Boy, did you read badly, Doc. I lock my doors. To the degree I rely on anything, I rely on that.

The point, again, is this: if I were in the business of burglary, I wouldn't do it in such a way that the people on the block could observe me; I'd be offended if someone thought I would.

It seems to me curious that in a discussion of what happened after a neighbour (as you say, in this case, a more or less random person) called the police, you say of the notion that someone would call the police, "this is a myth." It may be rare, but in this case it happened, didn't it?

If I struggled with my front door (as actually has happened until we replaced the lock), and one of my neighbours, or neighbour's friends, called the cops on me, and I thought it was racial, I'd be completely polite with the police officer, and then go have a polite conversation with the neighbour. If I thought their thinking was racial (as I think it was was in this case), I might remind them that not all African Americans are criminals. And, based on this evidence, I would draw some conclusions on how white people think.

I firmly believe that African American notions of how whites think about race are largely the result of experience. Professor Gates is fifty-eight, so he was born in 1951 or 1950. How many white folks do people think he's encountered that engaged in racist discourse or behaviour? What was the society he observed growing up like? What conclusions would a reasonable person draw? How many times would he have the polite, educational conversation with people who didn't get it before he/she gave it up and went about his business?

If I thought the police officer abused his power, I'd wait the incident out and then go talk to his supervisor, who would see me because I'm a homeowner, a long time resident of this community, and white. I wouldn't expect anything to happen immediately, but I'd expect to be listened to.

However, I believe that the calm and clearsightedness necessary to defuse this incident at any point after the yelling began are pretty near superhuman (for both the cop and the professor).

I don't think it's Gates or the cop we should be examining but our institutions and ourselves.