Sensitivity Training Now
The Cambridge cop accused of a racist arrest on Harvard Prof Henry Louis Gates Jr says he’s no racist and he won’t apologize. Gates has called James Crowley a “rogue cop,” though it’s not clear whether he knows much about this cop or his history. Meanwhile, the president of the United States, while acknowledging that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, calls the Cambridge cop “stupid” on national TV.
I’m beginning to think some sensitivity training is in order.
First, here’s the cop. The Boston Herald, in an extensive search of the man’s background, discovered that a cop of the same name had performed intensive and intimate lifesaving techniques on another prominent black man, Celtics star Reggie Lewis, 16 years ago. Turns out it was the same James Crowley. On that occasion, he also had to fend off accusations of racism. He agreed to speak about it when approached Boston Herald:
The Cambridge cop prominent Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. claims is a racist gave a dying Reggie Lewis mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in a desperate bid to save the Celtics superstar’s life 16 years ago Monday.
“I wasn’t working on Reggie Lewis the basketball star. I wasn’t working on a black man. I was working on another human being,” Sgt. James Crowley, in an exclusive interview with the Herald, said of the forward’s fatal heart attack July 27, 1993, at age 27 during an off-season practice at Brandeis University, where Crowley was a campus police officer.
It’s a date Crowley still can recite by rote - and he still recalls the pain he suffered when people back then questioned whether he had done enough to save the black athlete.
“Some people were saying ‘There’s the guy who killed Reggie Lewis’ afterward. I was broken-hearted. I cried for many nights,” he said.
Crowley, 42, said he’s not a racist, despite how some have cast his actions in the Gates case. “Those who know me know I’m not,” he said.
Yesterday, Lewis’ widow, Donna Lewis, was floored to learn the embattled father of three on the thin blue line of a national debate on racism in America was the same man so determined to rescue her husband.
“That’s incredible,” Lewis, 44, exclaimed. “It’s an unfortunate situation. Hopefully, it can resolve itself. The most important thing is peace.”
Gates, 58, an acclaimed scholar on black history and a PBS documentarian, went on the attack against Crowley on Tuesday, demanding he apologize for arresting him for disorderly conduct last Thursday while investigating a reported break-in at his home. Gates, returning from a trip, was seen by a Malden woman trying to force his front door open. Police alleged he initially refused to identify himself.
Though he harbors no “ill feelings toward the professor,” a calm, resolute Crowley said no mea culpa will be forthcoming.
“I just have nothing to apologize for,” he said. “It will never happen.”
OK, here’s the president of the United States, who acknowledges he doesn’t know the facts, and in his brief recitation of them maks that clear by omitting any reference to Gates’ disorderly conduct. Boston Herald:
President Obama ripped Cambridge police for acting “stupidly” in the arrest of Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and said the noted scholar, a personal friend, was justified in being “angry” at his treatment.
The president said he does not know whether, as Gates maintains, race was a factor in the controversial case now making national headlines. But he said racial profiling is a “fact” in America today.
His remarks came in response to a question at the end of last night’s press conference on his health-care initiative.
Obama acknowledged that he did not know all the facts of the case in which Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct by cops investigating a report of a break-in at his Cambridge home after Gates had to force open a jammed door.
“I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that,” Obama said. “But I think it’s fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry.
“No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.
“And No. 3, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.”
I appreciate the fact that as the first black president of the United States, Obama occupies a position of both symbolic and real importance in this nation’s tortured history of race relations. His politics aside, I’m glad we’ve finally arrived at this place as a nation, and hope his presidency helps us put race as a dividing factor behind us. Ironically, while the campaign with all its wild presumptions and accusations didn’t have that effect, the final result showed all the predictions of American racism to be exaggerated. Obama is now being allowed to fail on his own merits. But I’m not sure that the president making off-the-cuff judgments about complex and inflammatory racial situations he admits he isn’t up to speed on, and weighing in on the side of a personal friend, is particularly helpful to American race relations. Given what is known about this situation, his remarks suggest he doesn’t think citizens verbally accosting cops in public is a big deal. At least when they are Harvard professors who are friends of his, or maybe even when they are blacks or Hispanics in general.
On the broader issue that Obama raises: While racial profiling is a problem that law enforcement in Massachusetts around here and presumeably elsewhere in the nation has been addressing for a number of years now, I doubt the instinctive profiling of actions and people as racist is doing much to help advance race relations or reduce racial tensions in America.
Gates has been demanding sensitivity training, and I’m beginning to think he’s right. Some sensitivity training might be called for in this situation. For the Harvard professors, 24-hour news network ministers and apparently presidents of the United States as well, on how destructive it is to individuals, to race relations and to society in general to level inflammatory accusations of racism or to call people “stupid” and “rogues” without knowing who they are, what they are about, or even what exactly happened.
Michael Graham, Boston Herald: Colorblind test failed … by Gates with his racial profiling of the white cop.
