No surprise that Gates opened his mouth and “race” came out
As you know, the police report of Henry Louis Gates’ arrest, an arrest that involved black and Hispanic officers, as well as the white officer who got all the coverage, saw Gates instantly crying “race.” His first words, after refusing to cooperate, were “Why, because I’m a black man in America?” He then accused the white officer of racism. He then told unknown third parties that the officer was racist. And since then, Gates has made it about race. So yes, this was definitely about race.
What’s important to remember is that this shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s not just that Gates is black. Of course black people are aware of their race (just as other people are always aware, if only subliminally, of their race or religion, or other distinctive attributes). And in America, blacks are exceptionally aware of their race, since it has for many decades been a front-burner issue in terms of deciding whether or not America has cast off the immoral shackles of slavery and Jim Crow.
With Gates, however, race isn’t just a sort of background hum in his life, one that rises or falls depending upon the circumstances. Instead, it turns out that racial distinctions, and a perpetual sense of grievance against white culture, are the fulcrums of his professional life and his fame. Already back in 1990, in a glowing New York Times profile, the fact that Gates is not only proud of his race, but is also committed to identity politics and disdainful of white culture, come through loud and clear (emphasis mine):
In print and from behind the podium he attacks Allan Bloom, author of the best-selling book about the crisis in higher education, ”The Closing of the American Mind,” and William J. Bennett, who as Secretary of Education was noted for his denunciations of American universities for dismantling the core curriculum. To Gates, the ”Killer B’s” (as Bloom and Bennett are known in the academic world) are representatives of ”the cultural right,” guardians of ”white male Western culture.’‘ Leading the ranks of a ”rainbow coalition” of left-leaning critics, he fights for a ”revised canon,” a broader representation of non-European cultures in the basic university curriculum and a concurrent emphasis on the contribution of women to Western civilization. He calls the process ”de-centering the humanities.”
As a self-proclaimed ”race man,” Gates (Continued on Page 48) wants the history and culture of Africans and African-Americans taught in the nation’s classrooms. He explains the private impulse behind this facet of his activism with a quotation from James Baldwin, who wrote, ”I have not written about being a Negro at such length because I expect that to be my only subject, but only because it was the gate I had to unlock before I could hope to write about anything else.” Gates’s goal, predicated on the conviction that African-American studies programs can help open up the university to minority students, is ambitious. In an essay celebrating the 20th anniversary of African-American studies programs, he writes: ”If we have taken black studies for granted as a tool for integrating higher education, we may have only begun to glimpse its potential for integrating the American mind.”
[snip]
He dismisses as a ”racialist fiction” the idea that African-American culture is ”exclusively a thing apart, separate from the whole,” and insists that white and black professors alike should teach black studies for the benefit of the entire student body. Yet he favors the creation of separate departments. And even if black studies programs are denied departmental status, he believes they should have the power to make appointments, to hire members of the faculty whose methodological approaches may ”fall outside the discipline of a traditional department.”
I applaud Gates for his view that whites were capable of learning about and even teaching black culture. I also applaud him for wanting to bring to light a culture that had been buried — and for being proud of his own culture. These are admirable attributes and they should thrive in a melting pot America.
BUT, having said that, there is no doubt but that Gates is someone who defines the world strictly by race and who, at least 20 years ago, had a lot of hostility towards white culture.
