Tag Archives | The Thin Blue Line

Commenting on the Gates arrest, Boston police officer Justin Barrett explains his attitude toward the civilians who pay his salary:

His [= Gates’] first priority of effort should be to get off the phone and comply with police, for if I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC [= pepper spray] deserving of his belligerent non-compliance. … He indeed has transcended back to a bumbling jungle monkey, thus he forever remains amid this nation’s great social/racial divide.

’Cause we all know there’s nothing worse than when someone suddenly, belligerently, non-complies at you.

Still, such, um, frankness about a case that is already in the national spotlight was a bit too much even for his cop bosses (as well as for his army bosses), and Barrett is now facing termination – which is a shame, because, as he helpfully explains, he didn’t mean “banana-eating jungle monkey” in a racist way at all; it was just, you know, that standard non-racist use of “banana-eating jungle monkey.” Barrett assures us:

I have so many friends of every type of culture and race you can name. I am not a racist.

For some reason I’m reminded of Eichmann’s contention (I think it’s in Eichmann Interrogated) that he couldn’t be considered anti-Semitic because he used to visit his Jewish friends while wearing his Nazi uniform and they never expressed any disapproval. (“Guess who’s coming to dinner, honey. You know that chair we thought we were saving for Elijah?”)

Now comes before the court Barrett’s lawyer, who leaps into the fray to offer some further explication:

Officer Barrett did not call professor Gates a jungle monkey or malign him racially. He said his behavior was like that of one. It was a characterization of the actions of that man.

That is such a good point. This blue-costumed vicious thug despicable asshole conscientious public servant never said that Gates was a jungle monkey; he just said that Gates had “transcended” (I guess he thinks this means “regressed”) “back to a bumbling jungle monkey” and “thus he forever remains,” which is totally different.

So please leave race out of this. Banana-eating jungle monkeys come in all colours, after all; so what Barrett was really saying that he would have physically assaulted anyone, black or white, who acted like they had any rights he was bound to respect. And that, of course, is totally okay.

It’s interesting how so many defenders of the Cambridge Police Department are arguing that there’s nothing wrong with the officer’s conduct because he would have arrested Gates even if he hadn’t been black.

I think we’re entitled to doubt whether he really would have been as ready to arrest a non-black Gates – but OK, let’s stipulate that that’s so. What the hell kind of defense is that? “He’s not a racist, because he treats whites like crap too!”

Whatever his motivations, Officer Crowley (any relation to Aleister, incidentally?) should have dropped the case and departed as soon as he determined that the “intruder” was in his own home. (Note that Crowley himself has said, “I really didn’t want to have to take such a drastic action because I knew it was going to bring a certain amount of attention, unwanted attention, on me,” which shows that he knew the man he was arresting was not a burglar.)

Assume that Gates behaved in a “confrontational” manner; assume, if you like, that he did so in a way that went beyond what the situation warranted (though this seems far from obvious even according to the officer’s version of the story). So what? There’s no evidence that Gates aggressed against Crowley; his only “crime” was failing to kowtow to the superior authorita conveyed by Crowley’s blue costume. (And if Gates weren’t a famous person, I doubt the charges would have been dropped.) But while the American public is willing – though, alas, just barely – to be dragged into a conversation about the possibility that cops might be systematically abusive toward particular races, the idea that they might be systematically abusive, period, is still outside the bounds of polite discourse.

Quick Addendum:

Another argument I’ve heard is that Crowley’s conduct couldn’t have been racially motivated because he leads anti-racial-profiling seminars and once gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a black athlete. This “but some of my best friends are …” argument misses the point. People with consciously antiracist convictions can still be guilty of relying on racist assumptions in their conduct; that’s how prejudice works. (And of course the same applies to sexism, statism, homophobia, and so on.)

Addendum #2:

See also Charles’ post.