You know when you arrive home, whether it be after school or work, planning to rest your tired feet on your favorite ottoman, order in the extra cheese pizza you’d been psyching yourself up to eat all day and watch reruns of “Law & Order: SVU” as your parents or roommates work overtime, thankfully leaving you alone? And as you reach the front step of your house, already tasting the perfectly melted cheese and the slightly crunchy crust, you realize you locked your keys inside and there’s only one way in: the back door.
    This is similar to what happened to noted Harvard scholar, Henry Louis Gates Jr., last week. After returning home from vacation, Gates arrived at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts unable to open his front door. Figuring his best option would be to go through the back, he did just that, only to be arrested minutes later by an officer who thought he was breaking into his own home. Yet, what’s more perplexing than the possible racial profiling of the arrest is the person who made the phone call to have Gates arrested: his neighbor.Â
    In a society where we often have these picture-perfect, ideal neighbor relationships–where your neighbor is supposed to be the person who’ll tell you if someone has been snooping around your house, tampering with it, or breaking into it–how is a person supposed to deal when their own neighbor doesn’t recognize them? Â
    Maybe Gates’ case is the perfect indication that our society needs to gain back some hospitality. From now on, we all have to bake pies and jello molds and have dinner parties with our neighbors, just to make sure they get familiar with us. Then, we have to offer to walk their dogs, watch their kids after school, and maybe fetch some groceries when their backs hurts, just to gain some respect. And hopefully then, and only then, will they not accuse you–an owner of the house–of breaking in to your own home. I mean, if your neighbors turn on you, and your ID proving you own the house isn’t enough to convince the police you live there, then please, tell me what is.