimes you don't know someone as well as you think you do

I have a friend who casually used the term "those people" when refering to Michelle O. It was quite shocking to me, as I never would have suspected that kind of language (said in a tone of voice that left no question as to the feelings involved) from this person I've known for years.

I predicted that when Obama won we'd be dealing with a lot of people with thoughts and feelings they never had to confront. And we'd be hearing things from people that we would never have thought possible. Basically, they are crawling out of the woodwork. Most people put a lid on their feelings, now, with Obama in office they can't ignore them.

As for the friend of a friend with the black child, well I'm guessing this officer treats the black child wonderfully, so the friend assumed the cop had no bad feelings. But there is a difference between how someone treates a small child and how they treat an adult. They aren't threatened by the child.

If the officer had done this to a white person, there would be no racism, it would be abuse of power. Still wrong.

[Fuzz]

22. One doesn't have to burn crosses on the front lawn to act in a racist way.

[ingac70]

23. Still....

making nasty comments about the officers momma is not against the law. This cop is obviously a dick.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

27. Obama called him an outstanding officer and invited him to the WH for a beer.

[bridgit]

10. I just heard Obama say it's time to deescalate and start listening to each other...

Do you really think that's going to happen? If it's not going to happen how will a discussion ensue? If on the odd that it does occur - the 'discussion', isn't it more a case where one group *DEMANDS* another just stand there and receive all manner hang-dog-isms? While republicans are loving this in the course of disassembling everything you thought you just won? Are we all to be extras in Soledad O'Brien's Black in America 3-4-5-6-7-8? Who's playing who in this "Gates and Obama" moment in time, and is being "suspected of occupying a majestic residence under false pretenses" a defense that can only be explained by Chinese jet lag and a bronchial infection?

I'm seeing a day rapidly approaching wherein we are less likely to be considered realistic simply by way of what our experiences, our successes, our failures, or our malady or station in life bring to us; or we say they bring to us, as we will be considered more valid by our eyes wide open, even-handed relationship *to* them i.e. Mohammad Ali, "It ain't getting knocked down that matters, it's how fast you get back up." so that therefore it is in my opinion that,

"Why!? Because I'm a black man in America!?"

Is among the least creative 1st responses to a scene that Obama himself now claims was a teachable moment, deescalating-alluding away from prickly professorial diatribe

[WeDidIt]

11. Nails it

This one nails it beautifully.

Birthers have racially profiled Obama. These sorts of questions were not raised with this fervor for any of the 42 men who came before Obama, and what Chester Arthur faced was minoimal and quickly died down.

[JTFrog]

12. Fuck the apologists. Every single last one of them. Especially those here at DU. n/t

[TexasObserver]

13. Recommend

[Odin2005]

16. This guy gets the Bingo prize, he connected the dots.

[suffragette]

20. Great article

Really ties it all together.

[EFerrari]

24. Stanley Fish is always great. Kick,

[crickets]

25. Excellent. Thank you. K&R -nt

[Pirate Smile]

26. K & R