A Post Before Sighing
Posted on July 29th, 2009 in Uncategorized | 25 Comments »
Lucia Whalen speaks. Here. And here. And everywhere.
The narrative the media’s playing up: It was the cops who “injected” race into the description of the event, not Whalen.
To me, though, it’s a little unclear what really happened…
Meanwhile, a Boston cop has been suspended for writing a “racially charged” e-mail about Skip Gates.
25 Responses
7/29/2009 8:41 pm
Richard, you may not have had a chance to listen to the 911 tape over there in Iceland. On the tape, Lucia Whalen doesn’t mention the race of the two men at all until the policeman answering the call asks if they were “white, black, or Hispanic.” At that point, she says very hesitantly, that they were “two larger men, one looked kind of Hispanic, but I’m not really sure, and the other one entered, and I didn’t see what he looked like at all.” So I think it’s quite reasonable to say that it was the person who answered the 911 call who brought up the issue of race, and not Lucia Whalen. Throughout the entire phone call she sounds rather embarrassed, because after all she is only calling because a woman had stopped her on the street and asked her to do so, and that woman is standing right there with her as LW makes the call. I honestly see no point in raising any more questions about Lucia Whalen’s posture in this incident.
7/29/2009 10:04 pm
Folks, this is ridiculous. This woman is defending herself against unfair charges. But to say that the 911 operator “brought up race” is really silly, because it is routine and perfectly legitimate for 911 operators to ask for descriptions of people mentioned when a possibly problematic incident is brought to police attention. Police answering calls often go into danger, and they have to have all the information they can get going in. That is NOT racial profiling!
There is zero evidence in anything made public so far that the Cambridge police went into this incident with any improper attitudes or procedures. It was fine for the 911 operator to ask the citizen who called for all info available, fine for her to say what she knew and what she did not know, and equally fine for Sergeant Crowley to ask people at the house to step outside and identify themselves, given what little he had been told about the report of a worrisome situation at that house (there could have been intruders inside).
Whatever went wrong was in the interactions beyond that point — and, really, we should all calm down and see that, most likely, both Gates and Crowley overreacted to their prior assumptions and made poor choices. Gates expected that identifying himself by name and rank would result in deference and when it did not immediately do so, he got angry and probably viterpurative. He may have been the first to raise improper racial stereotypes for all we know — by calling the offider, in effect, a racist, when he was just following procedures used in all incidents. The Sergeant has said he was startled at the persistent failure of “cooperation,” and when that continued he — unwisely — invoked his authority to arrest. The Cambridge police corrected this misjudgement within hours — but that did not stop a national distraction growing out of this, one that has significantly harmed the popularity of the President of the United States at a critical juncture in health care reform, undermining a once in several-decades opportunity to create a more just society for people of all colors. This is very sad. This murkey incident was not worth all this — and it certainly is not worth perpetual deconstruction at Harvard.
General Colin Powell took care of it all this morning and we should all just move on.
7/30/2009 7:07 am
Theda, you’re quite right to say that the policeman answering the 911 call “brought up race.” That formulation in my post above was an inadequate attempt to avoid the expression “injected race,” which seems even more inaccurate and accusatory. Obviously, the policeman just asked a routine question.
Yes, let’s just move on.
7/30/2009 7:08 am
Theda, you’re quite right that it’s not correct to say that the policeman answering the 911 call “brought up race.” That formulation in my post above was an inadequate attempt to avoid the expression “injected race,” which seems even more inaccurate and accusatory. Obviously, the policeman just asked a routine question.
Yes, let’s just move on.
7/30/2009 7:09 am
My second posting (of 7:08) is what I really meant to say in the 7:07 post. Please mentally erase the first one.
7/30/2009 8:24 am
Why can’t everyone be as sensible as Skocpol and Ryan?
(though I don’t think Bradley intended to criticize Whelan-but rather the still unexplained inconsistency in the police repor. Crowley says Whelan told him at the scene that she saw two black men with backpacks. Whelan plausibly denies saying this. Crowley does not seem like someone who would make up the quote, but it may have come from somewhere else-the dispatcher, the other witness?
7/30/2009 9:43 am
It’s a game of telephone: suitcases -> bags -> backpacks.
I think it’s likely that Sgt Crowley spoke at the scene not with LW but with the older woman who initiated KW’s call. LW says she says she didn’t speak to him but the police report is clear that he spoke to someone he thought was the caller.
