Another View of the Gates/Crowley/Obama Imbroglio

The following appeared in the current issue of the MV Times. It was written by Peg Regan, the former principal of the local high school.

Skip Gates is my neighbor. He doesn't live next door or even on the same street, but anywhere I see him on the Island, I know him just the same. I see him at Slice of Life having lunch. I see him politely stopping his car on State Road, letting the backed up vehicles on Edgartown-Tisbury Road turn. I see him vacationing with his children and his wife. I've watched how he respectfully observes the crosswalks in OB that give hundreds of pedestrians the right of way. He's patient when waiting for the boat just like the rest of us. He even opens his house in the summer for Vineyarders of all backgrounds to share in the publications and achievements of his colleagues.

So what surprised me most about the arrest of Dr. Gates in Cambridge in his own house and neighborhood on Ware Street is that those year-round neighbors who, living within throwing distance of Harvard University, do not know who he is.

Perhaps people in Cambridge do not watch PBS or Oprah or read the New York Times editorials or the Boston Globe. Maybe they don't subscribe to the New Yorker or follow any of the published works of this pre-eminent scholar. Those of us who see him two months a year at most may, in fact, know him better than those who have lived near him on his beautiful tree-lined street. What one person on Ware Street has resurrected is a primal fear that any person, but especially a man of color, can still be cuffed, fingerprinted, and removed from his home by his own neighbor.

It reminds me of another neighborhood a few years ago where I was carrying a heavy tray into my house. As the hinged door sprung shut, my neighbor on the other side of the fence heard breaking glass and yelled, "What's going on over there?"

"I broke my door," I said. "It's just me being clumsy."

He recognized my voice and came over to help clean up. No police were called. But then again he knew me. He recognized my face and my voice. Not because I'm famous, but because he knew my name. Neighborliness means knowing your neighbors, checking next door when their mail piles up, returning packages that mistakenly get delivered to your house instead of theirs, and watching over each other's pets and plants; but no neighbor I ever knew called the police when I returned from a trip and couldn't unlock my door.

The inauguration of President Barack Obama signaled a hope in this country that suddenly we knew each other. That we would suddenly begin recognizing one another on the street and say, "Hey."

The arrest of Skip Gates has set that hope back a bit by offering help as a way of life for everyone in America - not just for those of us lucky enough to name one another.