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Obama's New Reverend Wright
Lee Marriner / AP Photo
He may not be as controversial as Jeremiah Wright, but Skip Gates has become Obama’s latest racially polarizing friend. Adam Hanft rereads Professor Gates’ analysis of the Wright controversy through the lens of the professor’s arrest.
Read other takes on Gates' arrest from Daily Beast writers.
Memory can heal and haunt. All of us are the manufactured sums of the tribal stories we’ve absorbed, that were handed down to us as implacable lessons, and that we overheard as children, tracking the whispers of anxious adults in the night. Barack Obama is. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is. Benjamin Netanyahu is. You and I are.
When Gates saw the cop enter his house, he suddenly became a proxy for history.
That’s the teaching moment of the Gates incident. His emotional explosion was, I think, less about the immediate incident and the behavior of that particular cop. It feels to me like a very personal reaction to a long history of police terrorism of black Americans, resulting in an eruption that appears to be disproportionate to the circumstances.
In that sense, Gates’ reaction struck me as literary and historical, a mis en scene that could have come straight from a Mamet play or, going back earlier, a moment of concentrated emotional intensity from Odets and his compadres in the Group Theater.
Were it actual theater, in fact, a reviewer assessing the performance might write that when Gates saw the cop enter his house he suddenly became a proxy for history. He was the embodiment of—and revenge vessel for—all those helpless and demeaned black Americans bullied and abused by racist authority figures. And he reacted as the heir of great pain. The cop was merely objectified at that point. We can’t escape the whispers. Art Spiegelman often says that his father told him to stop drawing and learn how to pack a suitcase.
When we react both as individuals and as inheritors, the context suffers, overwhelmed by what we bring to it. That’s not the teaching moment Obama had in mind, though. The heuristic opportunity he was talking about is a PBS narrative, a national lesson about racial profiling, the lingering stain of racism, and how America still has work to do. And yes, those are real dimensions of our culture that must be dealt with.
But the deeper issue is how our tribal baggage defines us. That was a big part of Obama’s now-famous Philadelphia speech. What he said then about Reverend Wright is, in some Möbius-strip irony, applicable to Henry Louis Gates Jr., who is nine years older than Wright:
“For the men and women of Reverend Wright's generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table.”
It’s not easy—and some would argue passionately, not always desirable—to put sufficient distance between ourselves, history, and the world of now to look at a set of circumstances with objectivity.
Obama failed to do that; when he said that the Cambridge police “acted stupidly,” he was doing exactly what he criticized Reverend Wright for. He defaulted to the stereotype of the racist cop. Obama said that Wright “…spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country…is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.”
Later, when the president said should have “calibrated” his remarks differently, he was really saying that he shouldn’t have said what he was feeling deep inside. Which makes this a teaching moment for him, personally, as much as for the rest of us.
Adam Hanft is a decoder of the consumer culture and our branded planet. He blogs for The Huffington Post and FastCompany.com. He is also the co-author of Dictionary of the Future and is founder and CEO of the marketing and branding firm Hanft Raboy. Follow him at Twitter.com/hanft.
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None of which changes the fact that cops ARE stupid...and that Gates overreacted...
There are those that adamantly claim that President Obama NEVER used the race card - not just in the Gates case but OFTEN. This link should disabuse those who make that false claim as his own words demonstrate ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI77cU3jsFs&feature=fvw
Aside from being a distraction from minor things, like a health care system that is bankrupting our businesses as well as our population, keeping up a debate about this is not really worthwhile. If the person involved is really upset about this it will be settled in court, if he isn't then what is everyone else upset about?
Comes a time when you have to start being responsible for your actions and quit blaming the past. Isn't that what the Philly speech was about? Because until that happens, African Americans will continue to lag behind other cultures who found their way to the US by whatever means.
In this case, the cop was doing his job. Gates was being a jerk.
This case turns neither on racial profiling, nor on police misconduct, but on unspoken, often demeaning expectations surrounding the social etiquette in interactions between blacks and whites. Whitefolks perceive as threatening those blackfolks who don't speak in dulcet tones and in the Queen's English. Blackfolks no longer feel constrained by a death penalty if they speak to whitefolks however they please. The rebellion of African Americans against four centuries of oppression has always been waged on this front as well as in the courtrooms, schoolrooms, and workplaces of America. It is personal and it is intimate, and it was on display in the interaction between the white man who demanded respect from the black man who had earned it.