Today is the day for Skip to be a mensch and let this whole thing go, for the good of the country and out of respect for the truth. The truth is that he was browbeating the cop, full of vinegar and signifyin power — and also that the actual arrest, though provoked by his tantrum, was unnecessary.
Public option!
Standing Eagle
7/30/2009 10:17 am
The talk in the vineyard this week is that Ogletree is furious with his friend Gates. Apparently Gates put Tree up to involving the President in this issue and feels his reputation with the President has suffered from this incident.
Just gossip.
7/30/2009 10:34 am
I very much doubt that, Ogletree. Prof. Ogletree was a signatory to the good joint statement issued last Tuesday (nine days ago!):
“The City of Cambridge, the Cambridge Police Department, and Professor Gates acknowledge that the incident of July 16, 2024 was regrettable and unfortunate. This incident should not be viewed as one that demeans the character and reputation of Professor Gates or the character of the Cambridge Police Department. All parties agree that this is a just resolution to an unfortunate set of circumstances.”
That’s where it all should have ended, but Prof. Gates blew it all up by going on CNN and calling Sgt. Crowley a “rogue cop”, with the obvious results.
If Prof. Ogletree is furious, that would likely, and justifiably, be the basis.
As some of us said nine days ago time to move on.
Yes, SE, public option! I can’t believeWaxman’s caving the Blue Dogs, but looks like Pelosi et al. will push back. Drink up, Obama, and back to work.
7/30/2009 10:39 am
Well, whoever involved President Obama in this, no doubt with a one-sided story, did a great disservice not just to Obama but to the nation! At the same time, Obama spoke unwisely at his press conference. He should never have taken sides with an elite buddy or elevated the matter to a national dispute, and his doing so HAS hurt him in the polls and in popular regard at a critical juncture in his presidency.
As Glen Loury rightly put it, how ironic for a candidate/president who avoided taking sides in really egregious cases of racially based police misconduct to finally inject himself into this tempest in a teapot! Stewart on the Daily Show has rightly lampooned Obama for this, and his commentary exactly parallels what ordinary Americans are thinking, that this was Ivy League cronyism. Ugh.
After tonight’s beer at the White House, Gates and his buddies should pull back — no law suits, no more public statements, and, God help us, no “documentary” on racial profiling. And Gates himself should make no effort to spend time with Obama on the Vineyard. Obama really needs this entirely behind him, and it cannot be as long as the dispute goes on, or there are photo-ops with Gates.
7/30/2009 10:56 am
Our own Sam Jacobs, late of the Crimson, has a good take on that theme on the Daily Beast.
7/30/2009 11:13 am
In my opinion L. Whalen is the one who deserved the White House invitation. Among all of the cast of characters, she’s the one who seems to have done the right thing and kept a cool head. And a word of support for her from Obama would also be a good thing, encouraging citizens to do what is right without having to worry about this kind of backlash — although I understand her need to fade into the background. I find it appalling that she is receiving threats.
7/30/2009 12:27 pm
Some idiot getting his fifteen minutes:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/29/disorderly-conduct-conver_n_246794.html
7/30/2009 1:43 pm
To be sure, RT. But we may have a spin-off problem in the Harvard context after the beers have been sipped (I do hope these guys remember that alcohol has a disinhibiting as well as relaxing effect on the human brain) and Michael Jackson has reclaimed his rightful place atop the home pages of the nation’s news outlets. Legal and illegal keep getting conflated with right and wrong. It’s quite correct that the police ought to stick with the first distinction, and seem to have drawn it incorrectly in this case. Yet at Harvard we hope for an acknowledgment of the second in relations among students, faculty, and staff. Professor Gates represents all of us, and Harvard officials have spoken up on his behalf. I would not be surprised if some student on a foul-mouthed tirade with a police officer or a dean or a fellow student this fall turns to the First Amendment in defense of his incivility. I’ve seen it happen, actually, in the past. But now we have a distinguished representative of the Harvard community signaling (allegedly) that this is the way we behave here, and no one, himself included, yet suggesting that there’s anything wrong with showing our contempt for other human beings who happen not to know how important we are. I do hope we have not lost the capacity to say that some things are wrong even if they are legal (under Harvard’s rules or the state’s). Faculty holding the freshman “community conversations” may find them lively this year, as they presciently were set to be focused on “socioeconomic issues and racial differences in society” long before the Gates-Crowley incident occurred. There will be plenty to discuss, but the Freshman Dean’s Office might want to consider issuing beer to the discussion groups.
7/30/2009 2:38 pm
Hear hear!
