The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: A Father's Perspective

The incidents surrounding the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. outside his home have led to some troubling questions that I, as a father, have a hard time answering. On the one hand, I've taught my children, especially my son, that he should have respect for the law and that he should never permit any kind of abuse, verbal or physical, to threaten his self-esteem. Yet, on the other hand, I know there are some police officers who seek every opportunity to humiliate black males in America.


This is not a wild claim. I know about these kinds of police officers from accounts from my friends and personal experiences: being rousted every week by the police at the University of Miami when I’d be walking back late from the Rathskellar to being humiliated a few years ago in front of my son for a minor traffic violation.


I had received a call late at night from my daughter who was in an unsafe neighborhood. She needed a ride home. I jumped in the car and in my rush to pick her up, I rolled (after looking both ways) through a four way stop. An officer in a patrol car about a hundred yards away, lights off, was waiting underneath a tree. Soon there were lights behind us and when I was signaled to pull over, I complied. The officer approached the car and looked me up and down. Despite my explanations, the officer while dispensing a fair amount of verbal abuse, ordered me to turn around, drive back to the stop sign, and stop. I did exactly as I was told and then, I was allowed to go on and pick up my daughter. I guess I was lucky I did not get a ticket and that my daughter was okay when I picked her up.


My story is inconsequential to some of the stories that my friends have told me about beatings and even worse verbal abuse than I suffered.


Should I have been a “man” and shown the officer and my son that I wasn’t going to stand for that kind of abuse? Or should I have done (as I did) listened to the officer, apologized, and moved on? Or was I just being saaf, as usual?
I think I did the right thing, but it still stuck in my craw. For as I listened to the tirade, I kept wondering if my actions were in direct contradiction to my lectures about building self esteem in children and my work as a writer in writing books such as Grandpa Sydney’s Anancy Stories and Who’s Your Daddy? that address these issues.


I want my son to be a man who has enough self confidence to think that he can overcome any obstacle and that he will not permit any kind of violence, physical or verbal, to become a part of his life.


I also want him to stay alive.


My son and I have talked about the incident and he’s told me that the officer was out of line. He knows good officers. His granduncle is a retired detective, his cousin is an active police officer, and Malachi Smith, our good friend, is also a police officer. Many of my students at Miami Dade College now work with correctional services or have graduated as police officers. In fact, on some dark nights as I’ve left the parking lot to go home, I’ve heard the rookies—out of the earshot of their instructors—practicing how to take control of a situation where there is an armed suspect: “On the ground, m****rf****r!”
Their language or behavior doesn’t scare or offend me. I have no illusions about the conditions that police officers face everyday. I’ve had guns pointed at my head and chest during armed robberies in Jamaica and Miami by criminals who seemed to think that they had a greater claim to my personal property. I often remind my son about a statement by Richard Pryor after he had done a comedy tour of prisons that many of the those “brothers need to locked up.”


So, what’s a father to do?


I cannot speak for other fathers. I cannot speak for all males of African descent in America. I can only repeat what I’ve told my son: if you follow basic rules of decency (“Do unto others, etc.), you stand a greater chance of never being involved in the legal system or jails—a future I would never wish on anyone.
Also, because I want my son to live, I can also say: be “properly deferential” to the police, especially at night. They carry big stick and guns—and some are always too ready to use them. From all the official police report, it seems as if Dr. Gates had not treated the Sgt.Crowley with the “respect” he thought he was due. But this begs several other questions: Was Sgt. Crowley deferential to the renowned scholar as he should have been? Or do we only respect men with guns and badges and not those with doctorates—even if it’s only in literature? And haven’t we seen enough of what a lack of “respect” or “rispec”—as we say in Jamaica--can lead to? Was this incident another incident of machismo and/or hubris-- a face-off between two proud men-- that has been conflated with racism?


Finally, I can only hope that the police departments will begin to review their policies, their training methods, and the records of few officers who tarnish the reputation of the men and women who put their lives on the line everyday to protect and serve all of us.


Our children deserve no less.

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Related article: Skip Gates, Please Sit Down

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