African-American Scholar Arrested For Entering His Own Home

[chud]

Easy way to test the "no this can't be racist" hypothesis: ask yourself if a similarly situated white guy (renowned professor at prestigious university) would have been hauled down to the police station if he gave the cop lip after he showed ID and was clearly the owner of the house. The answer is no.

You're joking right? I've seen all kinds of people who mouthed off to the cops get arrested regardless of race. Cops don't like being talked back to, by anybody.

And since when is a *little lip* cause to be arrested?

It may not be right, but that's the way it is. And it's why I usually say "sir" when I get pulled over, even if I don't agree with or respect WHY I've been pulled over. I try to avoid trouble.
Getting confrontational with a cop gets you nowhere, just get a lawyer and take care of it in court. The professor should've been smart enough to know this.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

Why wasn't this homeowner tazed then beaten?

This just doesn't make any sense at all.

[internalenthusiast]

Internalenthusiast: Perhaps my sense of humor is misfiring. I would maintain the Harvard faculty is as well supplied with nutty professor types as any you will find.

One might find in this some reason to deescalate the hot rhetoric that has, in some quarters, surrounded this really very minor episode. I don't know Gates or much about him, so my reaction to what I have read about the matter owes nothing to the particular man involved, and everything to my general sense of amusement at the hothouse flower tendency of many academics to take themselves far too seriously--at any rate, more seriously than I do.

thanks, klonk. i appreciate your taking time to answer...

[chud]

Why wasn't this homeowner tazed then beaten?

This just doesn't make any sense at all.

I know you're just adding some levity (much appreciated, btw), but actually it's worth thinking about.
If a cop shows up at a breaking and entering call and the person inside the residence refuses to show ID while mouthing off about race, many cops would just taze first and ask questions later.
This is why it's best to just say, "I live here, and here's my ID to prove it". Going on a rant about race instead is not going to help your cause.

[Darth Rock&Roll]

If people think that race isn't a factor in a great deal of things,then perhaps they are not wholly aware of the human condition for most people.

We function in highly racist and cultural elitist circles and the smaller you make your circles, the more intolerant it becomes.

[chud]

If people think that race isn't a factor in a great deal of things,then perhaps they are not wholly aware of the human condition for most people.

We function in highly racist and cultural elitist circles and the smaller you make your circles, the more intolerant it becomes.

I'm not saying race isn't still a factor these days in America, but it's worth noting that we did elect a black man president. Just sayin'.

[zenshiite]

Why wasn't this homeowner tazed then beaten?

This just doesn't make any sense at all.

I know you're just adding some levity (much appreciated, btw), but actually it's worth thinking about.
If a cop shows up at a breaking and entering call and the person inside the residence refuses to show ID while mouthing off about race, many cops would just taze first and ask questions later.
This is why it's best to just say, "I live here, and here's my ID to prove it". Going on a rant about race instead is not going to help your cause.

I'm beginning to think you have a basic inability at reading comprehension here Chud. You keep coming back to this fantastical notion that Gates didn't show his ID and in fact, refused to do so upon request. According to Gates' testimony the only thing he refused to do was step out onto the porch of his home when the police officer's introduction into the situation was to immediately ask him to step out onto the porch. When he was asked for identification he then politely closed the front door to proceed to his kitchen to retrieve his identification, which he then presented to the officer.

It wasn't until after he'd shown his ID, was lured onto the porch and then arrested by the initial officer and 5 or 6 additional officers, according to his statement, that he said anything about race being a factor.

[Bill]

re: lured onto the porch.
I once knew a Hawthorne P.D. reserve officer and he told me a story about another officer who encountered a belligerent drunk husband while on a domestic violence call. He asked the husband to step outside onto the houses porch. Once outside the officer arrested the husband on the charge of public intoxication. He couldn't do shit about the guy talking trash to him inside the house so he lured him outside just in order to arrest him.

[Steve James]

Well, it wasn't about genes, it was about sociology and psychology. Yeah, it's easy to say (and exactly what I do say) that just go along with the man. If a cop yells "Stop", just don't run. In my community, that was a self-defense mechanism. It's very rational, and I've told my sons they should act that way.

That doesn't mean it doesn't piss people off; and telling them that they should just get over it just makes it worse. That's the thing. This whole "race card" justification is kind of sick, actually. In this case, there's no claim of assault or threatening actions, just the claim that he pulled the race card, meaning that he claimed he was being treated the way he was because he was black. All he wanted was some politeness and an apology.

