Dr. Gates makes for a good victim. He is a superstar intellectual of erudition, status and influence. Moreover, no one is accusing Dr. Gates of illegal behavior in his recent altercation with a Cambridge police officer. He was, by his account, simply too tired after a long flight to tolerate what he perceived to be racially biased policing. That such a distinguished scholar received such undignified treatment is what makes the incident newsworthy. But what makes it important is something else: good victims make good movements possible.

This nation has often needed good victims to gird our moral resolve. I am reminded particularly of Rosa Parks, who was not the NAACP’s first choice for the Montgomery bus boycott. That honor belonged to Claudette Colvin, a 15 year-old NAACP volunteer. Ms. Colvin was chosen in part because of her age and seeming innocence. However, shortly after she was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus, she became pregnant by an older, married man.

Despite being victimized by an unjust law and abused and humiliated by police officers, Ms. Colvin’s case ended quietly. Rosa Parks became an icon while Ms. Colvin, whose pregnancy meant she was no longer a good victim, was largely forgotten.

The young black and Latino men and women who routinely face the kind of treatment Professor Gates endured are largely not good victims. They are young and poor, like Claudette Colvin, and are often involved in crime. When these people are targeted for humiliating and unfair treatment, it is difficult for some of us to muster much outrage — even if the outcome is that 1 in 9 black males between the ages of 20 and 34 are incarcerated. That apathy should be our shame and not theirs.