By Vanessa • 14 years ago

Scholar Henry Louis Gates arrested at home, racial profiling questioned


Harvard professor and editor of The Root, Henry Louis Gates Jr., was arrested in his home late last week after police came to investigate a break-in, which has resulted a call by many for an investigation into racial profiling by the Cambridge police department.
Gates entered his home on Thursday afternoon after struggling with a jammed lock upon returning home from the airport. Shortly thereafter, Cambridge police showed up at his house (due to a call from a neighbor) where he was subsequently arrested, despite him giving them his driver’s license with his address and Harvard ID card.
The officer apparently arrested Gates for disorderly conduct when he reportedly (and understandably) got pissed he was being accused of criminal behavior for being in his own home.
S. Allen Counter, a Harvard Medical School professor and colleague of Gates spoke with him on Friday, saying that Gates was “shaken” and “horrified” with the arrest. Counter is also black, and was nearly arrested in 2004 when two Harvard police officers supposedly mistook him for a robber suspect.
Pam has a good run-down of what happened, and asks very real questions to consider when thinking about Gates’ reaction to the police officers and why this is a fucked situation:

  • Would a white professor have been subject to the same suspicion by the woman who called in the report of a break-in?
  • While a white prof wouldn’t have yelled “I’m a black man in America”, say he had said something to the effect of “is there some reason you’re standing in front of my home?” and proceeded to engage angrily in the same manner. Would he be arrested?
  • Would a white prof react as strongly to the police officer’s initial inquiry since he would not be a victim of racial profiling?
  • Did Dr. Gates’s explosion of anger in his own home warrant an arrest? Is this a manifestation of the “angry black man” phenomenon, where the lower threshold of public anger by black men is seen as more threatening than it would be for a white man?
  • Was the fact that Gates threw down the “don’t you know who I am? card a mitigating factor?

Post-racial America, my ass.
Here is the police report. The Root also published a statement by Gates’ lawyer.

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