The amazing thing about Paramus is that the Route 17 shopping corridor contains anything you would ever want in life, except if you’re wanting it on a Sunday. Everything except food is closed on Sundays due to Bergen County’s “blue laws,” pretty much the only ones left in the nation. The laws recently made national news because new NJ governor Chris Christie proposed ending them to help close the state’s budget gap (against some local opposition).

I’m reading some essays by the author/essayist Charles Chesnutt for a class. Chesnutt is fascinating because if you saw him today, you would immediately classify him as white without a second thought. However, by the “one-drop rule,” Chesnutt was black, and he self-identified as African-American even though he looked as white as anyone.

In his essay “What Is A White Man?”, Chesnutt writes about the laws deciding what composition of genetics made a white or black man, especially in the South: “Some day they will, perhaps, become mere curiosities of jurisprudence; the ‘black laws’ will be bracketed with the ‘blue laws,’ and will be at best but landmarks by which to measure the progress of the nation. But to-day these laws are in active operation, and they are, therefore, worthy of attention; for every good citizen ought to know the law, and, if possible, to respect it; and if not worthy of respect, it should be changed by the authority which enacted it.”

Isn’t it fascinating that Chesnutt wrote in 1889 as if blue laws were a quaint relic of ancient history, and yet, Bergen County is still clinging to them 120 years later?

The upside, of course, is that at least America has left behind the hideous practice of the government deciding what race we each are (and therefore what rights to bestow on us). The government may want you to choose a race for your census form, but you can self-identify as anything. Sometimes rather than focusing on how bad our current government is, it’s nice to reflect on how bad some things used to be and how in many ways, government has improved as time goes on. After all, that’s what every libertarian hopes for, right?

But this photo tells a different story.

If anyone racially profiled, it was the Harvard professor’s neighbor, who apparently called police and reported two black men breaking into Gates’ house. This is another lesson in why it’s important to get to know your neighbors!

The neighbor may have not called in the cops if Gates and his driver were white, but she/he may very well have still done so. Let’s imagine a different scenario: a robbery had taken place at Gates’ house, and the neighbor comes forward to say she saw it occurring but had figured the person breaking in was the owner locked out; I can imagine how she would have been ridiculed for thinking such a thing.

So it’s no surprise that if the neighbor didn’t know Gates lived there, she might have thought the men breaking down the front door were breaking into the house. This is true whether they were white or black.

So just the neighbor calling the police wasn’t inherently racist. I have relatives who always forget their keys, yet they’ve never had to break the door down to get in; they call someone who has a key or they find a hidden one. I’ve never seen a person breaking their own door down, have you?

Now we have the police. Depending on whose story you believe, the police officer was rude to Gates in his own house OR Gates refused to show identification to prove that he owned the house while accusing the officer (loudly) of being a racist. According to a third party, Barack Obama, the police officer “acted stupidly.” And yes, that was more of a detailed answer than he’s ever given on health reform.

But an aspect of this that hasn’t been reported in the media is that one of the officers that arrested Gates was black. You can see in this picture that as Henry Louis Gates is being led from his home in handcuffs, one of the officers standing in front of him is black (Gates is biracial himself, just as Obama is).

Gates hasn’t mentioned this at all, the media hasn’t mentioned it beyond publishing this picture. Isn’t that an important fact to get the whole picture of this story?