Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin
Both stories are plausible. If you get loud and obnoxious while conversing with a police officer, you are lucky to be walking away from that encounter not in handcuffs. I don't care what race you are. Being an Harvard professor doesn't make you special in that respect either.
Even if you believe Gates' account, both men were acting like asses and one of those men had a badge and handcuffs. At the end of the day, that trumps an Harvard ID card.
|
This was my initial response to the story. Gates was understandably angry and probably felt a "get the hell outta my house...do you know who the hell I am" attitude would fly with the officers.
Maybe it would have if he were white as long as he, as a white man, didn't put his hands on the officers. Who knows. I've seen white males with professional clout be extremely obnoxious with police officers, only for the officers to give them a pass because they are "somebody" in the community. It doesn't always happen but people are looking at patterns of behavior and not what happens 100% of the time.
As for the neighbor not recognizing him, that happens. I don't know the climate of that neighborhood and who the neighbor is. It is often the case that an unrecognizable Black male neighbor in a predominantly white neighborhood is more likely to be looked at suspiciously than an unrecognizable white male neighbor based on people's images of criminality. Again, this is based on patterns of behavior and not what happens 100% of the time.
As for racism, this is yet another incident that is way too introductory textbook for me to automatically call it racism. Either way, the actions of the neighbor and the actions of the officers can't necessarily be lumped together.