Reading the police report, the Gates arrest appears far more about class than race. Gates, himself, made this clear by invoking his status -- "You don’t know who you’re messing with" -- and authority -- "get the chief". Its fair to say that a person of any race who laced into a police officer the way Gates apparently did, would have been similarly arrested, but that only someone of Gates' status would have had the charges quickly dissmissed.
Reading Stanley Fish's column which testifies to Gate's personal history of being subject to racism, overt and subtle, helps to understand how Gates might have been predisposed to mispercieve racism in this instance, and, as such, how he is, in some way, a genuine victim here, and not simply a clown, or worse, a class bully on a power-trip.
That said, Mr Gates is not just any longstanding victim of racism. He is, or at least is advertised as, one of America's foremost authorities on race. As such, he, more than others, ought have been able to differentiate genuine racism and the soft everyday injustices -- a man who committed no crime being arrested in his home for arguing with a Police Officer -- that Americans of all races have learnt to live with.
There are, in other words, things that a black man is subject to in America because he is black, there are things he is subject to because he is a man, and there are thing he is subject to because he is in America. It is disappointing that our national experts on race appear unable to understand these distinctions and that "having a police officer visit your home when you have been seen breaking in" and "being arrested for verbally assaulting a Police Officer" are clearly in the latter category.
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