7/30/2009 3:08 pm
I’ll drink to that! I put myself down for a freshman Community Conversation, so will be very interested to see how those go.
7/30/2009 3:48 pm
Very quickly—Judith, you misunderstood me; I wasn’t casting aspersions on Lucia Whalen, who seems like a really good and sensible person. (At a later time, we can discuss gender differences in communication and how they contributed to this incident—it’s a very rich subject!)
No, I meant only that the addition of the “two black men with backpacks” line, with its implication that Crowley “injected” race into the incident, still didn’t strike me as suasive.
7/30/2009 4:47 pm
My apologies, Richard. I was doubtless reading too quickly.
And now, unless something truly outrageous happens, I plan to let things rest and not comment on this case again.
7/30/2009 5:58 pm
Harry, stoic resignation in the face of provocation (real or imagined) is a cultural or subcultural characteristic. There may not be as much agreement as you may think on what constitutes proper comportment under trying circumstances in ethnically diverse America. Wisdom would dictate that in an encounter with a police officer, one shouldn’t do or say anything antagonistic, but culture frequently trumps wisdom. And even those whose cultural prescription is grace under pressure can go ballistic if the conditions are right.
We still have no objective report of what was said and done during the Gates arrest incident, but commentary continues to lean toward accepting the accuracy of the police report insofar as it is unflattering to Gates. But whatever actually happened, I rather doubt that Gates believes it is appropriate to display contempt for other human beings.
I wish people would try a little harder to pardon words spoken in anger and frustration. As you can well imagine, I rely heavily on others forgiving the stupid things I say, write, and do.
7/30/2009 8:22 pm
Feste, I don’t think it’s about pardoning—everyone can understand words spoken in frustration. I think the idea is that, whether those words are a racial epithet or a class-based slur, words spoken in the heat of the moment often seem to reveal hidden (but true) feelings.
We may forgive Gates, but now we know that there is at least a vein of snobbery in him. May not be a lot, may not show itself very much, but it’s there.
Look, we all have our flaws. But if Crowley had, out of “anger and frustration,” suddenly dropped the n-bomb, we’d be saying, well, this person really needs to examine himself. No reason we shouldn’t say that about someone who utters a different insult.
7/30/2009 10:13 pm
F, I would be delighted to have Gates say what you say he believes. He hasn’t said it yet, as far as I know.
7/30/2009 11:30 pm
Richard, in your comment that “words spoken in the heat of the moment often seem to reveal hidden (but true) feelings”, I would have substituted “sometimes” for “often.” Thoughts and actions elicited under stress indicate something about the psychological makeup of a person, but to arrive at some conclusion about a person’s true feelings, attitudes, beliefs, etc., requires long observation in the widest possible range of contexts. However, I can’t say that I have much interest in more stories about Gates even if they might illuminate his true feelings. Chalk it up to Gates fatigue. Regarding your assertion that, “now we know there is at least a vein of snobbery in him”, I’m not sure who “we” refers to, but shouldn’t we be astonished to find a Harvard faculty member that lacked the trait? By the way, what is the current limit on rhetorical questions?
Harry, I haven’t heard Gates say it either. I was hoping that after the “beer summit” he would say something about the need to treat everyone with respect and avoid snap judgments. His statement could have been much better and I think he squandered an opportunity.
8/1/2024 8:41 pm
Lucinda received today a beautiful bouquet of flowers from Skip with a very moving thank you note from him.
Nothing like flowers!
8/2/2024 4:54 pm
“words spoken in the heat of the moment often seem to reveal hidden (but true) feelings”
Yup. Very true.
11/22/2015 10:36 am
that the truth has come out, isn’t funny that the “good cop” hasn’t stepped foawrrd to set the record straight? Whatever happened to protecting the people of Cambridge? I guess dirty cops always put themselves first. I’m not surprised. For him to come foawrrd at this point would equal the loss of his career thus ruining him and his family financially. He’s protecting them in a fashion, and relying on the fraternity’ to cover his ass. Doesn’t make him any less of a douchenozzle.@ mojo what seems more idiotic is the Cambridge PD brass coming out to show support without even THEM knowing all the facts yet. Agreed. the SMART thing for them to do would have been to suspend Crowley (with pay if they wanted to support him) pending an investigation. Shit Mojo, I was going to respond to more of your post, but you bring up so many great points! I particularly agree with the tumultuous behavior observation. If I swerve in traffic and get a ticket, there’s great detail about where it happened, how fast I was going, what intersection was nearby. A hundred details. In this case it’s broadstroked. I think your assessment is dead on.