Gates Arrest Brings Issues of Racism To The Forefront

by State Rep Mark Cohen Dem PA

Share this on Twitter - Gates Arrest Brings Issues of Racism To The Forefront Tue Jul 21, 2009 at 12:53:05 AM PDT
Is Cambridge, Massachusetts, the storied home of Harvard University, the new Selma, Alabama? Is there a racial backlash in Cambridge--long considered a bastion of liberalism--against having both a black governor and a black President simultaneously? Will liberalism in Massachusetts die when Ted Kennedy does? Will the late Boston anti-busing crusader Louise Day Hicks prove to the patron saint of 21st Century Massachusetts?

I am certain I am not alone in thinking about these kinds of questions in light of the recent news that the eminent Harvard Black Studies Professor Henry Louis Gates has been arrested for disorderly conduct after vehemently protesting his interrogation for breaking into his own home, a horrible nightmare in a land where the belief that one's home is one's castle is widespread.

State Rep Mark Cohen Dem PA's diary :: ::
If the City of Cambridge is smart, by 8:00 a.m. today, the Mayor will have announced a 10:00 a.m. press conference to discuss the City of Cambridge's decision to drop charges against Professor Gates. A smart city would make sure top police and prosecutors were there to support the decision to drop the charges.

If the City of Cambridge is not smart, and lets the issue of Gate's absurd and likely racist arrest reverbate around the world for days or weeks or months, the Gates arrest will define what Cambridge is for many people around the world for many years to come.

Police of all kinds, like elected officials of all kinds and officers of the court of all kinds, have tremendous discretionary authority. When that authority is used well, cities prosper. When that authority is used poorly, cities get bogged down in painful issues that they could do without.

The arrest of an affluent internationally known self-made man for complaining loudly of his interrogation for breaking into his own home is a case of discetion run amuck. Yes, everyone in Cambridge will learn the valuable lesson of not arguing with a policeman. But, there will be a surprising number of Cambridge who march on City Hall, write angry letters to the editor, or put their homes up for sale.

I believe the Obama Presidency is an indication that we are moving towards a post-racial society, but we are not there yet. A children's day camp located in my legislative district in an increasingly black neighborhood that had long been a Jewish and Catholic enclave was denied admission to a private swim club in suburban Huntington Valley it had paid to get access to for an hour and a half a week after it became clear what the racial composition of the children was.

A lawsuit was recently filed against the City of Philadelphia by the Guardian Civic League, a longstanding organization of black police officers, seeking injunctive relief and damages against the city for allowing a website, Domelights.com, to post racist essays by police working on and off the job. The suit alleges that large numbers of police were making racist postings, and these were so widely discussed daily that they were creating a racially hostile work environment for minority policemen and policewomen.

Today's Washington Post notes an unexplained significant drop in crime in many cities this year, and wonders why. My guess is that the optimism generated by Barack Obama's election is part of the answer. I would also guess that those who see racial issues as a matter of winners and losers have gotten angrier and more anxious about Obama's election.

The late great Richardson Dilworth--once feared by President Kennedy as his main rival for the 1960 Democratic Presidential nomination if he could have gotten elected Governor of Pennsylvania in 1958-- served as President of the Philadelphia School Board after having served as city treasurer, district attorney, mayor and a two time Democratic gubernatorial nominee. Dilworth angrily fought issues of racism in education, and earned national notoriety by describing suburbs as a "white noose" around the nation's cities. (His anger at suburbs was likely increased by their voting overwhelmingly against him in his gubernatorial races in accordance with their party registration.)

Around the time of the 1968 release of the report of the Kerner Commission,the National Commission on Civil Disorders, Dilworth warned that problems of racism could not be solved immediately. "It will take thirty or forty years to solve these problems," he said.

Events in Cambridge, Huntington Valley, Philadelphia, and likely a lot of other places, show that more than fifty years after the Kerner Commission report we have not solved the problems of racism in our society. We have made great progress, but we still have a long way to go.