By now you’ve heard about Gates’ arrest and the plethora of insanity that’s followed in its wake, including the idea of ‘housed while black.’ There’s been some good work done and some very, very poor work done on both sides. What I haven’t heard much about is the flip-side of the problem, ‘policing while white.’ By that term I mean the problem we have of accusing white police officers of racism when they arrest or interact with a minority in the course of their duties. That’s not to say that it never happens – it does. Yet, in many instances, before even looking at the facts we’re quick to condemn them as racists.

If we look at this particular instance, it seems a lot more like cooler heads not prevailing versus actual racism. First, the caller was calling on behalf of somebody else. She wasn’t even sure of the race and even Gates says she acted properly to what she was seeing – yet the hardliners still take it upon themselves to call her a racist. Then we have the officer on the scene, whether or not he knew the race of the individuals involved doesn’t really make his actions based on race. He was responding to a call of a potential break in where two individuals were believed to be involved. He was alone and confronted at the door.

The idea of having Gates step out on the porch is not a horrid idea, and seems like a good policy to have in that situation. Think of it this way. If you’re an officer and there’s supposedly two people and you only know where potentially one of them is what would you do? Enter the home or ask the person to speak with you in a location where you can be sure that nobody can get a drop on you. Now, at this point, had cooler heads prevailed it could have gone something like this. Upon a short explanation Gates realizes why the officer is there and explains that he had problems with his key and had to force the door a bit. After verifying that Gates is Gates officer Crowley offers his apologies and Gates thanks Crowley for being responsive. Instead a tired Gates blurts out an accusation of racism and things go to shit from there. Still, the arrest of Gates was entirely out of line. He was guilty of no criminal activity.

As for Gates himself, having never met him or had a chance to really understand where he stands on race I’m rather against lumping him into hardliners who see racism at every turn. Having read his op-ed from 2004,  I’d say he is somewhat practical on the matter of race issues—something the hardliners are rather far from. Yet, in this situation and some of the following statements he’s issued, he seems to step dangerously close. He continues to accuse the police of some form of racism with lines like “I think they did some historical research, and watched some episodes of ‘Good Times.” Then there’s Gates and his demand for an apology, “I think that Sergeant Crowley has backed himself in a very tight corner, and I think that is most unfortunate. My offer to listen to a heartfelt and credible apology is a sincere one, and continues to stand.” Gates continual comes off as an elitist who cannot admit he did wrong. In his eyes, he’s perfect and Crowley is nothing but a racist and the cause of the whole problem. I cannot respect this. The officer owes no apologies for responding to a 911 call and doing his job. I also hardly believe that Gates didn’t say anything racially motivated at all. As for a “very tight corner,” I hardly agree. Perhaps at this point I should accuse Gates of classism. Prominent professor with connections to the White House thinks that he can simply trample over lowly police officer. Maybe that should be the headlines and the focus of the discussion.

More though on Gates, when he first moved to Harvard he went to the police station to introduce himself so that he wouldn’t be the victim of driving while black. At first I’d be absolutely appalled by this action that basically asserts that the police are racist. But, we should also consider Gates’ experience while at Duke. Stanley Fish has a decent article on that experience, but I highly caution the rest of the article which gives a de-facto assumption that Crowley and others are racists. Another good article to give some perspective on being a minority comes from Charles Blow, in which he discusses the cultural reasons of the distrust of police.

To me, it’s important to look at both sides of the story and the facts—something hardliners never do as it would in some if not many cases conflict with their accusations of racism. I think Glenn Loury, in his op-ed for the New York Times, summed up our problems with the discussion of race quite well and included a nice discussion on actual issues of race.

Yet during this past week — as I have watched the controversy unfold over the arrest of a black Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., by a white Cambridge, Mass., police officer, James Crowley — I have come to appreciate the prescience of Mr. Holder’s remark. It is as though we are determined to prove him right — as if our talk about race must be forced into a comfortable and familiar, if false, narrative where villains (“racists”) and heroes (“victims of racism”) are clear-cut, and where all one need do to stand on the right side of history is to engage in a bit of moral sanctimony.

As far as I am concerned, the ubiquity of this narrative shows that we are incapable of talking straight with one another about race. And this much-publicized incident is emblematic of precisely nothing at all. Rather, the Gates arrest is a made-for-cable-TV tempest in a teapot. It is the rough equivalent of a black man being thrown out of a restaurant after having berated an indifferent maître d’ for showing him to a table by the kitchen door, all the while declaring what everybody is supposed to know: this is what happens to a black man in America.

He’s quite right about the cable news extravaganza. That’s really what this has turned into, and not for the better. But it’s the ides of villains and heroes that causes quite a bit of the problems we have. The hardliners are quick to see themselves as the heroes. Some of the worst offenders are white males who are pretty well to do. They thrive on considering themselves to be better than the common lot. They elevate themselves above the rest because they consider themselves to be truly post-racial. To them, anything with racial connotations makes one a racist. Rather than even try to explain their rationale for the denunciation they simply, and in many cases vulgarly, state that there is no discussion to be had for they denounce racism and racists and do not give their arguments any consideration. It’s a simple act of not listening at all or even caring about the situation. They don’t even care what the evidence was, it’s simply white, males especially, said or did something that involved race and is thus a racist.

