As more and more facts come out about the incident between a police officer and Harvard professor Henry Gates, assessing the significance of what happened becomes more and more complicated. What do you think of this take from Kansas City Star columnist Grant Martin?
Who yells at a police officer? In my experience only two types of people yell at police officers: drunken people and those who are “privileged”. By privileged I mean people who feel they are “above” the law. People who can afford expensive attorneys. People who are “connected”.
These people have attitudes and aren’t afraid to show them. Maybe it’s a part of my upbringing- but my first instinct when dealing with the police is cooperation. I don’t want to end up on the daily blotter just because of a misunderstanding with a police officer — no matter who is at fault. As my dad used to say, “It doesn’t matter whether you weren’t in the wrong in a car accident — if you end up dead.”
But, in my experience, those with privilege don’t think like that. They say things like, “you don’t know who you’re dealing with” and “wait until I call my lawyer”. Another quote that I’ll add to that list now is: “this incident will help me make a movie about my field of study.” . . .
I think our elites have always been a little out of touch, and maybe it is a perverted sign of progress that some African-American people today are able to do what their White counterparts have been doing for a long time: take advantage of their social status. The good doctor is, after all, a professor in one of the country’s most elite schools who counts the President as a friend.
Surely the “average” guy yelling at the “average” American police officer would have spent the night in jail. Maybe the real question is why a higher-class citizen was released with the charges dropped while a lower-class citizen would not have received the same treatment.
Now, usually, African-Americans have had to face both racial and class discrimination, but it can be revealing to sort those out. Can you think of other examples of class discrimination?
(In the meantime, I salute President Obama for inviting Officer Crowley and Professor Gates to get together at the White House to work out a reconciliation in a classic blue collar way: over a beer.)
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