Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Quotable

Henry Louis Gates, a Professor at Harvard University was recently arrested inside his own home after a white neighbor allegedly called up the cops on him on suspicion that he was a thief...

From here: "If I had been white, this incident never would have happened. He would have asked at the door, "Excuse me, are you okay? Because there are two black men around here try'na rob you [laughter] and I think he also violated the rules by not giving his name and badge number, and I think he would have given that to one of my white colleagues or one of my white neighbors. So race definitely played a role. Whether he's an individual racist? I don't know-I don't know him. But I think he stereotyped me."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The area where this incident happened is a fairly liberal, upscale community. I find it difficult if not impossible to believe that this was a case of two racist, rogue cops deciding to harass another black man here. It makes a lot more sense to me that Professor Gates was tired and cranky after his long trip, and he took it out on the police officers who had been to investigate a possible burglary. If a possible suspect, black or white, gets in the face of an officer, he's going to get arrested, no matter who he has proven himself to be. This is a case of an angry man who felt inconvenienced and put upon by officers who were just doing their job, so he decided to turn it into a racial incident in order to get at them.