Many people have said what has needed to be said about the incident, Margery Eagan does it best (also The Distributed Republic brings up a good point), but one thing has gone unsaid, which I think bears saying:

Apparently, Henry Louis Gates Jr doesn’t know his neighbors. Or put differently, his neighbors don’t know him.

Isn’t that incredible? His own neighbor, upon seeing him attempting to enter his house, didn’t offer to call him a locksmith or something, or offer his house as a place to hang out while he waited for family to come home and open the house. No, they called the police, because they didn’t recognize who it was that lived on their street.

Living in a town that borders Cambridge, I find this not at all surprising. In many ways, Cambridge is the epitome of modern, professional America. People don’t know each other one iota, are afraid to speak to each other directly, preferring to speak out loud past each other in a passive aggressive manner as if to drop hints. All the while everyone has covered their lawns and cars with Obama paraphernalia, voting to expand the government to help the community at every chance they get, a community that in reality they aren’t really a part of, one that arguably doesn’t even exist.

I feel sorry for Gates. Not because he got arrested or locked out of his house. But because he has no community.

UPDATE: Good roundup of the issues involved here (via balko).