Henry Louis Gates, Jr. - Back in Black

The first thing that came to mind was Dave Chappelle's skit featuring his drug dealing alter ego, Tron. Tron switches places with a white male corporate type who is roughed up and framed by the cops, while Tron is given a courteous and apologetic call and asked when it would be convenient to turn himself in.

Chappelle's incisive wit in this hypothetical exploration of race relations in America, is what convinced me that this was a case of racial profiling. If not for the the fact that a white Harvard professor with a very high national profile would never have been treated in this way, I could dismiss it as an over reaction on the part of Gates. But Gates, it turns out, is black and I think he was reminded of that in a most unpleasant way.

I don't blame Gate's white female  neighbour, she was looking out for his property after all, but I do wonder how long they were neighbours and why she couldn't figure out that is was Gates himself. I'm not advancing a conspiracy theory, just wondering again if she would have called the police had it been a white man of the same age  (apparently 58 years old). 58 year old men of any race aren't known for burglary.

That there is now a black American president adds weight to the issue and, if handled accordingly, could pull Obama's tongue on the simmering problems of racial equality, discrimination, segregation and prejudice. The recently featured segregated school proms not only revealed the still living spectre of racism in the US, but begs one to question what else is done in the name of prejudice that has gone unreported, and yet accepted in both black and white communities.

The real issue with both Gate's arrest and the segregated proms is that they are black problems - or blacks are the ones who have the grouse. Whites are merely spectators, busy being human, while blacks are trying to ascend the evolutionary ladder to humanity, a feat ever more possible with the ascent of Obama. To be sure, all men are equal, but reality offers another version of the truth with black people having had to justify their presence in a (white) man's world for generations. This is why many white folks can't comprehend Gate's stance.

Richard Dyer, in his book White, noted that whites very rarely ever acknowledge the implication that non-whites, in the Western World, are raced while whites are just human. This is played out in the media everyday from the many contemporary white blockbuster heroes (while blacks have only Will Smith, Jamie Foxx and Denzel Washington - Asian and Hispanic stars? Even  fewer), to references to 'black on black' violence and the fact that mainstream media is primarily white and niche media is inevitably ethnic or non-white - as if white isn't an ethnicity. Too often do minority characters have to justify their presence through their ethnicity. You get the point? Though whiteness is the standard it is essentially an invisible standard usually unmentioned and under-acknowledged by the white community, if anything excused as 'victim mentality' acted out in the non-white community.

Like these few thoughts Gate's arrest has the potential to take us far and wide within the issue of race and culture, and surely many will try to forward their own agenda on the springboard of this event. But we all know that legislation can't change mens hearts though it can guide their actions, and action may be more necessary than anything else right now. But the biggest concern is not what Obama is going to say or do - he will either be a disappointment to the black community or a black man with a bone to pick to the white community - but what the response will be within the white communities across America, because of the many invisible discriminatory standards that still obtain in a nation that is supposedly free, democratic and equal.

The time is fast approaching when it must be acknowledged that we have issues not just them, and working out these problems is not a gesture of good faith but an act of moral responsibility.

NOTE: It should be noted that many white commentators in the US media have sided with Gates and stated they believe if he were white the situation would have played out differently. Indeed, some have said if they were in his position an arrest would not have been made.