Everybody Tells the Truth

It's long been one of my favorite TV episodes. It aired originally on March 3, 1973, as part of the series All in the Family. Entitled "Everybody Tells the Truth,"it bears a crucial similarity to the classic Japanese film Rashomon. The audience is presented with very different views of the same event from several eyewitnesses. In the All in the Family episode, the three truth-tellers are Archie, Mike ("The Meathead"), and Edith.

The events center around the visit to the Bunker residence of two refrigerator repairmen, one white and one black. The repairs go awry, words are exchanged, and the repairmen leave before the job is finished. Mike recalls the black repairman as a weak Uncle Tom sort whom Archie mistreats; Archie remembers him as a menacing Black Panther with a switchblade knife; and Edith presents what is meant to be the reality, that the repairman was just a normal guy going about his job.

I was reminded of this episode in the current controversy over the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates in his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. No one knows what happened except the people who were there. Unfortunately, like any of us would have done, they brought a lot of personal, societal, and cultural baggage along with them into the encounter. The participants themselves may yet unite around a common narrative of events, but for the time being they're presenting contradictory accounts. I think it would behoove us to show restraint in light of the uncertainty and the lack of any good reason for us outsiders to speculate. It may be hard if you've had bad experiences with the police before, or if your house has been burgled. You want to line the events up with a paradigm your mind already has waiting for them.

Both sides are, in one sense each, absolutely right. How you can be arrested in your own house for just speaking some words is beyond my imagination, at least in a free society. On the other hand, we must all reckon with the possibility one day that we will run into the police as they are answering such a burglary call in our neighborhood or looking for a car that matches the description of the one we're driving (I remember all the poor owners of white vans in the D.C. area in the fall of 2002). When I was 16 I was pulled over doing my early morning paper route (about 3:00 a.m.) because the hospital in my hometown had just been robbed by people stealing narcotics. Any car moving at that hour was going to be stopped. It shook me up, but I don't know that I would have done anything differently if I had been a police officer at that moment.

I'm very curious how the truth is going to develop out of the current imbroglio. Until it does I'm going to keep my mouth shut and probably wince every time I hear anyone offering an uninformed opinion. That includes everyone from my Facebook friends to the president of the United States. Move along folks, nothing to see here -- yet.