Cambridge, Massachusetts was in the news this week. A city cop busted a black professor on his own property following some verbal hassles. The professor was understandably freaked out by the cop’s behavior. The cop interpreted that as disrespect for the law or disorderly conduct or something. Basically, the effect of the arrest was to underscore the bust ’em if they’re black and sort them out later practices of too many police departments across the US. It underscored too, the powerless rage that a lot of people have when confronted or challenged by police authority.
My first thought was that this is just another case of Driving While Black, only this time it’s about forgetting your keys so you gotta go down to the station to get it sorted out. It was probably more nuanced than that.
That it happened in Cambridge is an eye opener. The cop lives in Natick, a town that’s more than 90 percent white and less than two percent African American, and a place where housing is more affordable than Cambridge. That old Unitarian pederast and Harvard graduate, Horatio Alger, was perhaps Natick’s most notable resident. He retired from his Cape Cod pulpit to Natick, disgraced by his “imprudent behavior” with some teenage boys in Brewster. His reputation did not follow him when he left Natick, moved to New York, and befriended young bootblacks who provided inspiration for his tales of young men who found success through constant striving.
Doug Flutie, who exemplified Alger’s “Strive to Succeed” philosophy, went to Natick High School. The Hostess Twinkie factory (think Dan White, famous San Francisco policeman) in Natick is closed but I suppose that the Cambridge cop could still get them retail at the Quik Trip Market. I know. That’s not fair.
So here we have a white working class cop from Natick, and an upper middle class black professor with the reasonable expectation that the shit could hit the fan simply because of the racial dynamic within the Cambridge university community–I’m surprised no one got tazed.
But I wasn’t there…
