Hulk to Police: It’s Because I’m Green, Isn’t It?

Crazy story out of Cambridge, Mass this week with the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates.

Let’s recap: a neighbor sees two men trying to force their way into the professor’s house. The neighbor doesn’t recognize Prof. Gates (Inexcusable, right? Naturally all of us know all of our neighbors well, yes?) As for the other man, he’s a limo driver hired for the day, so why should anyone know him? Gates goes into the house from the back and pulls on the uncooperative front door while the driver pushes, so now we’re down to one definite stranger pushing on the front door. Neighbor calls the cops to investigate, as you might hope your neighbor would, on seeing people forcing their way in your front door.

From here on in, the stories differ. Gates says he explained it was his house and produced his ID, and the officer wouldn’t give his name and insisted on running him in. The officer (a Sgt Crowley) says Gates called him a racist, yelled, “this is what happens to a black man in America,” insulted his mother (!) and made it impossible for him to call in a report to headquarters. Anyway, Gates is arrested.

Next, President Obama demonstrates his legal training and natural leadership qualities by saying at a press conference, “I don’t know all the facts” but the police “acted stupidly.” The police officer involved — who incidentally teaches a class for rookies on the dangers of racial profiling — is now threatening a libel suit against the professor. The professor, meanwhile — whose wife is white and who by all accounts is not the militant type — is considering a wrongful arrest suit against the police.

The real winner in all this? Whatever enterprising burglar decides to actually rob Gates’ home. It’s a sure bet no neighbor will bother to call the cops now, even if they see furniture, electronics, jewelry and a safe being loaded into the back of a van by mysterious strangers in stocking masks.

The losers? Anyone still clinging to the notion that the 2008 elections ushered us into a post-racial, post-partisan utopia light years away from the days of Rodney King and O.J. Simpson. That, and anyone who hoped for a President who might actually act…well, presidential. As others have noted, when you start a sentence with “I don’t have all the facts,” then the way to end the sentence is, “…so I cannot comment.” Instead Obama rushed to the defense of his friend, invoked the specter of racial profiling (and thus implied it had happened in this casse) and escalated a local controversy into a national screaming match, with the predictable diatribes against police everywhere, and Cambridge residents now leaving Gates’ property littered with signs calling him a racist.

It wasn’t that long ago the President was responding point-by-point to arguments made by Rush Limbaugh on the radio, theoretically to tar the Republicans by making Limbaugh their “leader” in the eyes of the public, but all it really did was elevate a radio personality, an entertainer, to equal footing with the leader of the free world. For a supposed political genius, sometimes this guy comes off like a real bozo.

Not to worry, though; Obama’s offered to share a beer with both men at the White House in the near future, and everything will be hearts and roses again before you know it. At least until the next blow-up.

I was always a big fan of Henry Louis Gates’s WONDERS OF THE AFRICAN WORLD, which is my favorite Africa-themed documentary series except for maybe Basil Wolverton’s, which was about the relationship between Europe and Africa from antiquity to modern times (worth checking out if you can find it at your library).

It’s weird, but when I think back on the television shows and specials that I’ve really responded to in my life, nearly all of them are documentaries, from JACQUES COUSTEAU to IN SEARCH OF… to Eugen Weber’s THE WESTERN TRADITION. Which is interesting because with lots of people, documentaries are like their illegitimate offspring, reality TV: everybody watches them but people just don’t think about them when they’re not on.

As for cops, I learned pretty early on to respect and avoid them for the same reason you respect and avoid members of the Maras, Latin Kings, or M.S. 13: they have guns, can call on their friends for backup in tight spots, are fanatically obsessed with status, respect and keeping face, and are constitutionally incapable of remorse.

Having been the victim of profiling myself in the past (as a teenager wearing the wrong sort of clothes in the wrong place) I can tell you, you never stop being angry when you’re hassled and aren’t doing anything wrong – cops bother you simply because they figure you must be guilty of something and it’s just a question of finding out what.

The worst part is the sanctimonious tone officers assume when they find you really are just minding your own business.

“Well, we’re not giving you a citation for trespassing…this time…”

Gee whiz, thanks, officer!

At the magnet high school where I teach, there’s a police officer that we keep on retainer, and even as an adult I prickle up in his presence. Not just because I’ve had bad experiences with police, but because to keep a police officer around just to spook kids that skip classes is the ultimate violation of trust, and the ultimate absolution of our responsibilities as educators. It’s the ultimate example of the overkill that results in the “school-to-jail pipeline.”

