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Sunday, August 9, 2009

The Professor and the Police II


Four Men on a Mission


A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the Harvard professor and the Cambridge, Mass. police. There were two aspects to an incident that involved them both that was newsworthy. One was the way that the professor over-reacted when all that the police were doing was trying to protect his property. The background to that was the professor, a black senior member of Harvard’s Business School was observed by a (black) member of the public trying to force entry into his own house at night. She thought she was seeing a break-in in progress, which is what it was, but when you have to break into your own home, then that’s legal.

She called the police who came running, although the professor was unaware that a call had been made. When they arrived and found he had entered the house, in the eyes of the police he was a suspect. To make matters worse, the cop who confronted him was white. When the cop ordered him (in his own house) to “Hands Up!” the professor became outraged and replied “I’ll put my hands up yer Mamma!” or something like that.

The professor is a man of my generation who has lived through all the bad shit that America could throw at him, but has nonetheless risen to the exalted position of tenured professor at one of the country’s most prestigious schools. He knows all about Freedom Marches, and may have been right alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He certainly knows about police harassment of black men. It is still happening as we speak But America has a black president and it’s about time this shit stops once and for all.

The second aspect is, to very nicely complicate matters, that black president is a personal friend of the professor, so I imagine it may have occurred to the professor that he was sick and tired of these things happening and he was not about to take it anymore.
And Houston, we have lift off!
The professor went straight up like the space shuttle. He was simply not going to have some white policeman come into his house pointing a gun in his face and ordering him about, when he was simply going about his lawful business.

Things were said and both men became ever more upset. It is a miracle that the policeman did not shoot the professor, but instead he arrested him, put him in handcuffs and took him downtown. There, someone with a much cooler head explained to the policeman that the professor had broken into his own home; and the professor was informed that the poor policeman was trying to do his job under the most trying of circumstances, namely, by trying to protect the professor’s own property.

I imagine that it was at this stage that both men went to their own respective corners and had a good cry, while the rest of the precinct had a good laugh. However, while this was happening the plot thickened very badly because a lopsided version of events reached President Obama about his friend’s predicament, and while holding a press conference he let slip that he thought that the Cambridge police had acted “stupidly”.
Open mouth and insert both feet!

When everyone had calmed down the President realised he had made his first real faux pas. He could not take back his words nor apologise for them, so what he did was invite both men to The White House for a beer summit with himself, the Vice-President and about four million journalists, where actions were explained and recognition was given to a good officer who was acting in the execution of his difficult job. Astonishingly, none of these proud men could find the words to say “I’m sorry that I made things worse then they need have been”. But, they did find the funny side of the incident, and they found respect for one another.

I’m sure that profiling of certain members of the public continues to be a problem. A white officer of another police department made a comment on the incident that was racially inappropriate. There were calls for him to lose his job, which I hope didn’t happen, especially in these difficult times. However, he definitely needed to be referred to sensitivity training.

All in all, a very interesting incident and a test of where America is on race relations. There are so many lessons to be learned from this incident, including lessons for the President of the United States. I thought the President recovered from the situation well by using a little ingenuity. We really must take our hats off to him.

As for the professor and the policeman, they have stayed in touch and it would appear that a genuine friendship is building. I wish them well for the future.

Copyright © 2009 Eugene Carmichael