Gregory Kane: Four ‘teachable moments’ from Cambridge Cops Caper

Maybe Crowley and Gates will learn to ratchet down their egos a bit, which, I suspect, is what got them into their predicament in the first place. And perhaps Obama has learned a lesson as well: that the nation’s chief executive should dummy up about local matters he admits he knows nothing about. Is there anything the rest of us can learn from this “teachable moment”?

Oh, a few.

 

• Our president, in spite of his 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention, has no hesitation about jumping into racial politics, as some accused him of doing in the Gates controversy.

Those critics are absolutely right. And let’s not forget what Obama said in that 2004 speech. Don’t you remember? “There is no white America; there is no black America,” etc. etc. Noble words, but didn’t you have the feeling that Obama didn’t really believe what he was saying?

Because Democrats believe very much in white and black Americas, so much so they supported the University of Michigan undergraduate admission policy of giving black applicants 20 points because of their race.

And you also knew this: If Obama really believed what he was saying, he’d be a Republican, not a Democrat.

 

• We should all take police reports with a grain of salt.

I watched with amusement television debates about the Gates-Crowley tete a tete, with some commentators ready to take every word in Crowley’s police report as the gospel truth. But Cambridge police released the 911 call Lucia Whalen made this week. She made no reference to the race of the men she said were trying get into Gates’ house. She even speculated that no crime may have been in progress.

The 911 tape directly contradicts what Crowley said in his report that Whalen said she saw two black men with backpacks. This is not to say that either Crowley or Whalen is lying, but good journalists know that police reports are the beginning, not the end of, the reporting process.

 

• Whenever possible, police should respect the sanctity of the private home.

Crowley would never have been pilloried as a racist cop if he’d simply left Gates’ house once the professor provided proof that he lived there. That’s the case even if we take Crowley at his word, that Gates was being abusive, loud and a jerk. If you can’t be a jerk in your own home, what’s the point in having one?
 

• Gates identifies, perhaps way more than he should, with black criminals. (And the man wonders why he got arrested.)

This is a quote from a New York Daily News story that Gates gave one week after he was arrested: “There are one million black men in jail in this country and last week I was one of them.”

Will these “there are too many black men in jail and prison” African Americans please come off it? The truth is most of those black men in prison or jail are exactly where they belong, and black communities across the nation would be infinitely better off if many who aren’t in jail or prison were.

If the good Harvard professor would like me to get down to specifics, I will. I’m thinking of the guy who shot up a cookout in Bodymore, Murderland last weekend and wounded 12 people, including a pregnant woman and a 2-year-old girl. I’m thinking of the guy who fired into a Baltimore crowd and shot a 5-year-old girl in the head.

Do you think that girl’s parents would have preferred the perpetrator be in prison? (Note: the suspect should have been. He’s a repeat juvenile perp who was given home detention instead, probably by one of these “there are too many black men in prison” Negroes.)

The man who torched a Baltimore home seven years ago and killed two adults and five children is one of those one million black men in prison. Gates clearly identifies with him more than the victims. Perhaps he’d like to explain why.

Here’s hoping Crowley asks him precisely that.

Examiner columnist Gregory Kane is a journalist who lives in Baltimore.