The Louis Gates Affair - Black Paranoia or Discrimination?

By now we all know about the circumstances surrounding the incident between Louis Gates, Jr., a Harvard scholar and professor on race relations and the Cambridge, Mass. police department. The shocking part of this is our own President, acting with typical black paranoia before he has the facts, says that the police “acted stupidly in this incident by arresting a black middle-age man with a cane in his own house”. Now that the facts are in, we see that Professor Gates and even our President have acted like black stereotypes in an incident that had nothing to do with race.

It just appears that we have the case of a liberal, intellectual, and elitist African-American (the liberal label is an assumption- but given the geographical location we’d be hard pressed to find a conservative) who thought that he was being treated like a “common” black man by the police and because of his “status” became enraged as soon as the police arrived and immediately call the policeman a racist.

There is no doubt from the police reports and witnesses that Mr. Gates exacerbated the situation and became uncontrollable, shouting insults at the police officer and causing a significant disturbance and was arrested for that reason. I realize that the persecution and abuse of blacks by the police has been a blot on our society and causes great resentment by blacks. No doubt that racial profiling is a reality, but given the fact that 70-80% of our prisons are inhabited by minorities it is obvious that the police may act aggressively in certain situations and that law abiding or educated and professional blacks would be sensitive to the race issue, in situations involving a white policeman. However, most educated people, white or black, would normally act respectful to an officer who was doing his job in a situation where he thought a break-in was involved. Apparently, Mr. Gates thought he was intellectually “superior” to this white cop and instantly proceeded with an attitude.

Massachusetts is a state with a black Governor, Cambridge has a black mayor, officer Crowley had Hispanic and African-American partners, and we have a black President. It’s time for us to get beyond this issue, however, if educated blacks continue to use the race card in a situation where racial profiling was clearly not the case, this will never happen. Also, if our President shows his own racial bias before he even knows the facts, we surely won’t get beyond this and he will antagonize his white constituency. The incident now threatens to de-rail his popularity and even his legislative agenda.

Rushing to judgment ridicules his sincerity about changing this country with respect to race relations. It also makes one wonder about his credibility as he tries to push universal healthcare down the throat of a reluctant populace without even reading the legislation. This event adds credulence to the argument about his executive inexperience in running anything except for elective office.

Like the Cambridge Police Department spokesman said yesterday “the President called the wrong party stupid”.