When to say you're sorry and moving onward and forward

[Yep, another long and rambling post--but if you are a regular reader, you expect this by now, right?]

One of the things I've noticed about us Americans is that we like to be apologized to. We like to have people say "I'm sorry" in a genuine way, so that we, in turn, can forgive and move forward.

Of course, perhaps this isn't an American trait--I haven't lived in any other country for a length of time that gives me a baseline comparison, but I *feel* it to be a very American trait--that we are a nation imbued with the values of fair play, and when that is called into question, we want an apology, we want to forgive, and then we want to move on.

Problem is, it's hard to figure out when you should say you are sorry. There's also the whole issue of the empty apology or the apology that doesn't address the underlying problems.

Little aside: A friend once told me this story about his grandfather and father. When his father was a young boy, he and his siblings and cousins were having a pillow fight in one of the bedrooms, and since this was a time in which they were real feather pillows, the feathers literally started flying. So when the grandfather came to scold his kids and his nieces and nephews, they all apologized but he said, "Sorry doesn't pick up the feathers." Which I find to be a useful phrase to show that while it's all very well and good to feel bad, you have to be able to actually do the work of repairing the situation.

Recently on What Tami Said, Tami cross-posted my "Race: Always more complicated than you think" post. And since my internet access has been down for the last 36 hours (just got it back up and running this morning--thank you Cable repair person!) I didn't notice the cross-posting and most especially did not see the dozen comments, a number of them from "anonymous" commenters who were chiding Tami (forgetting that she was not the author of the blog) for her post (which was really my post) and faulting her/me for criticizing Lucia Whalen, for describing the situation as racially motivated, when clearly it wasn't since Lucia Whalen's 911 tape was released and she has spoken out about how hurtful the "racist" label has been for her, and especially since the great "beer summit" happened yesterday at the White House between Dr. Gate and Sergeant Crowley. Apparently Tami was trying to address some people who believed that she should apologize for calling Lucia Whalen a racist or apologize for being quick to believe that Lucia Whalen could be a racist, and Tami's response was to cross-post my blog entry about race being a complicated issue, I suspect because I specifically wrote in that post that while I now see that Whalen didn't intend to racially profile Gates or his driver, none-the-less I do not absolve her for her part in the "Gates-gate" if you will.

So why am I not apologizing for calling Lucia Whalen a racist, (that was in the "rant" where I admitted to everyone that I was taking off the educator's hat and speaking from the gut). I guess my first thought is, do I need to? Does Tami need to apologize for assuming that Lucia Whalen was acting out of racist beliefs and racially profiling Professor Gates when this is what every seemingly reliable news source was telling us? And moreover, isn't it possible that Lucia Whalen holds subconscious biases and prejudices that she has picked up from society--ones that equate black men with crime?

It's not nice to call someone a racist, but the truth is, people bandy that word about so much and it has taken on a life of its own--it has this power that, for all you Harry Potter fans out there, is similar to "he that shall not be named"--it's like calling someone a racist is the WORST thing you could ever do to another person--like worse than, I dunno, mistakenly arresting someone in his own house after he showed proper identification and proved that he was the owner of the house and you arrest this person, an older gentleman with a cane, because he's showing his frustration and anger and you don't think he's exhibiting enough respect for the law and how hard your job is and by the way, you always considered yourself to be one of the good guys--the non-bigoted guys who has a black friend or two and trains other law officials on race profiling. But you do not need to apologize because you did nothing wrong and how dare anyone accuse you of being racist, because now you are the victim in all of this and you have suffered and if there's going to be an apology shouldn't it come from the highest quarters, like say an apology from the President of the United States with an invitation to share a beer?

Where was I?

Oh yes. Lucia Whalen. I have to say, I feel for her. She has gotten a lot of negative attention, a ton of hate mail, and a lot of public scrutiny. And she wasn't invited to join the big boys at the White House for their little tete-a-tete, which I think was a mistake and a blind spot in terms of the dynamics of sex in all of this as well (because lets face it, there are sexual and racial dynamics intertwined in all of this). I don't know Ms. Whalen but she seems to be a conscientious person who tries to do the right thing, even though the best laid plans often blow up in your face (and boy did that happen to her with this one).

But I do believe that her internal biases played a part in her decision to call 911 on behalf of her neighbor rather than calming her neighbor down or asking the two men on the porch, from the safety of the very public and visible sidewalk of this very wealthy and well trod and trafficked Cambridge Street, if they needed any help.

