Safety

"I want a good girl, she want a gentleman,
We're saying the same thing like a sinner man" - Kanye West

Everyone knows the story. On Thursday President Obama, VP Joe Bidden, Sgt. Crowley and Harvard Prof. Gates got together to "have a beer" and the discuss the events that transpired 2 weeks ago which has sparked a national debate on race.

The distinguished black Harvard intellectual was arrested at his home by a white police officer and charged with disorderly conduct on July 16. A neighbor had mistakenly thought a break in was underway as the professor was attempting to nudge his door testy door open. The two accounts that ensued and played out in the national media could not have been more different.

But one thing. Everyone, including President Obama, is missing the point.

Professor Gates' arrest took place in Cambridge, home to Harvard and MIT. People are paying attention and speaking about race because he is beyond a distinguished individual who, regardless of whether he was yelling, should not have been arrested for occupying his own home. It isn't a crime.

But he was and people talked, some even questioning why this regional incident created national headlines. Those like Colin Powell, who placed some of the blame on Gates himself, said the incident would not have gone as far if it wasn't for a clash of the egos and if the professor would have been completely cooperative.

Mr. Powell neglects to mention the 400 pound elephant in the room. How often do we see white men get suspected of a crime simply for occupying their own home? I forgot my key last week and had to break into my own apartment-- I was not suspected of an attempted robbery.

The statistics of black men being under suspicion of a crime, being arrested, and occupying America's jails and prisons are staggering. But it took the newsworthy act of a well known Harvard professor being arrested for people to talk, for whites and even blacks to act "shocked" at everything that transpired.

No one takes into account the value of each human being. Professor Gates, as prominent and intelligent a man as he is, is just a human being like every other human being. He is a black man in America just as millions of others are. But when this daily event happens to ordinary people who aren't celebrities or powerful figures, nobody gives a shit. Nobody is up in arms.

Professor Gates can ask, "do you know who I am?", because he most likely can foresee some kind of outcry or retribution. Most black men who are falsely accused of a crime know that they should keep their audacity under control if they don't want to experience the negative consequences that will likely follow.

Shocked that this would happen to Professor Gates? Sure. Shocked that this is happening? How naive can we get? We're searching for a scintillating, in the moment story, while this trend continues to face ordinary people, who may not be your scholar, who may not be your doctor, who may not have the opportunity to fight this.

It's not about Prof. Gates . It's about why America as a nation cares so much about important figures (or pretends to in the in-the-moment kind of way) and not about our very own neighbors. It's us reducing the concept of race into a 5 minute CNN news clip. We're a country that is eager to move onto a new and exciting story. We see the news worthy events; we don't take a look at the socio-concepts and realities which caused it and many events like it to happen.

Why might there be an innate defensiveness in Professor Gates? Why might there be an innate anger toward law enforcement in a great number of black men who are consistently being suspected of crime in large part because of the stereotypes America (and police in America) are being force-fed about them? And within that anger, does it take away some percentage of their masculinity, and makes them submissive, which subsequently leads back to the scene of a powerful white cop taking control of an unarmed black man. It's a microsm of the majority group being consistently more powerful than a minority group that is being silenced and it's a fabric of racism in American society.

Sgt. Crowley probably didn't have time to think about all this while trying to do his job to the best of his ability. But again the question is, when does white America ever think about these issues without having to? When do ordinary people who make up this national issue start to matter and when do we speak on these issues beyond the superficial newsworthy layer?

A beer in hopes that a national fiasco might go away? It won't.