Skip has fallen victim to the Ivy League Effect. Check out his articles — you can definitely go to the Root — the Web site he is editor in chief of — if you want to see a repository for the whole masturbatory display. He all but says, “Do I look like that type of (black) person? I was wearing a blazer and a polo shirt!” Gates is Ivy League pissed with a dash of black anger. Not the other way around. Is this to say the police weren’t in the wrong? Hardly. As a person who is familiar with the Cambridge/Boston P.D., I can say that the prospect of some procedural malfeasance on their part is entirely believable, if not an abject certainty.

But I’m also sure the good doctor was talking some shit. The Ivy League Effect, when it’s potent, wouldn’t allow otherwise. It made Gates forget that, no matter what, even when you’re right, you don’t talk shit to the police. And that’s not a matter of manhood or pride; it’s a question of survival. Why? Because you’re black before you’re a Harvard professor. Because, in an extreme case, you can’t tell your side of the story if you get shot reaching for your ID. As a black man and a Harvard professor, Gates’ thought process should have been: “Wow. I am so thoroughly pissed right now. When this current situation is resolved and I am out of harm’s way, I’m going down to the station and I’m going to use my considerable influence to make heads roll. But right now, I need to be the smart one, remember all the details and not give him any reason to escalate this situation.” That’s what many of my colleagues have done, guns drawn on them at night in the middle of campus by the police. They didn’t get loud; they got smart. They defused the situation, then got pissed and did something about it. And, I assure you, they did so with much less juice than Dr. Gates.

I remember when I heard about the story, I couldn’t help thinking: Wow, that Ivy League Effect has washed out his healthy fear of the police. Yikes.