TWILIGHT ZONE OF PREJUDICE

Racial guilt, of sorts, gnaws at me.

With the Cambridge flap looming large, two African-American women were handed a legitimate reason to wonder if I was dissing them. I stepped off a train at Penn Station in Manhattan, entered an elevator holding four other people and stood directly in front of the button panel. I spotted the two women standing outside the elevator and plenty of room was still available for them. Why should I deny them entry?

I never did. The doors closed on the women and I scrambled to find the “open” button. A man’s finger poked the air to my side as he uttered something about finding the right button. He pushed the button that sent us spiraling upward to the station concourse. I was the only white guy there; the others appeared to be Asian. These poor women had a right to wonder if I deliberately barred them from the elevator because of their race.

I felt incredibly stupid. I was tempted to tell the other guy, “Thanks a bunch.”

Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. bungled his reaction to a Cambridge police officer’s visit on July 16, but his actions were nonetheless fully understandable. The officer’s investigation touched a nerve, tapping a deep reserve within Gates of centuries-old racism toward him personally and African-Americans in general. The celebrated scholar’s sensitivities were compounded by struggling with a cold and enduring an extremely long flight from China.

Lucia Whalen was performing her civic duty by alerting 911 that two men seemed to be breaking into a house. Sgt. James Crowley responded to a call of a break-in. He claimed that Gates was confrontational from the outset and showed him a Harvard identification which excluded his address, The Washington Post reported.

A smart, responsible citizen always cooperates with any symbol of authority. Gates should have waited until the incident was done and, if he was still upset with the officer’s conduct, report his concerns to the police department. Maybe Gates would have done this if he was thinking clearly at the time. If Crowley was truthful, then he might have been attempting to sort out the matter as Gates harangued him. This would mean that Gates interfered with an incomplete investigation.

Yet, Gates cannot be blamed. Gates could have been responding to the perception of prejudice. We all know the depth of racism in American history - the common practice of lynching young black men in the South; pervasive segregation only 40 years ago; widespread poverty in the black community; and even the barring of African-American campers from a suburban Philadelphia swim club weeks ago.

Boston itself is known as the North’s bastion of racism. I am sometimes the only white person when I ride Philadelphia’s buses and subways, and while visiting Boston I discovered that most passengers on its subways and trolleys were white. The few African-Americans on board were visibly nervous. Maybe Gates was irritated with persistent racial attitudes there.

Who knows what racism Gates experienced in his own life?

Gates might have been stressed out by his long flight from China and his struggle with a cold. He arrives home and maybe can only think about flopping down on his bed. Then a white police officer enters his house demanding that he provide identification on his own property. That sets him off, possibly.

With America’s history of racism and other forms of bigotry, prejudice has dimmed somewhat in this country. That presents an interesting and vexing problem. A situation may bear all the earmarks of bigotry, but it turns out not to be the case. Jewish groups seeking to build schools or synagogues in congested suburbs have charged anti-Semitism when their neighbors - less observant Jews among them - object to their grandiose plans. If a black athlete is arrested, is the “man” trying to bring him down or did he commit a crime? When an imam denounced Jews at a Muslim conference, did he represent only himself or did he verbalize what most Muslims are thinking?

Unlike the bad old days, it is often difficult to figure out what these things are all about. A white social worker who removes a child from a black mother’s home is doing exactly what many black social workers would do. There are non-Jews who criticize Israel because they genuinely believe the government misused its powers. Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s assertion that “wise Latinas” know best does not mean she hates white males.

Few of us can forget the context of our history. It is hard to trust other groups after centuries of discrimination. Some conservative Jews are already calling President Obama an anti-Semite because of his demands on Israel. Lucia Whalen was accused of racism before Cambridge police tapes proved that she did not inject race into her 911 call. Many whites cease considering any arguments on a racial issue the instant that Jesse Jackson Jr. or Al Sharpton open their mouths.

On a personal level, the harsher critics of Israel have called me an apologist and hawkish Jews likened me to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister accused of appeasing Hitler. A black jury foreman told me, during a break in deliberations in a case with racial overtones, that there were things I needed to learn. Like what? How to be abrasive and antagonize a somewhat liberal white man?

We have reached a stage that resembles a twilight zone of prejudice, where we must separate the wheat from the chaff. That’s hard work, but who said that keeping a free society free was easy?