Before I begin this article, I want it to be clear that there are few people who care about race relations more than I do. And please don’t accuse me of lack of sensitivity to race issues. Most of my relatives lost their lives in Europe during World War II for the terrible “crime” of being Jews. Unfortunately, race (I mean this in the broadest sense to refer to all group identifications) has become the most sensitive subject in American society, so one always risks the danger of being attacked as being racially insensitive whenever expressing unconventional views regarding race. Before you impulsively write enraged comments, please consider my point of view with an open mind. I am not trying to offend anyone, but to show the best path to reducing racism.
Important Addendum, August 6, 2009
I am adding this a week after I initially sent out the blog entry. Thanks to many astute readers, including my wife, I realize I made an error that went contrary to my own teachings. I fell into the trap of my own victim mentality and unfairly took out my resentments against police in a way that prevented me from applying my point of view correctly and understanding the police point of view. I was considering removing this blog entry altogether to avoid generating addtional hostility, but I will take the courageous path and leave it, as much of the analysis I believe is correct, and I shouldn't hide the feelings generated within me due to my experiences with police or deny what I wrote. All I request is that before you decide to turn against me upon reading the article below, please consider these clarifications.
In this blog, I describe police as the "biggest bullies," going against my own advice that we stop thinking of people in this insulting manner, "bully." I forgot my basic teaching that people who seem like bullies to us usually experience themselves as victims. "Bully," despite it's use by academics as if it were a diagnosis, is not a diagnosis and we have no business using this term scientifically. It is an insulting description of the way we experience others who we feel are dominating us. People are most dangerous both to themselves and to others not when they feel like bullies–which they rarely do–but when they feel like victims.
It was a mistake for me to call police bullies, though it is easy for us to experience them in this way because their job requires them to be able to intimidate the public or they wouldn't be able to function. When Sgt. Crowley arrested Gates, he did so because he felt like he was Prof. Gates' victim, and from his point of view, this is correct. Crowley was simply trying to do his job, and he was given a hard time by Gates. I continue to assert that I don't believe Gates' behavior warranted his being arrested in an enlightened republic, and I beiieve governement itself has been given way too much power by a population that increasingly looks to the government to solve their problems for them. However, I don't fault Crowley for arresting Gates for talking back to him this because that is what police are taught to do in our country. I believe that many governmental (including police) practices can be more enlightened, but police are following the procedures they are taught. If I were to write this blog over, I would have described both Crowly and Gates as victims of each other, and not of Crowley acting from a bully mentality. So please forgive me in advance for the error of my ways.
I also describe what happens to the mind of people when they are given the power of the badge and gun. Though this may not sound complimentary to police, it is simply human nature to acquire this attitude. This is supposed to be a psychological blog, and I hope you will see my analysis as an objective psychological one, not as a personal attack against police officers. We all have the same human nature, and I would acquire the same attitude if I were a policeman. Police R' Us.
The irony of the Prof. Gates arrest
This past week, we witnessed a remarkable irony. In the first year of the reign of the first Black president in US history, the country’s most prominent Black scholar, the brilliant and accomplished Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University, was arrested after breaking into his own home. Prof Gates claimed he was the victim of racial profiling. Ironically, the arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley, has the job of teaching police officers how to avoid engaging in racial profiling!
Another irony I will be revealing here is that Prof. Gates indeed was NOT being racially profiled, yet he would almost certainly NOT have been arrested had he not believed he was being racially profiled!
