Posted by misterearl:

Styling and Profiling

"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." - NYT

sebstar - check it out. something that hasn't been discussed. Henry Louis Gates is 58 years old, wears glasses, greying, walks with a limp, is only 5'7 and dresses fairly respectably.

58, greying and robbing a house?

What's wrong with this picture?

Posted by RemBee76:

Posted by bitty41:
Police Officers are supposed and should be held to a higher standard then the average joe walking down the street.

Very true, and this is a fun discussion here. I've enjoyed catching up on it. One question...why are you guys having it?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32092715/ns/us_news-race_and_ethnicity/

Crowley is a police academy expert on understanding racial profiling and has taught a class on the subject for five years at the Lowell Police Academy after being hand-picked for the job by former police Commissioner Ronny Watson, who is black, said Academy Director Thomas Fleming.

Nothing in this incident makes me think that the very same thing wouldn't have happened had Dr. Gates been a white man. We are, after all, faulting the officer here for not just walking away from an irate citizen, not for racial profiling. Would the whole country be talking about this if this guy was a white law professor?

So who here are the racists?

Okay then the cop is just a idiot and I don't need a Criminal Degree to know that the chances of an elderly man with physical limitations burglarizing is pretty slim.


I'm going to have to disagree with you on the whether Gates would have been treated any differently if he was white. I firmly believe that if Gates had been white the the neighbor would have never called the cops in the first place, and the cops would have automatically assumed that he was the resident and not a burglar.

Posted by RemBee76:

Posted by bitty41:
I firmly believe that if Gates had been white the the neighbor would have never called the cops in the first place, and the cops would have automatically assumed that he was the resident and not a burglar.

But then, if its on the neighbor (which is debatable...he/she knows their neighbor is away and sees two dudes slamming their shoulders against the front door) why are we talking about the cop?

You don't really think a cop answering a breaking-and-entering call wouldn't have bothered to check ID of anyone? So no burglars are elderly, or where nice clothing? And the only person who might break into someone else’s home would be a burglar (not, say, an ex-boyfriend, or a spurned colleague, or a drunken idiot)?

Again...who here is profiling?

Posted by RemBee76:

Posted by bitty41:
Police Officers are supposed and should be held to a higher standard then the average joe walking down the street.

Very true, and this is a fun discussion here. I've enjoyed catching up on it. One question...why are you guys having it?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32092715/ns/us_news-race_and_ethnicity/

Crowley is a police academy expert on understanding racial profiling and has taught a class on the subject for five years at the Lowell Police Academy after being hand-picked for the job by former police Commissioner Ronny Watson, who is black, said Academy Director Thomas Fleming.

Posted by sebstar:
Bottom line, racism isn't always an intentional, burning hatred of other races...it's way more complicated than that.

Do not see intension behind other people mistakes

Posted by sebstar:

Posted by RemBee76:

Posted by sebstar:
But I dont think the relationship between police departments and Black citizens which have lead to false arrests, abuse, brutal beatings, and even death has been coincidental or unfortunate happenstance.

Right you are Seb, couldn't agree more.

My point is only that it is problematic when it’s somehow necessary to point that out when there is zero reason to think the arrest was racially motivated.

It’s even more problematic when our president calls out the Cambridge Police department when he himself admitted that he didn't have all the facts, and someone here says "right on, finally our president is acting like a black man."

Practice the racial transcendence you preach. Simple and plain.

I was half joking about Obama which stems from the fact that he is so consistently race neutral in every situation. This was all about him sticking up for a friend, not tackling racial injustice.

I think this situation is less about Gates and is part of a broader social narrative and that's the way cops view Blacks. If it were a white Harvard professor and the cop discovered he was simply an elderly man who was simply trying to enter his residence after a long trip from China, the day does not end with the cop arresting him in his own home. He would have accepted that the man was doing nothing wrong, was plenty agitated for good reason, and he would have left the residence. He would have showed Gates respect.

To me, by and large that respect for Blacks is absent among many cops. As soon as Gates started mouthing off, the officer saw an opportunity to put Gates in his place. For Gates, a very distinguished man all that meant was an inconvenient arrest. For Blacks who have considerably less stature, putting them "in their place" could have deadly repercussions. Just my perspective and the perspective that no doubt fueled Gates that day once the officer began showing him blatant disrespect in his own home.