Georgetown Professor Richard America Joins the Conversation about the Gates Arrest

My last post sparked an email exchange between me and my Georgetown University colleague,
Professor Richard F. America, Professor of the Practice, Director of the Africa Initiative and
Director of Community Reinvestment at the School of Business at Georgetown University.

I invited Professor America to write an op-ed for this space. He has special expertise as a management scholar and a keen observer of the racial dynamics of authority in the workplace. His views are below.

By
Richard F. America, Georgetown University School of Business

Prof Henry Louis Gates and Officer Crowley had an interaction that became newsworthy.

Comments have been published that examine many aspects of this event. We have an opportunity to gain one other takeaway that might be beneficial far beyond police-citizen relations, or even black-white relations.

The interpersonal dynamics of all this are worth a brief notice. And they might even have been the key to what occurred.

Why they reacted as they did flows, in part, most likely, from unconscious sources. As a practical matter, we should move toward a norm of regular mental health check ups, every four years, as routine personal maintenance. We should do regular mental health checkups, just as we have regular physical and dental check

This incident, and every other such incident, whether race is a factor or not, may be more about the weaning, toilet training, and early family experiences with authority, power, and competition, than about the legal facts in the situation as it unfolded in real time in the case.

I am professor of business, not a psychologist, clinical social worker, psychiatrist or counselor. But, I have studied enough organizational behavior, and experienced enough workplace conduct, to reach a conclusion.

I have examined some aspects of black white relations and have coauthored two books on the subject, with Prof Bernard E Anderson of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. We interviewed African American managers in 1975 and again in 1994. We published two books, Moving Ahead: Black Managers in American Business, and Soul in Management : How African American Managers Thrive in the Competitive Corporate Environment. I also interviewed a sample of white managers, in the late 1990s. The interviews probed experiences in interracial professional management interactions.

One conclusion from this research on race and management is that all people who have any authority over other people, or who aspire to have such authority someday, such as medical, law and business students, should be required to go through a process of psychological counseling before they can practice their profession, whatever it is. This can be extended to law enforcement.

Human beings tend to "act out" a lot. Many of us have trouble identifying, processing and expressing feelings in many situations, including in professional interactions.

Social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists are all required to go through some form of process that increases their understanding and awareness of themselves and others, and improves their ability to help clients and patients, and to manage themselves and their relations with others.

It turns out that there is a lot of unconscious material, in most of us, that can emerge under pressure or provocation, and create conflict that might be avoidable, if we had fuller understanding of ourselves.

And much of that misdirected anger, fear, worry, turns into legal problems, EEO complaints, and court cases, when it is really a psycho-medical issue that could be fixed with some work on greater self awareness.

The incident also surfaces systemic racism, and the broad problem of unjust enrichment, and what we need to do about that 'Big Picture' problem, that is the subtext for this incident.

Unfortunately, the National Teaching Moment, that some observers hope for, and even if it occurs, cannot be very productive because we do not yet have a framework for having a meaningful conversation on race. The necessary analytical background work on our economic history, and its current policy implications, has not been done. Nor have we completed the personal psychological inventory required to reflect on what we learn.

When it is, we will then be able to converse in ways that can lead to compensatory justice, and to behavior changes by whites and blacks, that will solve the race problem.

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Comments

[wattnot]

Oh Yeah? And who, do you suggest, should perform these regular mental health checkups? Psychiatrists, perhaps? That special group of medical professionals who differ from their patients only in the respect that some of the patients get better. Psychologists, perhaps? 96% of whom go into that field because of real or imagined sexual trauma in infancy. Counsellors, perhaps? Why not use financial advisors for the task- they have hardly ever been wrong about anything.

And the results? Should they be posted on the Web? I mean, if you're going to have these checkups, you might as well add them toy our CV.

[AE50]

One should ponder a moment, let us say two white men were seen apparently breaking into a house. The police are called about a possible break in. When, the police arrived a white person was found inside. That person at first refused to give proof he lived there, then did but kept verbally berating the police. In most precincts this person would probably be arrested also. The difference is this would not be news as the person is not some one of importance, or know important people. It does not matter a persons race it is common sense when dealing with police not to verbally berate them, this is seen as an attack.

[MikeLicht]

This is not "Racial Profiling;" it is "Contempt of Cop," which has clear race and class bias. If they are wise, Dr. Gates and Sgt. Crowley will do a joint study of the “Contempt of Cop” issue. Sgt. Crowley (who taught a class on racial profiling at the Lowell Police Academy) could instruct officers how to avoid this abuse of discretionary police powers of arrest.