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Before the Gates Arrest: Race and the Case for Common Courtesy

By Roy Clark

The arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and its aftermath brought to mind a newspaper column written on Sept. 30, 1960, by Gene Patterson, then editor of The Atlanta Constitution. The column gave an account of a traffic accident in a small Georgia town, but, as with most great essays, it turned out to be about something far deeper, and more enduring.

Patterson's comments were inspired by a letter he received from a high school math teacher from Bainbridge, Ga., by the name of Mrs. Anne W. Smith. In the letter Mrs. Smith praised a police officer, W. D. McDaniel, for helping her after a truck squeezed her car into a collision with a parked car. The crash threw her grandbaby from her seat.

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Officer McDaniel arrived on the scene, attended to Mrs. Smith and the baby, protected them from the rain, and called a mechanic to help with the car. The officer told Patterson "She was just as nice as she could be. I treated her like I treat anybody who is courteous."

Mrs. Smith wrote this note of thanks to the officer and sent a copy to the newspaper: "Dear Sir: As a child, seeing the way people were treated by officers, I grew up with a fear of ever having to come in contact with one. How much better the feeling for law enforcement officers would be if there were more like you." She wrote to Patterson that "the kind of consideration given me by Officer McDaniel needs to be made known to the people of Georgia who, in many instances, have lost faith in our law enforcement officers. I would like the citizens of Georgia to know that this represents our division of law enforcement."

Why make such a big deal about what might seem like a simple act of courtesy in the line of duty? You have guessed by now that the officer was white and the teacher black, a fact that Patterson conveyed only in the column's final sentence.

What may now seem an old-fashioned notion, that a nice cop would help a needy lady, was the stuff of revolution in 1960 as the segregated South tried to throw off the chains of its version of apartheid, a society in which police were often counted upon to separate the races and keep black people in their place. Back then, police used fire hoses and German shepherds. Since, then, there have been many other abuses of police power. 

The legacy of those terrible days has not disappeared even with the election of an African American president. When white people see the police, in general, we think "protection." When black people see the police, they often see "danger," a vulnerability that can, and did in the case of Professor Gates, turn to rage.

Two such contradictory visions go even deeper, to the very core of relationships between the races. I've seen plenty of evidence, personal and scholarly, that suggests this conflicting dynamic when a black person meets a white person: The white person assumes he or she should be judged innocent of racism until the commission of an overt act; the black person assumes the white person is a racist until that person shows evidence to the contrary.

I live in a racially diverse neighborhood and use one or two of the gas stations on my end of town. I remember the day I walked in to pay the clerk, who pointed me to the clerk at the next register. I walked in another time and, as instructed on my previous visit, moved past clerk  number one to clerk number two. The first clerk yelled, "What's the problem, I'm not good enough to take your money?" That clerk was black, the other was white. The angry clerk assumed that my walking past him was an act of racism. If only there had been a president nearby to buy us a beer.

I have always had great respect for the scholarship and professional demeanor of Professor Gates. In his writings, he has demonstrated as deep an understanding of the culture of race in America as any scholar I know. I know nothing about the officer who arrested him, except for the positive testimony of his colleagues and supervisors. I grew up in a family and neighborhood of police officers and civil servants and understand the dangers they face and the difficult choices they have to make every time they knock on a door. Danger, felt on either side of the door, may justify caution, but not reflexive disrespect or discourtesy.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the historical and cultural forces described above are so powerful that they can overwhelm the judgment of two good men who wound up having something in common: a bad day. 

I wonder what Mrs. Smith and Officer McDaniel would have to say to them?

Full post as published by Writing Tools on July 30, 2009 (boomark / email).