How to Talk to a Policeman: A Lesson from the Henry Louis Gates Incident

On our way to the gym Monday morning my husband and I were pulled over in my 2002 VW convertible by a Maryland uniformed officer. Apparently, we had been breaking Maryland vehicle regulation 13-411 since May, when the license plates expired.

My husband, who was behind the wheel, was slightly more anxious than I that this episode would end badly. A few years ago, in a similar registration mix-up, he was removed from his car, which was then impounded. As we sat side by side in the open car I could see my spouse, who writes thrillers for a living, running scenarios in his mind. I could tell he pictured the young cop drawing his service weapon and ordering the two of us to step out of the vehicle. To lighten the tension I thought about expressing my hope they'd put us in the same cell, but before I could, our protector of the peace was back.

"No, ma'm," the policeman told me. He'd checked my story and the registration had not been renewed. It turned out that the record I renewed online was for my husband's 1998 Ford station wagon. I saw my husband's eyes widen and his mouth tighten as the patrolman asked him, "Could I see your driver's license, please?" I stayed quiet when he asked the officer permission to retrieve his wallet from the gym bag in the back seat, but when the officer left us again for his motorcycle, I teased him for anticipating a confrontation. Needlessly so, it turned out. When the lawman returned his operator's license and handed my husband a $60 ticket, he hinted if we went to court we'd probably get the penalty waived. We were on our way in about 15 minutes. No impound lot for us.

We were breaking the law, but despite my husband's inherent paranoia, as a middle-aged white suburban couple we were deemed exceedingly harmless. Compare our experience to Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., director of Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, who also had a police encounter recently. I don't know Professor Gates (though we have friends in common), but I am an avid fan of The Root, the online magazine he co-founded that contains some of the keenest observations on race and racial identity I have ever read.

Upon returning to his home in Cambridge, Mass., from a trip to China last week, Professor Gates found his front door jammed as he struggled to open it. A woman called 911 after noticing "a black man," who was "wedging his shoulder into the front door as to pry the door open." A policeman soon arrived on Gates' porch to investigate a suspected robbery. According to a statement released by Professor Gates, he repeatedly and unsuccessfully asked the uniformed man to show his badge. The police report characterized the returning traveler, confronted by police in his home, "as exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior," and quotes him saying, "You don't know who you're messing with." Gates was handcuffed, held about four hours, and charged with disorderly conduct. The charges were dropped Tuesday and the Cambridge police department called the matter "regrettable and unfortunate."

Gates is a PhD who has studied and written extensively on the black experience in America but told The Root's Dayo Olopade: "I can't believe that an individual policeman on the Cambridge police force would treat any African-American male this way, and I am astonished that this happened to me."

He should have asked my husband.