Powell Blames Gates for His Own Wrongful Arrest

Last night, CNN reported that former Secretary of State Colin Powell rebuked Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. for the way he behaved the night he was wrongly arrested by Cambridge police (h/t). Powell also faulted the police for "escalating the situation beyond a reasonable level," but he focused his criticism on Gates:

"I think Skip [Gates], perhaps in this instance, might have waited a while, come outside, talked to the officer and that might have been the end of it," Powell said in an interview with CNN's Larry King.

"I think he should have reflected on whether or not this was the time to make that big a deal."

"There is no African-American in this county who has not been exposed to this kind of situation," Powell said. "Do you get angry? Yes. Do you manifest that anger? Do you protest? Do you try to get things fixed? But it's the better course of action to try and take it easy and don't let your anger make the current situation worse."

It all seems so reasonable, doesn't it? If Gates had only been more patient, this would never have become such a big deal, right?

Wrong. Putting the blame on Gates is ridiculous. The police did something wrong when they assumed he was breaking into his own home, when the arresting officer refused to identify himself, and when they arrested Gates for disorderly conduct. I see no evidence that Gates did anything wrong. It's not wrong to get upset about suffering injustice. It's not wrong to suggest that racism had a role to play in this situation. (It's very hard to prove whether that's true, but it's not wrong to suggest it.) It's certainly not wrong to expect to be able to get into one's own home without being detained by the police.

Powell is basically saying that Gates was wrong to do anything other than lie down and let the Cambridge police walk all over him. Where's the sense or justice in that?

This—patiently waiting while the people in power commit injustice—is a standard of behavior frequently demanded of racial minorities, women, and other oppressed groups. When the police do something racist, misogynistic, homophobic, or transphobic, someone (often from the same group as the victim) usually comes forward to suggest that the victim could have handled the situation better. "Yes, it's discrimination," they say, "but we all go through it, there's nothing you can do about it, and it's best not to risk making the situation worse." And everyone applauds the spokesperson's sanity and reason.

But expecting people to "just suck it up" (Powell's words) when they come up against discrimination is part of how our society perpetuates discrimination. In fact, Gates had very good reason to be upset. And yes, he was probably extra upset because he suspected that the injustice happening to him was based in racism. That is also a justifiable reason to be upset. Instead of expecting him to be calm, we should be expecting the police to be fair and just. Isn't upholding justice their job?

Telling us that Gates should have been more patient puts the responsibility on the wrong party. It sends the message that what Gates did was just as wrong as what the police did. It passes off a one-way injustice as a two-way mistake. And that's just not right.

You can watch the interview with Powell here; the relevant section is the second clip.