I haven't read every word of "print" on the story and fallout of Henry Louis Gates, esteemed Harvard professor, who was arrested in his own home by a police officer who thought he was breaking in. Race is a topic I hesitate to write publicly about. As my Latino friend Rudy once said about chiming in on a debate about African Americans, "I'm not black, and I can't say how I'd feel."
So this is not going to take the perspective of "A Phantom Negro" who criticizes Gates for acting like he was in too high a position to be treated that way, or the Cambridge police chief who criticized President Obama for saying the Cambridge police acted "stupidly."
I just want to say a few things. First, I have long admired Henry Louis Gates, Jr., not because I know much about his scholarship, but because I have been proud that a black man rose to the heights of academic excellence and esteem. Second, I was outraged by the arrest, going to that place in my brain where all the stories of racial profiling have been stored. Third, I don't think President Obama was wrong to say the police acted stupidly. Apparently they did.
But maybe he shouldn't have said much about it at all. Maybe none of us should say much about what another person does. At age 53 - not old, not young - I've come to see and hear many, many stories. People stories. From afar, a person's actions might seem scandalous, unwise, downright stupid. But then they'll tell me their story, for an hour, and in just one hour I come to understand their story a little - enough to step down off my high horse of judgment and imagine their life.
Eckhart Tolle says that if you were born with the same genes and the same circumstances as any other human being, you would make the same choices they have. So far, I think he might be right. So I am going to withhold judgment of Gates, of Sgt. James Crowley who arrested him, and of President Obama for using that word about something he didn't know a lot about. It's a wilderness of unkown to assess any person's actions. I'm not talking about murder, or other heinous crimes, I think you know that.
