My initial reaction to the news that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. --leading black American scholar, Harvard Professor, and most importantly, the one whose explanation of the often mystifying black vernacular term "signifyin" is a major inspiration behind my writing on this blog--was arrested was in my usual expletive manner (see Twitter tweets). But then I read the news reports and shook my head in disbelief, not at the arrest, but at what the signifyin' scholar is reported to have said to the police who showed up at his home in response to a neighbor's call that someone was attempting to break into it.
Cambridge police say they responded to the well-maintained two-story home after a woman reported seeing ''two black males with backpacks on the porch,'' with one ''wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry.'' By the time police arrived, Gates was already inside. Police say he refused to come outside to speak with an officer, who told him he was investigating a report of a break-in. ''Why, because I'm a black man in America?'' Gates said, according to a police report . . . "Gates continued to yell at me, accusing me of racial bias and continued to tell me that I had not heard the last of him," the officer wrote... [An earlier NY Times report said Gates told the cops, "You don't know who you're messing with." This later report doesn't have that as one of Gates's statements to the police.] Some language in certain situations is not only unnecessary, but clearly inflammatory. And I'm sure Gates--old time signifyer, experienced in the art of confrontational and non-confrontational language, fully knowledgeable of black/cop relations in America--under cooler circumstances would have acknowledged that in such a situation the one who represents the law and the language and behavior of the law is not looking for enlightenment about blacks in America and about possible follow-up meetings with the person being questioned. They (the police) may have simply been responding to the call and following the script necessary in such a situation. If he felt the questioning or the cops' treatment of him was unfair, he should have waited and taken it through the right channels. The accusation of discrimination may sound better to a judge in a courtroom, than to a cop in the street. And so the grand signifyer lost his cool for a moment. Not to worry. He'll have his day in court with all the accompanying cultural figures (Al Sharpton says he'll be there) and others practiced in the art and detection of language and behavior that seeks to discriminate. I wish Gates a better outcome there. __________ UPDATE: "Harvard Scholar Won't Be Charged."