Shockacon, you are the problem. First this country is not four centuries old; second it was not Americans that captured, ensaved and then sold blacks to whites for transport; Americans didn't "go get blacks", wasn't it the Dutch who bought them then resold them? Second, no one in the universe has the right to say anything they want, ever, without consequences. From comments like this and many others on similar subjects I have read over the years, I have come to believe that perhaps the Malcom X's, Jackson's, Sharpton's of the last century were more interested in maintaining and encouraging a "hate" against all that "white oppression. They and or their families are wealthy today, aren't they? If, after almost SIXTY years you all can't even begin to get over it, it may be because, like many people in the world you not only want what may be "fair", but you want it all and that includes the elimination of the white race. No on in my family ever had anything to do with slavery but me and mine have paid money in taxes for decades to try and get over this episode in America, but, we are now so hated and despised that I despair for my country. You and yours can speak anyway to want...Queen's English or Hip Hop. You and yours can demean women as "ho's" and continue to abuse them as Brown did, or you can begin to get a grip on your irrational rage about "centuries" of abuse. The Jewish people have it all over you by thousands of years and the pogroms and genocide they suffer and continue to suffer shows that a people can live without hate and still "make" it in the world.
this whole subject makes me sick.gates was a asshole all the way, obama showed his true colors. i'm white and i'm so glad, being black isn't where it at
>wasn't it the Dutch who bought them then resold them
The Dutch were merely middlemen. It was the warring tribes that sold their defeated bretheren into slavery. So, in reality, they are products of their own inhumanity to themselves. Why do you think that (black) Africa has not achieved any of the advances that virtually every other continent has achieved? If you look there today, you will still see a bunch of tribes at war with each other and if they didn't purchase weapons from outside their own countries, they'd still be fighting with bows, arrows, sticks and stones. The whole arab nation would be in a similar situation if it weren't for the fact that they got lucky and are sitting on top of a large amount of oil.
I used to live in Cambridge, and I have witnessed numerous encounters with the police there involving everything under the sun. I never thought I would say this, but, everytime I witnessed or was personally involved with the Cambridge police force, I was extremely impressed at their professionalism, their ability to use reason over emotion, and their willingness to give people the chance to do good rather than become just another arrest. I am not just talking about people like Crowley, a white officer. I'm talking about all Cambridge Police, including women, blacks, whatever. When I see one of them coming/going, I don't worry about what race or gender they are, I just know that they're Cambridge police. Could there be one or two bad eggs - sure - something like that is always possible, but from everything that has been reported on this story, all I see is yet another well educated black man trying to be a martyr in some type of strange "please don't beat me, mr. police man" scenario in which he has absolutely no one to blame but himself. To prove this - just reverse the colors on the players and see how you'd feel about it then. Then try it with both of them being the same race and see what you'd think.
Thank you, Mr. Hanft, for the most insightful comments I've seen on this issue. We will not get anywhere with our racial pain and hideous past until we can see facts with stark precision. It is that objectivity that is sorely lacking in this case. The president shares responsibility for the whole mess.
It's weird how some people apparently just don't notice the vivid sense of great privilege offended in Gates' behavior and even words.
Gates has no inborn sense of fear of cops. He knows better than to label what happened racism and he knows he's slanting it that way to avoid admitting that he felt this cop didn't cower and scrap sufficiently before him.
Crowley was doing his job. And he got abused by Gates for it.
Gates must know that howling racism inappropriately harms rather than helps the cause.
I think the discussion of race should focus on another aspect. For instance, when conservative commentators say, President Obama is taking away our freedoms and our founding fathers would roll over in thier graves." We know for a fact that those founding fathers and generations of American leaders, actually denied its citizens basic American rights .
Point 2: When I talk about terrorism in America on this point, Im talking about: slavery, church bombings, hangings, cross burnings, KKK, and laws i.e.Jim Crow, seperate but equal, and etc.
For hundreds(plural) of years, the majority of Americans supported and/or participated in these evil and haneous attacks against black Americans. When we refer to past America(ns), why should black Americans not take offense to people making statements i.e. how great our founding fathers were or the greatest generation. Should they show the same kind of discuss one would show when someone makes a glowing statement about Hitler. I say that knowing Hitler committed his evil over decades and white America terrorized black America for HUNDREDS of years.
crowley was doing what he was trained to do. calling Crowley a racist makes things worse for everyone. And personally I do not care what kind of beer they drink. Lets move on.
One thing I can't get past. The image of Gates being walked out of his own house in handcuffs. Crowley has acknowledged that by that time he knew that Gates was in his own house. I simply can't fathom what Gates could have possibly said or done -- short of pulling a gun on the officers -- to merit that kind of treatment. Perhaps he is arrogant. Perhaps he was rude. By that time the police knew he wasn't dangerous or a criminal. They should have taken the verbal slaps and left.To do otherwise is simply to abuse their authority. Perhaps it was stupid.
Another hate monger out the gate with all the hate possible. Get over it please. This country may have been racist at one time, but you also need to see all that has been achieved, unless you feel that nothing is every resolved for any one, any place for any reason.
Thank you.
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