So yeah, if it isn’t obvious enough by now, I’m on the side of my buddy Louis Gates. Not just because I like his documentary, but if a cop hassled me while I was getting into my own apartment, brother, I would say a lot worse things than Gates did! Maybe Gates did overreact, but the instant he showed ID that showed he lived in that house, the interaction should have been over.

I have no reason to think the cop was a racist or the arrest was racially motivated, since according to a magazine article, the cop gave racial sensitivity seminars. Rather, the problem is in a mentality drummed into police: the obsession with receiving respect and recognition for status and the easily wounded sense of authority, even when they’re clearly in the wrong.

And for what it’s worth, I do understand that vague anxiety that comes from minorities and the lack of trust with police. There have been occasions where I have been really nervous to show my driver’s license to a cop, because it lists my full name as JULIAN PEREZ. The worst is the dreaded pregnant pause after you hand the ID over, and you’re left wondering exactly what this guy is thinking…

Although I seem to recall that one of the great memes floating around with conservative columnists in the wake of the Obama victory was, “Hey! It’s great this guy won, because now all racial tensions everywhere are a thing of the past!”

Astute you should mention the Hulk. No wonder that connected with teenagers.

Here’s the beginning of nearly every Hulk story: there he is, minding his own business, petting deer and other forest creatures…when suddenly tanks (sent by “The Man”) plow through his sylvan glen, firing missiles, refusing to leave him alone.

One comment

Julian Perez

August 3, 2009 / 12:40 pm

I was always a big fan of Henry Louis Gates’s WONDERS OF THE AFRICAN WORLD, which is my favorite Africa-themed documentary series except for maybe Basil Wolverton’s, which was about the relationship between Europe and Africa from antiquity to modern times (worth checking out if you can find it at your library).

It’s weird, but when I think back on the television shows and specials that I’ve really responded to in my life, nearly all of them are documentaries, from JACQUES COUSTEAU to IN SEARCH OF… to Eugen Weber’s THE WESTERN TRADITION. Which is interesting because with lots of people, documentaries are like their illegitimate offspring, reality TV: everybody watches them but people just don’t think about them when they’re not on.

As for cops, I learned pretty early on to respect and avoid them for the same reason you respect and avoid members of the Maras, Latin Kings, or M.S. 13: they have guns, can call on their friends for backup in tight spots, are fanatically obsessed with status, respect and keeping face, and are constitutionally incapable of remorse.

Having been the victim of profiling myself in the past (as a teenager wearing the wrong sort of clothes in the wrong place) I can tell you, you never stop being angry when you’re hassled and aren’t doing anything wrong – cops bother you simply because they figure you must be guilty of something and it’s just a question of finding out what.

The worst part is the sanctimonious tone officers assume when they find you really are just minding your own business.

“Well, we’re not giving you a citation for trespassing…this time…”

Gee whiz, thanks, officer!

At the magnet high school where I teach, there’s a police officer that we keep on retainer, and even as an adult I prickle up in his presence. Not just because I’ve had bad experiences with police, but because to keep a police officer around just to spook kids that skip classes is the ultimate violation of trust, and the ultimate absolution of our responsibilities as educators. It’s the ultimate example of the overkill that results in the “school-to-jail pipeline.”

So yeah, if it isn’t obvious enough by now, I’m on the side of my buddy Louis Gates. Not just because I like his documentary, but if a cop hassled me while I was getting into my own apartment, brother, I would say a lot worse things than Gates did! Maybe Gates did overreact, but the instant he showed ID that showed he lived in that house, the interaction should have been over.

I have no reason to think the cop was a racist or the arrest was racially motivated, since according to a magazine article, the cop gave racial sensitivity seminars. Rather, the problem is in a mentality drummed into police: the obsession with receiving respect and recognition for status and the easily wounded sense of authority, even when they’re clearly in the wrong.

And for what it’s worth, I do understand that vague anxiety that comes from minorities and the lack of trust with police. There have been occasions where I have been really nervous to show my driver’s license to a cop, because it lists my full name as JULIAN PEREZ. The worst is the dreaded pregnant pause after you hand the ID over, and you’re left wondering exactly what this guy is thinking…

Although I seem to recall that one of the great memes floating around with conservative columnists in the wake of the Obama victory was, “Hey! It’s great this guy won, because now all racial tensions everywhere are a thing of the past!”

Astute you should mention the Hulk. No wonder that connected with teenagers.

Here’s the beginning of nearly every Hulk story: there he is, minding his own business, petting deer and other forest creatures…when suddenly tanks (sent by “The Man”) plow through his sylvan glen, firing missiles, refusing to leave him alone.

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