Racial Profiling is Alive and Well

by Matt Kelley

category: Racial Profiling

Published July 23, 2009 @ 04:05PM PT

Racial profiling is alive and well...and the Skip Gates case won't change that.

It has been a week since Harvard Professor Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr., one of our country's preeminent scholars of African American studies, was arrested for breaking into his own home. I was planning to leave this story alone, because you've read about it on every other blog in the world. But it's still on my mind, and Barack Obama breathed new life into the issue yesterday, so I thought I'd share some of the more thought-provoking stuff I've seen on this issue around the web in the last week.

First of all, the details of Gates' arrest are in dispute. Gates wasn't arrested for breaking and entering, he was arrested for disorderly conduct for allegedly disobeying the officer who asked for his ID. Gates disputes the officer's version of events, but only the two of them know what happened. The officer involved apparently teaches new recruits how to avoid profiling.

Despite this, however, I think it's clear that this arrest - and even the involvement of police in the first place - would have been less likely if Gates were a white Harvard professor and not a black Harvard professor. And I think it's also clear that regardless of whatever happened in Cambridge, racial profiling isn't going anywhere soon.

The charges have now been dropped, but the discussion goes on. Here are some thoughts I've seen across the blogosphere on Gates' arrest:

Melissa Harris-Rockwell wrote at the Nation that Gates' arrest is particularly upsetting because he has led the way toward a post-racial America. "Gates is invested in black life, black history, black art, and black literature, but he has managed to achieve a largely post-political and even substantially post-racial existence," she wrote.

Adam Serwer wrote at the American Prospect that even more disturbing than the arrest is the fact that Gates' own neighbor called the police on him.

Slate's Emily Bazelon and author Farai Chideya had an engaging chat on bloggingheads.tv yesterday, where Chideya said "I don't think these provocative public moments actually produce policy change."

A presidential mention of racial profiling can't hurt the cause, however. Obama said last night: "There’s a long history in this country of African-Americans being stopped disproportionately by the police ... It’s a sign of how race remains a factor in this society."

Bill Cosby questioned Obama's comments today, saying he was "shocked" that the president would get involved and urged us to keep an open mind because we don't know what happened.

Others have suggested that the allegations of racial profiling might be overblown.

Neely Tucker wrote on the Washington Post that he had a similar experience in the 1990s, and was pleased that the police took a false alarm seriously. "When an armed law enforcement officer tells you to cease and desist, the wise person (a) ceases and (b) desists," he writes.

The National Review, always up for pushing the envelope, suggests that Gates should be the one apologizing: "If contacting a black man then found inside that very home is deemed to be “profiling” then the term itself has been stripped of its meaning," blogs an LAPD officer under a nom de plume.

Debating the details from either side won't get us anywhere, however. Racial profiling is real. It happens. This may be an example of it and it may not (as I wrote above, the combination of the police being called and then the police handling of the case seem much less likely if Gates were white), but it needs to be addressed, and I hope this conversation moves us closer to addressing it in a real way - rather than sparking an argument about facts we'll never resolve.