Professor Gates and Officer Crowley

I read that they had a "beer summit" with President Obama, and that they agreed to disagree.

Now that I have read both versions of the story, I have formed my own opinion.

I worked in Cambridge, MA, for two years. The Cambridge police department has a specific procedure that an officer must follow when he investigates a report of attempted break in. I believe that the procedure is exactly the same, no matter what the race is of the person who answers the door. And I believe that an officer who is given authority to investigate must maintain control of the situation to the extent needed to complete the investigation. I was taught always to comply courteously with requests from a policeman. The time to challenge his authority, if necessary, is after the fact, in a court of law. That's the way it works in our country.

By his own account, Professor Gates operated on the assumption that a white police officer who comes to his door is there to hurt him, not to help him. Professor Gates, operating on that prejudice, is the racist. Instead of being civil to an officer of the law, the professor chose to be belligerent. But the good professor is blind to his own racism, and he belligerently accused an officer who was following protocol of being a racist, without any specific facts to support that accusation.

There is is no way for me to know how intense things got at that moment, and whether or not the professor's actions justified an arrest for "disorderly conduct." For me, that issue is secondary; it would not have come into play if Professor Gates had not acted on his own prejudice in the first place.

A double standard applies to the concept of racism--perpetuated by radicals like Professor Gates, Rev. Wright, and Al Sharpton.