The person I think who says it best is Tenured Radical, who has an EXCELLENT post on this subject (click here) and who addresses Ms. Whalen and her elderly neighbor directly:

So Mrs. Cambridge White Neighbor, what should you have done? You should have stopped and asked the gentleman who was trying to get into the house if he needed help -- and did he want to use your cell phone to call a locksmith (hint: burglars don't jimmy the front door in full sight of everyone.) If he had no business getting into the house, he would have left. If he did have business in the house, he might have said, "No thanks -- I think I've got it!" Or, "We've had so much rain, are your doors stuck too? " Or, "Yes, thank you, I need to call my wife -- hi, I'm Skip."

Do I owe Lucia Whalen an apology? Does Tami? Does the nation? Does Dr. Gates or Sergeant Crowley? Does President Obama (for not inviting her to the WH for a cold one)? I think the answer is no. But what I will say is that I do take back calling her a racist. Because I should know better. Because I believe what Jay Smooth has all too eloquently said himself: it's not productive. It really just flames the fires of people's emotions to use that word, even if, in the case of certain instances, like The Valley Club or Sonia Sotomayor's hearings, you really feel that racism is underpinning the questions. Or even in the obvious discrepancy between what Sergeant Crowley CLAIMS Lucia Whalen said to him--that she saw two "black men with backpacks" on the porch when Ms. Whalen denies ever describing the men in this manner and, in fact, went out of her way not to talk about their racial background, until she was asked (and then she said that one seemed to be "Hispanic" but always her language was qualified).

I think the more telling thing among all these blog comments is why some commenters, esp. the anonymous ones on Tami's blog, are so up in arms over this and why they need to demand an apology from an African American female blogger who is speaking her own truth the way she sees it. Perhaps its my friendship with Tami or the common cause I share with her, but I bristled at the comments on her blog (in no small part because I did realize that they were aimed at me). And so what I want to say to everyone is that I will apologize to Lucia Whalen for mistakenly calling her a racist the minute that Sergeant Crowley apologizes to Professor Gates and admits that his own internal prejudices and bigotries may have been a factor in his overreaction and arrest of Dr. Gates in his own home.

But in an effort to move onward and forward, let me just end with saying that I'm not sorry that this has all happened. I mean, I'm sure that everyone in Cambridge, most especially Ms. Whalen, Dr. Gates, and Sergeant Crowley are all WISHING that this had never played out this way. But I think that the dialogue and conversations about this topic have been illuminating and helpful, if for not other reason than to put to rest this silly notion that we are living in a post-racial era or that the election of Barack Obama spelled the end of black disenfranchisement and racism.

The road is long people. We need to keep up our strength, and we need as many allies as we can to fight the good fight.

Race--always more complicated than you think it is

[Warning: Another long and rambling post--there's just something about all these racial incidents happening that loosens the fingers on my keyboard]

It's nearing the end of July, and after perusing the list of blog entries I've written this month, I've noticed that there have been A LOT of things I blogged about this month--a lot of news items related to what seemed, to me, to be obvious instances of racism/white privilege/racial insensitivity. From items relatively innocuous as Kristof's list of best kids' books (I'd put that on the "racial insensitivity" end of the spectrum or perhaps "white privilege") to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Junior and the question of racial profiling.

I say the question of racial profiling, because there seems to be disagreement about whether this was, in fact, a case of racial profiling and, perhaps more to the point of this post, whether race played any factor in the arrest of Professor Gates.

If you are a regular reader, you know that I've already vented through a very long, very rambling, and non-educator's rant on the topic of the prevalence of race and racism in our supposedly post-racial society.

What I want to do now is to put my teacher hat back on. Because the truth is, race is always more complicated than we think it is. It's certainly much more complicated than I understand it to be, and I am someone who thinks about race A LOT. I read books about race. I read blogs about race. I talk about race, both to people who I consider to be part of the choir as well as others who probably think I am a tone deaf singer. And yet, after all this reading and thinking and writing and talking, I'm never certain that I have a handle on race and racism--because it's SO SLIPPERY.

And one of the slippery things that has just emerged is the release of the 911 tapes form Gates arrest. And the tape does not conform to the news reports that came out in the aftermath of the arrest nor the assumptions many of us made based on these reports.

I had, like many others, assumed that Lucia Whalen jumped to the racist conclusion that two black men trying to open a stuck door must be burglars and that she myopically ignored obvious evidence: the luggage, the way the men were dressed, the town car. However, the 911 tape reveals that Lucia Whalen had not just been casually walking by when she made the call--that she called on behalf of an elderly neighbor who had just moved into the neighborhood. And Whalen admits that while she didn't recognize either man, she did speculate that they may live at the residence because she mentions seeing luggage on the porch. And when pressed to identify the men--to describe their race, she says that she is unsure but believes one man to be "Hispanic"--she never described either men as African American, and according to her attorney, she never spoke directly to Officer Crowley except to identify herself as the one who placed the 911 call. In other words, she claims, through her lawyer, that she did NOT tell Crowley that she saw two black men with backpacks trying to break open the door.

