Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

I, like many people, have had my interest piqued by the brouhaha surrounding the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates.  There is a ton of spin and politicking going on around and not wanting to take sides I have been watching this as a "living critique" of our culture.  What this incident defines for me is not whether we are racist or not, whether police act stupidly or not, or whether arresting someone for disorderly conduct on their own property is ethical or constitutional.  There is only one thing for certain in this mess, one problem that stands out above the quagmire: we don’t know who are neighbors are.

This incident did not happen at night.  The police report marks the initial phone call from the lady across the street as 12:44pm.  This happened in broad daylight!

Many people are justifying the right to call the police on this type of situation, but really, why were they called.  Shouldn’t you be able to recognize the person who lives across the street from you?

And later, during the verbal altercation witnessed in the police report, why is there no mention of the witness who called supporting or vouching for Dr. Gates?  Why didn’t Dr. Gates try to talk to her?  All signs point to the fact that neither Gates nor the witness really knew each other.

Not knowing the person who lives across the street from you, that’s just sad.  But that’s the state of affairs in all of America (not just the suburbs).  We have become anti-neighbor.  That’s just not a cultural fault.  We are supposed to treat everyone as a neighbor.  We as a people are failing as a culture to follow the golden rule on a daily basis in part because we are not mean, rude, belligerent, or nasty.  It’s far worse.  We are indifferent and apathetic.  We are lukewarm neighbors, ones who cannot even stop to wave or chit chat.

I might not be an all-star neighbor, but we wave, greet, or talk to one of our neighbors almost every day.  It’s only reasonable.  We know them.  We don’t help each other out much, but occasionally we do.  We’re neighbors for Pete’s sake.

The saddest part of this whole Gates ordeal is that it all could have been avoided if Gates and this woman had simply known the face of one another.  Really, think about it.  If the lady had baked a batch of cookies when Gates had moved in and said hello, or if Gates had seen her checking her mail and waved and said, "it’s a nice day today," this whole mess would have never happened.  If they had been real neighbors and not incubating denizens the complete opposite would have happened.  The lady wouldn’t have been calling the police, she would have been calling a locksmith, because that’s what neighbors do.