Following Up on the Gates Affair
Friday, July 24th, 2009 | 2:09 pm
Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a free man, but the furor over his arrest is not showing any signs of abating. While I believe the Cambridge police overstepped the bounds of good judgement when they arrested the scholar in his own home, I still find Gates’ new found awareness of racial profiling incredulous and disingenuous.
Like I said in one of my tweets, Gates’ ebony tower was dismantled by the arrest; not only was he reminded that as a black man in America he might be unfairly subjected to excessive police force, but he was also stunned to discover that his social and class status could not keep him out of handcuffs. The latter, I believe, is the true basis for much of his anger. While he has every right to rage, pretending that he suddenly cares about the plight of poor black men hemmed up in the prison system after years of avoiding the topic rings false.
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AMEN…RA!
After reading the police report and learning that his house had been broken into before, and about the arresting officer's history (his attempt to resuscitate Celtics player Reggie Lewis and his position training other officers on racial profiling), I think Gates was the one at fault here. He wouldn't have been arrested if he hadn't immediately overreacted and launched into indignant mode. I totally think this is a case of the shattered "ebony tower," as you so eloquently put it. I also think Obama should have kept his mouth shut on the issue. He wasn't there. If Gates wants to be mad at somebody, he should be mad at the neighbor who didn't recognize him and called the police in the first place.