The hardliners aren’t helping. For one, their denunciations without explanation of why a person is being racist don’t serve to help correct the problem. How is one supposed to understand why their actions are considered racist when they don’t think they are and the people calling them racist refuse to explain? Furthermore, in attempting to defend oneself from the chare of racism all they get in return is repeated harassment and vulgarity. It only serves to foster resentment and fear against any discussion on race issues. Why be an active participant when you’re made to feel that any statement you make will be over-analyzed and judged against an insanely unqualified PC police. Furthermore, the hardliners reluctance to discuss the issue doesn’t demonstrate any reason why the person they’re accusing of racism should change their mind.

You don’t deal with people who believe in creationism, out of ignorance or being lied to, by telling them that they’re idiots and then insulting them with vulgarity—though it can often be a fun afterthought after presenting the arguments why they’re wrong. Explaining the evidence and why they’re wrong—at least to those who have been made ignorant by authority figures–is more likely to be effective. As for those who are actively trying to make the case for creationism, yes they often get treated with little regard, simply because most often they’re trotting out centuries old arguments that have been refuted again and again—thus one can simply point to them quickly. I point this out so that the comparison doesn’t get made to that of racism. The true comparison between creationist leaders and racists are people like the KKK and neo-Nazis. Novel and new approaches are often dealt with in a concise manner that promptly explains why they’re wrong.

Some hardliners even go as far as to declare that minorities can’t be racists because they don’t enjoy the privilege of white males. This is a rather racist statement in and of itself. The idea that minorities can’t be racist is absurd and smacks against evidence. For one, there is the recent incident of a brick being thrown through the window of a white family in East Austin that said, “Keep Eastside Black. Keep Eastside Strong.” Secondly, this would require there to be such thing as a biological basis for race. There isn’t one, it’s a cultural construct. The problem, one I’d like to see these hardliners address—they won’t—is where they’re going to draw the arbitrary line for who can and cannot be a racist. Skin color runs a pretty good scale between Mormon and midnight. There is no gap. Furthermore, it doesn’t take privilege to hate or judge somebody on the basis of skin color. This is part of the problem these hardliners—often white males, congregating on left leaning blogs and forums (irony not included) who consider themselves to be high intellectuals, despite their lack of formal study in often complex subject matter. It’s about elitism for them, not about solving the problem.

What’s worse, they can’t admit they’re wrong. A few years back, in St. Louis a pretty bad storm knocked out a lot of power. The hardliners accused Ameren UE of being racist because the suburbs power was restored much quicker than the black neighborhoods. The local news took up the issue and demonstrated that Ameren had dedicated more resources to the black neighborhoods than anywhere else. What the report lack was an analysis of the power grid. The suburbs have underground lines. The only things above ground are main lines. Main lines are traditionally the first fixed since if they restore the most power and are the most important to the grid. The black neighborhoods have above ground power, even individual house lines. It takes much longer to fix these lines, especially when the streets are still filled with debris.

Another example comes out of the feminist movement. A small liberal arts university on the east coast had the problem of a disparity in their ratio of guys to girls. Thus, they adjusted their materials in order to attract more girls to the college. Unfortunately, they were too successful and ended up with freshman classes with a 3 to 1 ratio of girls to guys. Thus, they did the opposite; they changed the materials in order to attract more guys. This caused uproar among feminists. How are males supposed to feel when, in an attempt to create a more equal 1:1 ratio, they’re accused of being sexist? If equality is the goal, then equality has to be the goal no matter which way you have to go to achieve it. The university wasn’t specifically only admitting guys over girls; they were working to attract more qualified males. In a differing magazine on education I got to counting the pictures. There was something along the lines of nearly 30 pictures that prominently feature females. There were only nine featuring males. Of those nine only two were seen alone without a female present.

Another aspect of the problem they cause is that actual problems don’t get fixed. I’m not a big fan of things like affirmative action and title IX, not because of what they do, but mainly because of what they don’t even bother to address; namely the underlying problems that are causing the inequalities to exist. If we look at Gates’ 2004 Op-Ed, blacks only have a high school graduation rate of 50%. Certainly inequalities are going to start to exist when half of a minority isn’t qualified to even enter college and those that are under prepared because of the the inequalities in the school system. For affirmative action to work you have to have qualified candidates to start with, yet there’s nothing in the policy that seeks to address that problem. There’s hardly any call to address that problem even outside of affirmative action. Quite frankly, it’s why affirmative action has failed to get the desired results after so many years. When we start addressing the root problems and actual issues of race and privilege that exist in our culture we can finally have a meaningful dialog that solves problems.

The problem why we can’t have this discussion on race issues stems from these hardliners. They’re quick to judge, quick to condemn, and, I would say, perpetuate the Catholicism of Being White. In other words, since you’re white and not one of them you’re a guilty racist. We can never have a meaningful discussion on race until we stop considering an entirely social constructed race to be guilty of racism simply because of the color of their skin. Whites as well as other minorities want to solve these problems, they’re for equality. They’re for fair competition. Just because they enjoy some innate privileges do to their skin color does not make them racists. We’re not all the KKK or skin heads.

Quite frankly, I am disgusted by the entire incident. The frank and quick denunciation of racism on all the people involved except the one actually guilty of some form of racism, Dr. Gates combined with his overbearing arrogance after the fact simply does nothing to help and only fosters resentment. Consider, if the officer was black, would he have responded so negatively? Would this be in the news at all? No, it wouldn’t, because Gates couldn’t have accused the officer of racism. While I am hesitant to combine Gates with the hardliners in this case, he’s certainly acting in accordance with their elitist mantras to some degree. They’re not helping the discussion and we’re not going to move towards a post-racial society or make any meaningful progress until the hardliners are viewed in the same manner as neo-Nazis. Fuck their noise—I already explained why they’re wrong anyways.