Prisms

The story of the Massachusetts cop who arrested the black professor gave us an interesting example of the different prisms people use to look out on the world. What should have been a routine check on a homeowner to make sure his home had not been burglarized became an ugly incident because of the distortion of a predisposed racial prism.

For the professor, who is perhaps an extreme example of the racial agitator, the incident was all about "racial profiling". For President Obama, who admitted knowing little of the facts of the incident, a knee-jerk reaction caused him to assume the officer acted inappropriately and "stuplidly".

What I gleaned from the underlying facts reported of the event was simply this: The white officer had the misfortune of responding to a suspected burglary call in the wrong residence. A racial activist who harbors an intense hatred for a society and law enforcement community he believes is racist jumped to the conclusion that the officer arrived at his home for no reason other than to harass him because he's black.

Without the racist prism distorting the professor's interpretation of the police officer's motives, he would have simply provided identification, thanked the officer for his concern, and there would have been no incident. Instead, he became enraged and abusive, refusing to provide any identification to the officer and accusing him, loudly and profanely, of racial profiling in assuming he was a burgler in his own home.

The hypersensitivity exhibited in this case by both Professor Gates and President Obama is an unfortunate illustration of what I think may be the biggest problem remaining in race relations. I've observed similar hypersensitivity firsthand, with black folks who immediately assume race is behind any conflict or negative experience when in fact, race played absolutely no role.

I remember years ago some black folks in Washington DC sued Denny's restaurant. Their charge was that Denny's refused to serve them because they were black. When I read about the circumstances surrounding the event, I had to laugh. Because they experienced something I've experienced at least one out of every three times I've ever gone to a Denny's restaurant: bad service. I wasn't laughing at anything related to racism; I was laughing because they simply experienced the same bad service we all get to experience from time to time at Denny's.

Now it may be that Denny's has cleaned up their act and now have consistently great service. I don't know. But back at the time of that incident, it hadn't been a month since I had visited a Denny's, got seated at a table, placed my order with the waitress, and never saw her again. Which is pretty much what those folks used as grounds for suing the restaurant chain.

What will it take to get to a point where we all deal with each other as individuals? Things that happen to us don't necessarily happen because of our outward appearance. I wish everyone could stop using such things as a crutch or an excuse; "I didn't get the job because of age/race/weight/smoking/religious/gender discimination!".

Hate to break it to you, but most of the time you didn't get the job because they hired somebody more qualified. OK, or maybe they hired the boss' nephew. But your age/race/weight/smoking habit/religion/gender had nothing to do with it.