Thursday, July 23, 2009

Michael Kinsley - In Henry Gates's Arrest, Hard Realities and Human Nature - washingtonpost.com

Michael Kinsley - In Henry Gates's Arrest, Hard Realities and Human Nature - washingtonpost.com: "As he says, he wanted to be treated on the basis of 'how I was dressed' and 'how I talked' and 'how I comported myself.' Who can blame him for that? After all, it's a pretty good generalization that someone seen breaking into a house near Harvard Square is less likely to be a burglar if he is also a Harvard professor (and has the ID to prove it, as Gates did).

But how does a Harvard professor dress? A photo taken during the episode shows Professor Gates wearing the universal uniform of our age: jeans and a casual shirt. No social clues there. George Will wrote a column recently denouncing jeans as (if I've got this right) a phony effort by folks with no dirt under their nails to show solidarity with the masses. At the time this struck me as overexcited, or at least several decades too late. But maybe Will has a point. As the Chevy Chase police no doubt are aware, one does not break into someone else's house in a tweed sport coat and bow tie."