Henry Louis Gates Jr and you

"We don't get very far because we hear what we want to and we don't hear what we don't want to. And we simply make up the rest."

Delores Jones Brown, director of The Center for Race, Crime, and Justice at John Jay College

In discussing on Morning Edition why the debate over the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr and the subsequent furor that has lead all the way to the White House, Dr Jones Brown summed up my thoughts perfectly.

I wasn't there.

You weren't there.

President Obama wasn't there.

For any of us to say whether Gates or the officer on the scene acted incorrectly reveals more about our preconceived notions of the situation than it does about the situation itself.

Can we please just move on?