Falsely Accused of Racism? Me Too

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested, not for being a “black man in America,” but for being a belligerent jackass. It doesn’t matter if you’re an esteemed professor or a college kid hammered off of keg beer – talking back to an officer is stupid and will eventually get you arrested.

As one of the only whites in the Baltimore high school in which I taught,  I was called a racist – “You white racist bitch!” or “You skinny white racist bitch!” – on a rather consistent basis, mainly by students I was disciplining. Their first reaction to my discipline policy was to cuss me out and call me a “cracker ass bitch,” or something equally artful – it almost always revolved around the B word though. The first time I was accused of racism by a student who wasn’t raging at me, I was teaching To Kill a Mockingbird. Most of the books on the curriculum dealt with race in some way, shape or form. Whites were always the bad guys, for sure. It’s hard as a white guy to not get sucked into a category with the ugly racist Robert E. Lee Ewell from that great novel when teaching it to a class of 30 African-American kids. I did my best to convince them I was an Atticus type figure, mainly by showing up each day and expecting greatness from each of them. But I was shocked and really let down when an older African-American teacher told me that word was going around among the kids that I was a racist. I held my head low for a couple days – what had I done? I literally had no idea what I could have said. Here I was, doing my best as a 23-year-old white guy right out of college, in a notoriously bad and persistently dangerous all-black high school. Excuse me for feeling a bit out of place. A few days went by and the charge dropped without a whisper because there was absolutely no basis for it. I was profiled constantly: “Hey, is you Peyton Manning’s twin?” I would hear one kid ask. “Nah, he look like Eli,” another would answer. They would laugh, and so would I, as they walked down the hall. “Who that white man is?” a girl would ask a friend as I walked by. “He look like one of those ones from High School Musical!” It was constant and hilarious. It revealed to me that the students hadn’t come across too many white people in their lives, except on television. I apparently look like every white guy from Wayne Gretzky, the hockey star, to Mr. Prezbo, the famous cop turned teacher from “The Wire.” One thing I actually took away from a diversity training session was when a presenter said that white people don’t think about being white, but that black people think about being black every single day. When I started teaching in the inner city, it really was the first time in my life I’d felt cognizant of my skin color before. My whole life had really been surrounded by white people. It gave me a new respect and perspective, but it also has given me a new look at what racism is and isn’t. Racism is hateful and ignorant. Racism is not racism just because that’s the default position our society takes when someone is made uncomfortable by a person who doesn’t look like them. So I hope I have some perspective on the feelings of Professor Henry Louis Gates when he was arrested for disorderly conduct.  At the same time, I think I have some perspective on false accusations of racism as well. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested, not for being a “black man in America,” but for being a belligerent jackass. It doesn’t matter if you’re an esteemed professor or a college kid hammered off of keg beer – talking back to an officer is stupid and will eventually get you arrested. This is called equal application of the law. Thankfully, Sgt. Crowley, the accused “racist cop”, is standing up for himself. If we really need a national conversation on race, Crowley is standing up for people who are sick of petty racism charges – people who are sick of holding their tongues because they aren’t quite sure what someone is going to think. What progress can be made if we beat around the bush on racial issues? How else will any progress be made regarding black on black crime or failed schools, largely made up of black students, or disproportionate unemployment in the black community, if everyone has to worry that their career will be ruined if they are perceived to be a racist? As a good buddy of mine, a black male gang outreach counselor in Baltimore told me when he looked around the halls of our terrible school, “It’s not a black white thing anymore, it’s crazy – that’s what it is.”