No, It's Not About Racism. It's About Two People Who Were Both Tired and Angry.

All the commentators are talking about the Gates case like it's a case about racism, and maybe, tangentially, it is. I think, however, it's about two people who wanted to act like hard asses and this is where it landed them. Obama was right, Officer Crowley made a straight up stupid judgment call, but Gates helped provoke Officer Crowley.

Officer Crowley is more at fault than Gates, certainly. Crowley had to arrest Gates for disorderly conduct outside his own home, by luring him out of his own home (since a disorderly conduct arrest can't be made in the person's home) by saying only then will he give up his name and badge number. Once outside, Crowley arrested Gates for disorderly conduct. (Nevermind that you can't get arrested for disorderly conduct in Massachusetts.)

The Smoking Gun has the police report.

Gates, a man who has a Genius grant at Harvard and makes his living talking about race relations, decided he was going to yell and antagonize the officer. Regardless of the color of the skin, if you're looking to come to an agreement with someone, it's not a good idea to antagonize them. To add the race variable to the equation now, Gates was the victim of racism, initially, by the neighbor who thought he and the taxicab driver were burglars. Crowley, after a certain amount of verbal abuse, decided he was tired of getting yelled at and made the decision to arrest Gates.

Understand, both people knew a mistake was made. Gates, immediately recognized this. Crowley recognized it after Gates showed him his Harvard identification. Each of those people made a choice. Crowley made the choice to arrest Gates after he was sick of Gates yelling at him and calling him a racist and Gates made a decision to be a hardass instead of trying to work with the officer to resolve the dispute.

Why I'm so hard on Gates is precisely because at Harvard, he teaches courses about race and he, as the teacher, should know that one of the big ideas in race relations is to work together to solve problems. When he was presented with an opportunity, he ignored the lessons of his course. That said, the context was not kind to Gates. He had just gotten off a plane flight from China, which is a grueling and demoralizing flight in its length. His front door was jammed and he had to ask for help to open it and now has a police officer in his home because one of his neighbors thought he was breaking into his own house. I'd be pissed off and initially hostile too.

But, when they both came to the point where they recognized someone else made a mistake that put them in this situation, they didn't extend a hand and I think, if we're gonna talk about the issue, there it is. They treated each other as representatives of larger ideas as opposed to people put in a situation where both of them were pre-disposed to antagonize each other. They didn't take a step back. That's the lesson I take from this ongoing episode, that both people chose at the moment where they realized they were placed by outisde forces in this situation not to step off their particular horse and take that first step towards resolving the dispute together.

The colleague of Gates working at Harvard, Professor Bobo, said that "There ain't nothing post-racial" about picking up his black friend after being wrongfully arrested but he's more right in that there's nothing post-racial about the distrust between Gates and Crowley that helped lead them to the position they're in now.

There's an odd element of humor to this: precisely because they wouldn't work together privately, they're now stuck in this strange media frenzy together publicly. Here's to hoping the 24 hour news sharks go back to health care...