I have to admit, I cannot side with Gates on this issue. I feel a man of his stature should not be pulled down (no matter what) into the gutter of a racial confrontation. Racism is at root a very low form of thinking (or sense-making), and any disengagement with it is precisely what the black man/woman of substance wants. This is the meaning of an education; it's supposed to liberate you from this crude engagement, which in itself is a type of enslavement. If being black is an essential constituting element of your personality, that is a bad thing. One should strive to be less black. Why? Because being black is nothing but being identified as such by whites. It is not your identification (being black). The other designates this for you, and you recognize yourself in this designation. You are not yourself; you are this other because the other says you are who you are. In Africa, there are too many black people, and this results, if you are black, in the forgetting of your blackness (indeed, in Andre Gide's book on the black, black country of Congo, a white man forgets he is white and finds whiteness to be strange). When all are black, no one is identifying you as black. Other characteristics rise to the surface—class, tribe, physical disabilities.

From comment to this post:

Dr. Gates, the Harvard Professor whom I have had the pleasure to meet while at Harvard, is not the arrogant individual that the previous poster hypothesizes about. Dr. “Skip” Gates walks with a limp because of a medical condition...
In Africa, we would see this limp and be oblivious too the color. Because that is not the case in the American context, I wonder how much of this real disorder of the foot has translated into a terrific sensitivity on the surface of the flesh. A famous professor fighting with an unknown cop about the color of skin? How much of this has to do with that limp?