Pass the Beer, Mr. President! (Part 3)

So far, the one major American social critic and commentator who has constructively put the Gates-Crowley Affair into perspective is Frank Rich, the longtime theater reviewer for the New York Times. In an article poetically titled “Small Beer, Big Hangover” (New York Times 8/1/09), the renowned critic notes that the conservative-American perspective on the Cambridge, Mass., Affair derives largely from the generalized white angst over the fast “minoritization” of a hitherto virtually homogeneous American mainstream. More to the point, the fact that, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates, by the year 2042, white people in the United States would constitute a racial minority. Mr. Rich, basing his analysis on the remarkable number of ethnic minorities jockeying for positions of power and public trust, mainly at the mayoral and municipal level, also concludes that the so-called people of color are becoming empowered in ways not known or realized until now.

That may well be a plausible source of white conservative angst, on the face of it, and this is largely because members of the white-American majority populace tend to bunch up non-white ethnic groups in terms of categorical homogeneity, and thus the oversimplified political and economic category of “Ethnic Minorities.” Needless to say, the problem of ethnicity and identity is far, far more complex and complicated than it first might appear; and the projected “majoritization” of ethnic and racial minorities by the U.S. Census Bureau may not necessarily bring any remarkable comfort to ethnic and racial minorities for several reasons. And I am not even certain that the projected year of 2042 is clinically, or scientifically, realistic.

Anyway, before we tackle the foregoing, it may be worthwhile to examine the issue of Sgt. James Crowley's allegedly false portrayal of the “9-1-1” caller in the Gates case as a “racial profiler.” My firm and vehement contention here is that if, indeed, the Cambridge, Mass., police officer did portray Ms. Lucia Whalen as a racial profiler, this was understandably inadvertent, and I intend to promptly explain why.

To the preceding effect, this is what Mr. Rich has to say: “The president's subsequent apology for his news-conference [gaffe?] was superfluous. But he might have used it to acknowledge the one exemplary player in Cambridge, Lucia Whalen, the white passerby whose good deed of a 911 phone call did not go unpunished. In his police report, Sgt. James Crowley portrayed Whalen as a racial profiler by saying she had told him that the two men at Gates' door were black. She denied it, and the audio tape of her original call backs her up: she had told the dispatcher (only when asked) that one of the men 'looked kind of Hispanic' and that she couldn't see the other. Yet Whalen, who was pilloried as a racist because of Crowley's report, received no apology from him and no White House invitation from Obama. That's stupid behavior by both men.”

First of all, it is simply not accurate that “the audiotape of her original call backs Ms. Whalen up unless, of course, Mr. Rich could also confirm that Sgt. Crowley was the “9-1-1” dispatcher who originally received the call reporting the eerie possibility of a break-in at the residence of Prof. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. What we know so far is that, in fact, Sgt. Crowley was not doubling up – or moon-shining – as a “9-1-1” dispatcher on July 16, 2009.

Then also, it is rather curious for the alleged passerby to have reported of having espied two men attempting to break into a house if at the same time, as Mr. Rich clearly indicates in his article, Ms. Whalen also claimed that “she couldn't see the other,” by which, of course, the eyewitness obviously meant that she could not make out either the ethnic and/or racial identity of the second man who was, by the way, clearly identified as bearing the physical appearance of a man. By now, it ought to have become clear to the keen reader what I am driving at: the fact that oftentimes communication, either verbal or written, merely approximates the reality.

In other words, it would be quite a stretch for anybody to even merely appear to be accusing Sgt. Crowley of anything verging on race, because what we have here is a classical example of “conflated sources of information.”

What the preceding simply means is that by the time that he sat down to write his report, Sgt. Crowley, in all likelihood, must have heard from both the “9-1-1” dispatcher and the eyewitness, respectively. In sum, what clearly happened here is that Sgt. Crowley simply inadvertently conflated his two discrete sources of information into his report.

From Mr. Rich's quote above, we learn that Sgt. Crowley also directly and personally spoke to Ms. Whalen, separate and apart from the audio-taped information which the latter had earlier on presented to the “9-1-1” dispatcher. What makes matters appear tricky here is that just because Ms. Whalen had not injected what might be aptly termed as “racial profiling” into her report to the “9-1-1” dispatcher, does not necessarily imply that when the same eyewitness met and spoke to the arresting police officers face-to-face, later on, she had not, even unconsciously, attempted to profile the suspects to these law-enforcement agents, as she had already been prompted by the “9-1-1” dispatcher to do.

In brief, unless he fully accepts the plausibility of the preceding argument, it would be outright contradictory for Mr. Rich to curiously claim that, indeed, Ms. Whalen's version of her conversation with Sgt. Crowley is hermetically and incontrovertibly backed by the “9-1-1” audiotape. To be certain, there is no recorded evidence of exactly what Ms. Whalen told Sgt. Crowley when the latter arrived at the scene where the criminal act of burglary was suspected to be in progress.

Needless to say, about the only concurrence that I harbor vis-à-vis the failure of President Obama to have included Ms. Whalen in his beer invite at the White House, is definitely one of principle and good faith; and the latter may aptly be termed as the “Principle of Good Samaritan-hood.” The intent here, of course, being not to discourage future eyewitnesses to the commission of serious crimes from promptly reporting the same.

Still, I would rather have Ms. Whalen, accompanied by her family, being fittingly scheduled to receive the “Good-Samaritan Award,” than sheepishly go beer-drinking with two intransigent players in an otherwise avoidable contretemps. I also, of course, fault the far better schooled Prof. Gates for evidently allowing his fame and good fortune to unduly cloud his common sense.

The fact of the matter is that one simply does not flash a College ID at a police officer who demands to be shown a proof of residence, and then only reluctantly, after repeated demands, grudgingly pull out either one's driver's license or non-driver's ID. This is precisely where the patent act of abject “stupidity” which President Obama adumbrated during his mid-week's press conference comes into play.

Finally, on the question of the rapid “majoritization” of America's ethnic minorities, anxious white conservatives need not be so perturbed. First of all, the facile concept of a homogeneous ethnic minority constituting itself into a mainstream or dominant culture is highly unlikely to occur anytime soon. And to be certain, many of us, especially recent non-white immigrants, would rather forge meaningful and constructive alliances with a technologically and politically savvy critical white racial minority, than be fatuously driven by mere skin coloration into the rascally death camp of a continental African-hating Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who, by the way, envisages himself to be 50-percent Caucasian and only about 30- or 40-percent African.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is also a Governing Board Member of the Accra-based Danquah Institute (DI) and the author of 20 books, including “The New Scapegoats: Colored-on-Black Racism” (iUniverse.com, 2005). E-mail: [email protected].

###