Obama, Professor Gates and Officer Crowley to "share a Few Beers"

Professor Stanley Fish, a Davidson Kahn Distinguished University Professor, dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Ilinois in Chicago, a strong conservative thinker, writer and long time friend of one Professor Henry "Skip" Gates, has weighed in with his enlightened and thoughtful opinion of the situation that resulted in Professor Gate's being arrested in his own home.

He says this,

"I'm Skip Gates friend too. That's probably the only thing I share with President Obama and so when he ended his press conference last Wednesday by answering a question about Gates arrest after he was seen trying to get into his own house, my ears perked up.

As the story unfolded in the press and on the Internet, I flashed back 20 years or so to the time when Gates arrived in Durham, N.C., to take up the position I had offered him in my capacity as chairman of the English department of Duke University. One of the first things Gates did was buy the grandest house in town (owned previously by a movie director) and renovate it. During the renovation workers would often take Gates for a servant and ask to be pointed to the house's owner. The drivers of delivery trucks made the same mistake.

The message was unmistakable: What was a black man doing living in a place like this?"

I included this lengthy quote from Professor's Fish's opinion pieces at the New York Times on July 25, 2009. Anyone who has weighed in on any side of the multi-faceted conversation would be served well by reading Professor Fish's comments and thoughts on the subject.

It is very difficult to make an objective statement about this conflict unless one of two things is present, you are a black man in America or you are a white police officer trying to serve the citizens you've sworn to protect. The other person who might have a right to offer his opinion, after he received all the facts, was the current President of the United States. Even he realizes now, that his comments were perhaps a tad rash, considering the need for cooler heads to prevail than the ranting ones across the nation on both sides of this dispute.

And now it seems as though these three key parties will have a chance to sit and discuss this issue. Perhaps this need for ongoing discussion on Race in America will be aided and abetted by the discussion that will be held in the big house, The White House. Here a good man presides as our president, and yet on several occasions in the past few days, I've heard and read comments that demean all of us Americans.

One of my best friend is a cop on the beat in New York. I love his honesty, his down to earth way of describing his world. He says this. "Even the best of us, get caught up in the tensions of the strife. We can believe that we have the best intentions, but when our turf is threatened, our expertise doubted, our ground trampled on, we put up our fists and we want to duke it out" He believes this is what happened for both Professor Gates and Officer Crowley.

I tend to agree with both he and Professor Fish. But I do know this. I wasn't there and none of the thousands of people offering their view of the subject were there. Only Professor Gates and Officer Crowley really know the whole story. The better interests of our county would be served by the two of them sitting down and rationally discussing this issue, now that the heat of the moment has dissipated.

So I lift my glass of beer to the three of them. Here's to an America which welcomes the growing diversity of our communities and works to figure out how we all can achieve our American dream. It won't be easy. Egos and people are loathe to change old set ways on both sides, on all sides. But change we must if we are to endure as one nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

It sounds to me as though all three of these fine Americans, Gates, Crowley and Obama have come to a common viewpoint that this is a moment that we can all learn from. I look forward to hearing the results of their meeting and their discussion.

Sources:

New York Times

Betty Malone's brain

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/henry-louis-gates-deja-vu-all-over-again/