Obama, Gates, and the Problem of Black Guilt

Obama, Gates, and the Problem of Black Guilt

The situation in Cambridge, Mass., surrounding Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s arrest has been analyzed and reanalyzed from nearly every angle. The character of police Sgt. James Crowley has been dragged through the mud, then polished, then dragged through the mud again.

But Gates has, for the most part, escaped scrutiny. At worst, he has been described as a racialist, a man who sees every aspect of American life through the lens of ethnicity. At best, he has been described (by racialist and full-fledged polysyllable-babbling idiot Michael Eric Dyson) as the "Rosa Parks of racial profiling.”