For Golden Valley man, Gates' arrest all too familiar
Jeff Wheeler, Star Tribune
On the morning after the symbolic beer on the White House lawn, the beer that was not promising to be a racial summit or the beginning of a new era or even a time for apologies, Al Hixon, a black man from Golden Valley, dropped his 6-foot-2, 270-pound frame into a café chair and talked about the day he was mistaken for a skinny white bank robber.
Hixon watched all last week as the country argued and debated about race and the politics of race. He had listened to pundits and Average Joes dissect the behavior of a cop trying to do the right thing, and a famous black professor indignant over a cop he thought was doing the wrong thing.
They had a beer, and moved on, even though both sides of the political spectrum seem eager to continue to leverage the incident for their own needs.
Hixon has moved on, too, but he hasn't forgotten.
When Hixon first heard that Henry Louis Gates had been mistaken for a burglar and arrested in his home after a confrontation, he knew what would come next. "I could have written the script," said Hixon, a soft-spoken man who paused frequently to say "shabbat shalom," to people at the Jewish restaurant. "It brought back a lot of memories."
So last Friday, Hixon, a business owner and family man who has won awards for community service, just wanted to talk about how people should not judge unless they have been there. In the cop's shoes. In the professor's shoes.
Hixon, at least, can empathize with Gates. In April 2005, Hixon had the misfortune of changing the oil in his car near the scene of a bank robbery. Even though dispatchers broadcast the suspect was white, Golden Valley Police officers quickly descended on Hixon. In seconds, he found himself face down on the pavement, a boot on his neck and his face filled with pepper spray.
Hixon sued. Last year, the city agreed to pay $1.15 million to him and his lawyer after an all-white jury agreed that police used excessive force on Hixon. Racial profiling was not allowed into testimony, but Hixon said race was the unspoken back story of the case, and everybody knew it.
It wasn't the first time Hixon had been stopped by police. "I grew up in the South, where that was common," he said. "If you are black in the inner city, you learn how to deal with police before you can read."
"Discrimination is very subjective," Hixon said. "What is discrimination to a black man might not be to a white man, or a black woman, or an Hispanic person. There will never be a positive discussion on race in this nation until everyone understands you cannot generalize discrimination."
Hixon said the officer who arrested Gates, James Crowley, seemed "like a very nice man. The way he saw it, he was just doing his job," Hixon said. "But I think he went too far. When you are in a position of power, you need more than a high I.Q., you need a high E.Q. -- an emotional quotient."
As for Gates, "he was probably belligerent," said Hixon. "But that is not unlawful. He was in his own home, where he felt safe. I'm sure he's thinking: 'What are you doing to me?'"
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Though he doesn't think President Obama's immediate reaction to the incident will help him politically, Hixon said the meeting between Gates and Crowley was cathartic.
"This has happened, and it will continue to happen," said Hixon. "We need to keep talking about it."
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