"Open and Shut Case, Johnson"

Last night, I watched President Obama's press conference. I wasn't particularly sold on his healthcare plan. Truth be told, I simply don't understand how healthcare works in this country, and therefore don't really know which side to take. The President, however, made one excellent point during his prime time address, and it had nothing to do with the topic du jour: the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard professor and the country's pre-eminent African-American scholar. In his home. During the day. After he showed them his identification. And his home address:

"Now, I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home. 

What I think we know, separate and apart from this incident, is that there's a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact."

A lot of things raised my hackles this week: the Erin Andrews tape; ESPN's early refusal to report on the Ben Roethlisberger civil suit; the non-firing of Tony Bernazard; Liz Cheney; this paper and this Ken Rosenthal column. None, however, had me shaking my head more than the Gates arrest. One time, when I was still in high school, I drove my mother's car into a snowbank outside of a International House of Pancakes parking lot, just off Kennedy Boulevard, Hudson County's main thoroughfare. I was 16, driving without a license. It was after midnight, and as I tried in vain to get my car off the melting mountain of snow, a police car stopped and asked if I needed help. They didn't ask to see my driver's license, or even try to write me a ticket for any number of things. They just asked if I was in trouble. When I said I was fine, they drove off, no questions asked. Meanwhile, Henry Gates, a tenured Harvard professor, gets arrested for trying to get into his own house, and apparently having the gall to mouth off to a Cambridge cop. Ridiculous. 

Ta-Nehisi Coates, as always, sums up Obama's reaction pretty well:

Moreover, for black people, this is the kind of issue that tends to cut across lines of class and politics. I would say that this is the sort of thing that angers upper middle-class black people even more than it angers anyone else, because they tend to be individuals who, by society's lights, are very accomplished. They deeply resent being lumped in with the mass. And more than anyone they resent the whole "when you're black, you talk to the police like this" routine. Obama has lived as a member of that class for a large portion of his adult life, or he's had some concentrated exposure to it--the black strivers roll deep on the South Side. It's not shocking that he was pissed.

I'm pissed, too. That an unlicensed 16-year-old, in the middle of the night, in downtown Union City, would be given the benefit of the doubt, while a black, middle-aged, established Harvard professor is put in handcuffs in front of his own house is shameful.  But I'm pretty late to the party. Dave Chappelle saw this coming years ago.