“I said, are you doing this because I’m a black man in America? Are you doing this because you’re a white police officer and I am a black man?”
Does kind of sound like a case of enforcement while white.
Margery Eagan, Boston Herald:
Whatever happened to post-racial America?
I know, I know! Harvard happened to post-racial America! Also, Obama happened to post-racial America.
Riehl: He’s supposed to be everyone’s president.
Surber: If I were a cop, I’d wear a copcam.
Legal Insurrection: Yelling at cops is normal! For Obamists and Huffposters.
More news and commentary at Memeorandum.
Topics: Obama, cops, law & order, racism
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 7:36 am on Thursday, July 23, 2009
17 Responses to “Sensitivity Training Now”
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July 23rd, 2009 at 9:13 am
Not knowing anything hasn’t stopped Obama up to this point. Why start now?
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:13 am
[...] Who’s The Racist In The Situation? July 23, 2009 Posted by taoist in Racism. Tags: Cambridge, Harvard, Professor Gates trackback One of them is, by his own admission. The other isn’t, by his own history. [...]
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:19 am
[...] and Obama’s inexplicable desire to opine without the facts as he himself admitted. (Jules Crittenden has a useful post about this today.) However, I also notice that not one reporter asked Obama [...]
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:25 am
[...] more, read Jules Crittenden, who has an interesting take on Obama’s response to the question about Gates, Jr’s [...]
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:22 am
Sean is right. Obama is that guy who thinks he is so smart that he could step right into anybody’s job and do it better. You know that guy, right? When it’s a coworker or guy sitting next to you in a bar, it’s annoying. When it’s the President of the United States of America, it’s a disaster in the making.
It’s true that the less you know about somebody’s job, the easier it looks, and the more you learn about a subject, the more you realize how little you really understand. The problem with Obama is that outside of politics, he knows next to nothing. Which would be OK, except that he doesn’t have the sense to realize it.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:56 am
This case pretty much tells you all you really need to know about the so-called “state of race relations” in the US, the president and “elite” Harvard professors like Gates. If there’s any “stupidity” here, it’s now pretty clear where that “stupidity” lies. I’ll stand with Sgt. Crowley any day.
So , how soon do we get the first “Vigil” against racism and police brutality in Cambridge?
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:02 pm
[...] This isn’t the first time Crowley has been accused of racism though: Yesterday, as President Obama condemned the Cambridge Police Department during a prime-time White House news conference and Crowley steadfastly refused to issue the apology that Gates has sought, a fuller picture began to emerge of the 42-year-old sergeant who arrested the Harvard scholar last week on a charge of disorderly conduct on the porch of Gates’s Cambridge house. [...]
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Obama is that guy who thinks he is so smart that he could step right into anybody’s job and do it better.
Yup. Barry is the Cliff Claven of politics.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:01 pm
On the disproportionality claim, I once had a liberal friend go off on me about how awful was the disproportionate incarceration of minority males in this country. I asked him, “Who are the primary victims of minority criminals?” Even he had to admit they are the minority members of the communities in which the criminals live. Then, I asked “Why do you advocate providing a lower level of protection from criminals for people living in those communities?” He knew then that he had lost the argument.
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:55 pm
[...] Jules Crittendon thinks Obama needs some sensitivity training: [...]
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:54 pm
I’ve felt for a while now that much of what Obama says about health care and stimulus and “redistribution of wealth” and all the rest of it is code for giving minorities special consideration. When he was a community organizer and later a politician in Chicago, it was his job to represent his constituents. But he’s President of the United States now. He’s supposed to represent all of us, fairly and impartially. I’ve lost faith that he’s capable of it.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Obama has said that America “needs a national dialogue on race”. Seems to me that it should start with telling African-Americans that it is not acceptable to demand special treatment–and even more important, that it is not acceptable to hate whites, Jews, Koreans, Chinese, etc, etc, etc. I can’t tell you how many blacks I’ve met who are openly and unashamedly racist. (And who justify their hate with hateful stereotypes and obviously foolish claims of victimization.)
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:37 pm
[...] Jules Crittenden has some interesting thoughts on the cop in question. [...]
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:53 pm
[...] Jules Crittenden: OK, here’s the president of the United States, who acknowledges he doesn’t know the facts, [...]
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:56 pm
[...] Jules Crittenden adds: ‘I’m not sure that the president making off-the-cuff judgments about complex and inflammatory racial situations he admits he isn’t up to speed on, and weighing in on the side of a personal friend, is particularly helpful.’ [...]
July 24th, 2009 at 8:15 am
That would be a great SNL skit. A Cheers like bar, the actor who plays Obama in Cliff’s spot giving out his “true facts,” Biden behind the bar as Coach. I’m not sure who should be “Norm,” maybe Bill Clinton?
July 26th, 2009 at 7:34 am
[...] Jules Crittenden has some interesting thoughts on the cop in question. [...]