I should note that Whalen also does not seem to get all the details right--she describes two "large" men--yet anyone who has seen Professor Gates would describe him as a slight man. I also don't want to absolve Whalen from her part in this whole incident. While she may not have described the two men as "black"--the fact that she didn't go over and simply ask if they needed help--that she didn't inquire about who they were; to introduce herself as someone who works for Harvard University through their magazine and to render assistance--because she, herself, says that “I don’t know if they live there and just had a hard time with their key"--leaves me wondering whether unconscious bias and stereotypes of black men as criminals didn't somehow enter her mind when she placed the call on behalf of the elderly neighbor. If she works on that street, chances are she had to have a good hunch that the house was owned by Harvard University--she could have easily placed a call into the housing rental office rather than call 911 to find out who lived there and to report that there seemed to be two men breaking into the unit. Why didn't she just talk to the men, really, that's what I want to know. It was the middle of the day. She didn't have to go up on the porch, she simply could have called out from the sidewalk and offered aid/assistance, and her instincts could have then taken over if she felt anything was amiss--and she could then assuage the fears of the neighbor, perhaps even facilitating an introduction between Gates and the elderly neighbor.

Whalen's remarks and the article in The New York Times clarifies something I had been puzzled about, namely why Gates had not been troubled by Whalen calling the police--why he was not angry with her or why he did not accuse her of racial profiling him. And why all his anger seems to be (or seemed to be) directed at Crowley and the Cambridge Police. Because it's pretty damning evidence to have Whalen's tape and her statement via her lawyer claiming that she never identifies Gates or his driver as black (and for the record, Gates's driver is actually Moroccan not African American, as Gates clarifies).

So why does Crowley write in the police report that the caller identifies 2 black men on the porch with backpacks? Why does Crowley at first claim that Gates was so unruly and loud in his house that he couldn't speak to his dispatcher, yet clearly the tapes reveal that he did speak to his dispatcher and requests police backup and the presence of the Harvard police because he apparently fears for his life.

Yet things don't add up. If he was so afraid of Gates, why enter his home? Why follow him to his kitchen while Gates goes to retrieve his id? Why not just wait on the porch for Gates to show him the id and/or wait for police back-up to arrive? What could Gates possibly do in the five-minute interval it would take for Harvard police to arrive to confirm his identity? Steal something and run out the backdoor? Since Gates walks with a cane, it'd be hard for him to get very far. If Crowley is such a veteran of the police force and sensitive to racial profiling, why wouldn't he be courteous to Gates from the get-go? Why not simply wait for an invitation to come in or wait on the porch and, most importantly, what goes wrong in the communication between the dispatcher and Crowley--is he the one who ignores the comment about the luggage being on the porch or that the caller thought that one of the men could live there--that she wasn't certain this was an instance of a break-in? Why doesn't Crowley do what Gates had assumed he would do--politely introduce himself, tell him that there has been a report of a break in, and ask if Gates is the residence of the home and can produce id. Even if Gates still went ballistic, the whole incidence could have been easily defused from that point, something Crowley should have known as an instructor sensitive to issues of racial profiling.

Crowley has refused to apologize to Gates--which makes me believe that it's his pride that is at stake--that as a white police officer, someone who believes that he is sensitive to issues of race, someone who claims to have a "mixed" group of friends, that he doesn't believe he did anything worth apologizing for. And yet, if Obama has to retract the word "stupidly"--if Obama, the president of the United States and the most powerful man in our nation (at least supposedly, right) recants the remarks about the Cambridge police acting stupidly, Crowley can't muster the same type of humility and swallow his pride and apologize for at least SOME of his actions and remarks? Instead, he acts like he's the victim--he goes on radio talk shows and gets interviewed by media outlets claiming he is the one who is the victim in this whole situation.

And that, my friends, is white male privilege. Crowley doesn't believe he has to apologize because everything in his upbringing--everything he is told by society, especially given his line of work, tells him that there is nothing HE has to apologize to anyone. He is the ultimate symbol of white male authority--he is a white police officer.

Was this a simple case of racial profiling and racism? Nothing is ever that simple. But to ignore the evidence--to ignore the history of African Americans in this nation, especially their relationship with police officers, is to be blind to the way that race, racism, and white privilege operate in our world.

Finally, I give the last word in this post to Dr. R. L’Heureux Lewis, a Sociology and black studies professor at CUNY who has written a very insightful post about flash point racism. And in the spirit of Dr. Lewis, I do hope we can untangle the complexities of race and have a richer dialogue about race and racism, because as I've already repeated in this post (and in this post's title): race is always more complicated than you think it is.