Post-Racial? Apparently Not...

Nearly two weeks ago, police were dispatched to the home of "Skip" Gates, a renowned Harvard professor, on suspicion of burglary after one of his neighbours saw two black men forcing open the front door. As it turns out the two men weren't burglars, it was merely Gates and his driver trying to open his jammed front door on his return home. Unfortunately, the incident did not end there. Upon arrival, the police ordered Gates to provide i.d whiched proved the house was his own. Gates refused, as he felt it was a violation of his rights, and suggested that the policeman's request was racist (which it was, though probably unitentionally). After a heated exchange, Gates was arrested for being disorderly (though the charges have since been dropped).

Opinions are divided on whether this incident is indicative of a larger race relations problem or simply a one-off incident. Some even suggest that race had nothing to do with the officer's request, he was simply doing his job. This is to ignore the bigger trend, however, as the following post argues:

White folks are quite comfortable with this notion that there is a pattern of racist behavior in America. They are reluctant, however, to say that any individual instance is about race. So what happened to Skip Gates wasn't racist. Neither was what happened to Shem Walker. Or Sean Bell. Or Oscar Grant. Or Officer Omar Edwards.

Every individual instance must be rationalized, but then at the end of the year when the stats are compiled we rant and rave against a pattern of behavior, against institutional racism.

Institutional racism is nothing more than a pattern of individual behavior that has become institutionalized. Redlining is just a lot of White folks deciding where non-whites can live. Poll taxes were nothing but a lot of White folks making it really hard for Black folks to vote.

They say the personal is political. Well the individual is the collective.

This highlights an important point and one which needs to be addressed if we are to be honest about race relations in America. The fact is, had Gates been a white man, he would likely not have been asked to produce i.d and would not have later been arrested. When we take a "no-one's to blame" attitude towards instances like this or characterise them as the result of a "rogue" police officer it acts as a barrier to genuine reform. Without being honest about why this incident happened we cannot hope to stop it happening again (possibly the aim of certain people).

Race relations by their very nature have been tied up in identity politics in recent times and I believe this has held back progress. Where they have become part of a culture war between Republicans and Democrats, only the latter has been willing to devote time and effort to ensuring that the civil rights and liberties of minority groups are protected. This has ensured the prevalance of de facto racism long after minorities have been granted equal rights in law.

If there is any positive that can be taken from the incident it's that it has exposed the myth of post-racial America as a fallacy. In the wake of President Obama's election many believed that the past problems that minority groups had faced were over and that we had reached the goal of a colour-blind society. The fact that a prominent black scholar became a suspect in his own home puts paid to that idea.

Closing our eyes or making excuses for instances such as this does nothing but perpetuate the inequalities we know exist. In this light I'm pleased to see that Gates and the officer have been invited for a beer at the White House with President Obama. It's a publicity stunt, certainly, but in talking to 'real' people about a very real problem, we might just make some progress.

ADJB