COMMENTARY contributor Ruth Wisse pens a charming and devastating letter to Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (”Skip”). It should be read in full, but two points are especially noteworthy.

As a linguistic scholar, Wisse catches Gates adopting the false tone and language of stereotypical blacks:

What puzzles me most in the report of your actions — or reactions — on July 16 is why you would have chosen, as I’ve heard you put it elsewhere, to “talk Black” to officer Crowley instead of “talking White” as you so eloquently and regularly do? These are distinctions I’ve heard you expound — how educated African Americans switch their register of speech depending on what part of themselves they want to get across. Many of us do something similar inside and outside our particular communities, but you make it sound like a sport that is also for African Americans a tool of survival. So why didn’t you address the policemen as fellow Cambridgians? What was that “yo’ mama” talk instead of saying simply, in the same register your interlocutor was using, “Look, officer, I’m sorry for your trouble. Thanks for checking on my house when you thought I was being burgled, but this is my home, and if you give me a minute, I’ll find the piece of mail or license that proves it to you.” It seems it wasn’t the policeman doing the profiling, it was you. You played him for a racist cop and treated him disrespectfully. Had you truly feared bias, you would surely have behaved in a more controlled, rather than a less controlled, way.

Her point is well taken: this is not a case of racism but of playacting racism. Gates is an actor in this skit, and Crowley is the assigned villain. We are in the world of fiction. The president made the mistake of thinking this was something other than a staged event.

And second, Wisse firmly calls Gates out for behavior more typical of a Hollywood celebrity — the anger induced by failure of the little people to recognize him and show sufficient deference:

Rather than taking offense at being racially profiled, weren’t you instead insulted that someone as prominent as you was being subjected to a regular police routine? A Harvard professor and public figure — should you have to be treated like an ordinary citizen? But that’s the greatness of this country: enforcers of the law are expected to treat all alike, to protect the house of a black man no less carefully than that of white neighbors. You and I entrust our protection to these police, and we also entrust to them the protection of Harvard students. These are the police who were called in on May 18 to deal with the shooting of Justin Cosby, 21, inside one of the Harvard dorms by suspects who, like him, were African Americans. Has any case ever been dealt with more discreetly — likely at least in part because it involved African Americans? Should we not be encouraging all students to live within the law and to consider ourselves on the side of the law unless clearly and manifestly demonstrated otherwise? Is it not for faculty to set an example of politeness, civility, responsibility, and cool temper?

This is the unseemly side of liberalism — the elevation of victimology, extreme condescension, and the use of race as a weapon to with which to browbeat others. The president did his friend no favors by focusing our attention on this incident. Perhaps next time the president and the media chorus will think twice before trying to convert a snooty Harvard professor’s rudeness into an iconographic episode of racism.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 2:21 PM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.