A Teaching Moment

Transcript of the discussion among President Obama, Professor Gates, and Officer Crowley sometime next week:

Obama: I appreciate you both for taking the time to sit down with me.

Gates and Crowley: Your welcome, Mr. President.

Obama: I hope what we do here is something with which you both are familiar, an evaluation of just what happened last week. You both are professionals and are both teachers so please understand that we will find things to blame on each other. That's not the point. I hope we will be able to look at the mistakes as mistakes and figure out better ways to do things so we don't repeat those mistakes. Let's make this a teaching moment.

Gates: Where's the beer you promised?

Obama: Skip, it's right over here. (The President leads both men over to a cooler on the floor next to the desk where they each take a brand of their own choice.)

Obama: Officer, as I understand it, you were sent to Dr. Gates' house because someone called to say someone was breaking in. You arrived within ten minutes. Am I correct to say that you found the house quiet, door closed, and nothing unseemly happening?

Crowley: That's right. I went up to the door and knocked on it. An older gentlemen answered the door, holding mail in his hands.

Obama: Did he appear threatening to you in any way?

Crowley: At the moment, he did not. But I have been on burglary calls before and have encountered all kinds of people, all ages and sizes, and both genders so I had to remain alert.

Obama: Professor, what was your reaction to seeing a police officer at your door?

Gates: The first thing that came to mind was, "Oh Oh, what kind of trouble am I in?" I could not think of any reason for him to be at my door. Where I grew up, when a white police officer confronted a Black person, that was not a good situation to be in. Inside I felt on the defensive but I tried to keep my poise. I invited him in.

Obama: Officer, so far so good?

Crowley: I went by the book and stayed just inside close to the door. I asked him who he was.

Gates: I asked him why he had come. It was my house, after all.

Obama: Officer?

Crowley: He failed to answer my question so I asked it again.

Gates: He failed to answer my question and my fear of something being wrong increased.

Crowley: I realized he was getting tense so I asked more quietly a third time. Whatever he was thinking, he handed me a letter and pointed to the name on it. I was not satisfied because some burglars are cool enough to pretend to be the homeowner when we catch them like that. So I asked him if he had his I. D. on him. He showed me his Harvard I. D. and asked me for my name and badge number.

Gates: That's when he told me to step outside and then turned his back on me and went out onto the porch. "Step outside" was given as an order. I felt disrespected at that moment. He refused to identify himself and he expected me to do whatever he wanted me to do. That angered me. I am a respected professor. My picture was on the I. D. so he had to know I was telling him the truth about who I was.

Crowley: When I realized who he was, I acted on my training which is to get the subject outside as quickly as possible because the perpetrator may still be in the house, a potential danger to all of us.

Obama: Did you tell the professor that was the situation?

Crowley: I would have but he said something about my mother which angered me.

Obama: You know better, Skip. The white community only hears one phrase when the word "mother" is mentioned in anger.

Gates: I was standing there being ordered around and said something that any Black person in the country would have understood, "I won't go outside for anyone but your mama."

Crowley: That's not what I heard.

Obama: Officer, tell me what you know about mothers in African culture.

Crowley: Most African cultures are matriarchal so the mother and grandmother are the heads of the family. Dr. Gates, were you saying I did not have enough stature to make a demand on you, that my mother would have had to ask it for you to do it?

Gates: Either that or "Please come outside with me in case there is a crook inside the house who could hurt us."

Obama: Officer, did you say please or explain the situation?

Crowley: By then, the situation had deteriorated. I was afraid for both of us and he made me angry with his remark which I had never heard before and sounded like a terrible insult.

Gates: When he had not given me his name and badge numbered, I went to the door to ask him again and that's when I was grabbed and handcuffed, read my rights, and hustled off to jail.

Crowley: He was very aggravated and I was ready to also charge him with resisting arrest.

Obama: There were no cooler heads around to prevail?

Crowley: My partner was there as back up but his role under that circumstance was to put on the cuffs and make sure the subject was no longer a threat.

Obama: Did your partner then go in and check the house for a possible burglar?

Crowley: No, by then our focus was on the professor and his anger.

Obama: Skip, knowing what you know now, what do you think you should have done?

Gates: Kept my cool. The situation was exactly what every Black person fears day and night. I should have done whatever he said. That's what I was taught when I was little. Do nothing to add to the confrontation because they have the power.

Obama: But you didn't even come close to doing that. You are a man. You are a distinguished professor. You were in your own home. Is there anything else you could have done to retain those and still not escalate the situation?

Gates: I did not think of what he was up against. He's twice as big as me and half my age. I felt a real threat from him. But police officers face things we do not even realize. I wish I had kept my temper and stayed quietly where I was when he went out the door. I wish I had calmly asked him why he wanted me to go outside. I had no idea he was there on a burglary call. As I said, if he had been polite and explained what he was doing, I probably would have had no problem with him and we wouldn't have made the news.

Crowley: I should have kept my poise and taken a moment to identify myself and my purpose for being there and telling him the potential danger we might be in. Once we got into the tiff, I forgot why we were there. As many times as I've taught this stuff, I never realized how easy it is to lose track of what our safety priorities were.

Obama: So you both will teach your respective classes a little differently from now on?

Gates: I'll teach it differently but I'm not sure I will be able to completely control my feelings and reactions if this happens again. Maybe we will need to practice in my classes. How about you, Crowley?

Crowley: Good idea. I am glad to discover just how deep our respective fears run and how they can disrupt a situation. We will have to practice so we do not let those feelings take control.

Gates: Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate your bringing us together and thank you for standing up for me the other night.

Crowley: Let me add my thanks, too, but didn't you make a mistake by taking sides the other night and then called my department "stupid?" What would you do differently?

Obama: Who, the President make a mistake? Well, maybe my first this year. (All laugh.) Look, I apologize for using that word. In fact, if I had not, would we even be here?

Gates: Are you saying that you set this all up just so we could open up the country to this sort of discussion?

Crowley: I know you are smart but I still think it was a mistake.

Obama: The real mistake was drawing attention to your case by offering my opinion. I really wanted to stay on health care the whole presser. Some in the public media really want me to fail on this health care issue. I knew that the moment I started to offer my opinion, this would be the subject of the next three news cycles.

Gates: But you chose to let it fly? You still could have pulled back, especially before using the derogatory term about the department.

Crowley: That was like "a shot heard round the world."

Obama: Did you stop to think that the health care issue has been with us sixty years since Harry Truman but the racial tensions here go back to the bringing of slaves in the eighteenth century?

Gates: All that went through your mind when you were making your statement?

Crowley: That is not what went through my mind!

Obama: Mistake, miscalculated or not, let's make the most of it, Gentlemen.

Crowley: I'll drink to that. (The three touch their long necks.)

Gates: Too bad we didn't record this.

Obama: That's what Jerry just did. Hey Eckert, thanks.