My Perspective: A Teachable Moment

For the last two weeks, the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates known to many of his friends as Skip has brought about a major issue in America known as racial profiling. Racial profiling is nothing new to America but to consider the incident involving Professor Gates as a racial profiling case would be incorrect. Even President Obama involved himself in this debate because a reporter asked him a question about it and President Obama calibrated his words wrongly by referring to the police officers or police force actions as stupidly. To President Obama’s credit, he hosted a beer summit that brought Sgt. Crowley, the arresting officer in Gates incident, and Professor Gates together to talk about the issue as well for them to work together to learn how to improve police relations with the community.

The whole incident is truly a teachable moment as President Obama has said and it is the type of teachable moment that tells us as people not to take sides in a situation until we know all the facts. Even if that is your friend or relative, we shouldn’t quickly jump to the side of our relative or friend until we know all the facts of a situation regardless of what it is. As soon as Professor Gates was arrested, many people jumped to the conclusion that it was racial profiling and even the news media itself might have played a role in putting that notion in our heads but it is far too easy to blame the media for such notions when we as a people have a brain to come to conclusions as to what is racial profiling and what is not. Nonetheless as it turns out, the incident involving the arrest of Professor Gates was not racially motivated but was more so male ego because two man who didn’t want to let another man get the better of them.

That is why the real teachable moment is for us as a people to understand what racial profiling is and how to properly deal with. The real teachable moment is for us as a people to stop calling things racists if it is not necessary. It is those people who think before they act that usually come to the best solutions in this world. That is why the real teachable moment in the arrest of Professor Gates is that it teaches us as a people regardless of our economic status in life how to act in the presence of police and it teaches police to be more professional regardless of how rude and disrespectful an individual might be. It is moments like this that shouldn’t leave a bad stain on America but instead it should allow us to have real conversations as to what racial profiling is and what it isn’t.

Simply being a person of colored is not racial profiling but it is why you are stop or the speculator reasons for the stop that create racial profiling. It is not new that people of color are stopped more often than whites but every time a person a colored is stop by a police officer yet alone a white officer, will it be considered racial profiling. That is the question that has lingered throughout African American and Hispanic communities for years when it comes to police stops and arrests. Nonetheless the arrest of Professor Gates sparked outrage from many that it Gates was arrested because he was black but nothing can be farther from the truth. The reality is that Professor Gates own mouth caused his arrest and Sgt. Crowley’s own male ego got in the way of his professionalism which would have lead Sgt. Crowley to allow Professor Gates to mouth off as Sgt. Crowley just left. Instead Sgt. Crowley’s male ego got in his way and Professor Gates own male ego prevented Professor Gates from simply showing the officer his identification than allowing the officer to leave. Professor Gates instead continued to mouth off at the mouth causing Sgt. Crowley to react in a way that defended his badge of honor in front of his fellow colleagues and other citizens who witnessed the incident.

That is why the real teachable moment for the rest of America is for us to teach our males how to keep their male egos in check even in the face of adversity because that it is ego that can lead to death and other harm which thankfully didn’t happen in the Professor Gates arrest. The teachable moment for our society is to not pass judgment upon those blacks who disagree with other blacks or don’t think like the majority of blacks when it comes to situations. The black officer from Cambridge shouldn’t be called an Uncle Tom for simply telling the truth on what actually happened on Professor Gates porch. The woman who was walking by and made the call to police that lead to the arrest of Professor Gates should not have been called a racist when she was doing the neighborly thing by witnessing something that looked suspicious and called the police in order for them to investigate it. The type of hate mail and racist comments aimed at those individuals for simply doing noble things should make all of us shameful for our actions if we are the ones who called these individuals racists or Uncle Tom’s.

It is moments like this that we should learn from as we work to continue to make America post-racial. The election of President Obama has helped a little but that alone will not resolve all of our nation’s racial tensions because it is moments like this that shows how easy it is for many people to revert back to our old habits of picking sides and playing the race card whenever there are incidents between whites and blacks. As a people, we do have more in common than we think and it is those things we have in common that brings us closer rather than allowing those things that we disagree on us divide us. Still if we are to learn from this nation, we must learn that there are three things we as a people can do to help in dealing with situations that we perceive are racial profiling which the Michigan Citizen lists in an article entitled Teen talk: How to handle racial & rapper profiling.

Top 3 things to do if you get profiled & stopped
1. Know your rights. You are not required to give permission to police officers to search your car. You can deny the request—but do so politely. Take basic law.
2. Don’t argue. Police might try to intimidate you. Don’t be confrontational, Cooperate to avoid being injured, tazed, shot or killed if things spiral out of control.
3. Get police names. Get badge numbers, scout car numbers, license plate numbers. Make a note of the street, location, date and time of the incident, and whether the police cruiser camera was on. Ask a bystander to take a cell phone video.
File a complaint if you feel you’ve been mistreated and profiled by police. Contact the ACLU, NAACP, NCLR/La Raza, ADC, or other civil rights organizations for further reporting and lawyer referrals.

If we teach our young people to handle police in this matter than they not only live to fight another battle but they live to fight ongoing war that few people ever try to fight with police out of far. However at the same time, it is not just up to us as citizens to be polite toward police but it is up to police to be polite toward us as citizens and this starts with police doing more community policing and interacting with the communities they serve better. Police have a responsibility to build relationships in our neighborhoods and that is what this lesson should teach police officers all over America. But most of all we must teach our young males, well all males, to keep their egos in check when dealing with police because this is the only way we can prevent incidents like Professor Gates arrest from happening again. Keeping our male egos in check goes to all males especially police officers because they have to always be professional when dealing with the public no matter what. However professional responsibility and courteous is something that all people should adhere to no matter what and this will help in resolving issues between police and individuals more quickly in the future.

If we learn these lessons from Professor Gates arrest than I am optimistic that real conversations surrounding race and racial profiling can finally begin with people choosing their words more carefully when future situations occur between people of color and whites. If we learn these lessons than we as a people will be more careful in picking sides in situations and we as a people including the news media will be more careful in labeling things as racists and racial profiling. These are the lessons that we must learn and these are the things that are the type of teachable lessons from this moment that not only President Obama learned but I learned as I watched all of this took play out.