As been said before, and before, and before and affirmed by the police and Gates, he was arrested AFTER he showed his id. If he took a long dump before he produced it, so what? At that point, an apology was due. Sure, "it's my job" could have been part of the sentence. But, because of the peculiarity of American society, some people just don't want him to apologize. That would be a loss of face and an admission of wrongdoing.

The victim, in this case, becomes the policeman; and he's considered just one of the victims of "race card pulling." The perpertrator, in this case, being ... the black guy as usual. If he hadn't been black, he wouldn't have pulled the race card and wouldn't have landed in jail. Don't you know how many fricking PBS, CNN and FOX tv specials we're going to have to watch now? All he had to do was say "Sorry," then everybody could laugh at the mistake. But noooo, the bad man called him a name and had to be arrested, and we'll all have to suffer for it. If he'd even silently left, the report could be attributed to the mis-perceptions of some overly sensitive lunatic academic. Instead, it will become a litmus test that people will be forced to choose blue or red; instead of being relegated to an unfortunate error, like the senate candidate who used the n-word twice.

[Bär]

Easy way to test the "no this can't be racist" hypothesis: ask yourself if a similarly situated white guy (renowned professor at prestigious university) would have been hauled down to the police station if he gave the cop lip after he showed ID and was clearly the owner of the house. The answer is no.

You're joking right? I've seen all kinds of people who mouthed off to the cops get arrested regardless of race. Cops don't like being talked back to, by anybody.

And since when is a *little lip* cause to be arrested?

It may not be right, but that's the way it is. And it's why I usually say "sir" when I get pulled over, even if I don't agree with or respect WHY I've been pulled over. I try to avoid trouble.
Getting confrontational with a cop gets you nowhere, just get a lawyer and take care of it in court. The professor should've been smart enough to know this.

No I wasn't. And this wasn't a traffic stop. From the reports given, he didn't swear even...that's what I meant by "a little lip" because it wasn't even close to what kind of sass would get you hauled away, from all reports. The matter had been cleared & he proved he was the homeowner/resident, and *then* the testicle-free power tripping cop hauled off the bad black man who dared speak more than "yes sir no sir" to a white cop.

Just like most US cops, Boston cops are complete racist bastards who can't size a person up beyond the color of his or her skin...it's plainly obvious that Dr. Gates is not a career criminal or a threat the second he opens his mouth. Apparently being black/brown/anything other than bluish white is still tantamount to being a criminal. To deny that or apologize for these kind of police state abuses is what's really galling. The "that's the way it is" attitude indirectly/implicitly supports the racist & jackbooted thugs we have as cops here.

“In some ways this is every black man’s nightmare and a reality for many black men," (Mass. Gov.) Patrick told a crush of reporters at an impromptu press conference in a hallway at the State House. "And as you understand the sequence of events -- if I understand the sequence of events because, remember I wasn’t there and the only understanding I have is from what I’ve read -- I guess I would say you ought to be able to raise your voice in your own house without risk of arrest.”

[chud]

I'm beginning to think you have a basic inability at reading comprehension here Chud. You keep coming back to this fantastical notion that Gates didn't show his ID and in fact, refused to do so upon request. According to Gates' testimony the only thing he refused to do was step out onto the porch of his home when the police officer's introduction into the situation was to immediately ask him to step out onto the porch. When he was asked for identification he then politely closed the front door to proceed to his kitchen to retrieve his identification, which he then presented to the officer.

It wasn't until after he'd shown his ID, was lured onto the porch and then arrested by the initial officer and 5 or 6 additional officers, according to his statement, that he said anything about race being a factor.

I think that the reverse is true, your account of the incident does not match up at all with what I have been reading on all the major news sites.

[klonk]

The police report: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/ye ... ates1.html

[Steve James]

Then, he didn't arrest Gates because the neighbors were staring. Ok, it was a disturbance of the peace. Too bad the charges were dropped; it would have made better tv than what will come.

[Interloper]

Here's another example: in another thread that we had here on RSF about an article on Goldman Sachs, you came into the thread and said that it was just a slam on jews, that it was just "another iteration of the Great Jewish World-Domination Conspiracy Theory". No one had said the word "Jew" in that thread, you just came in and made it an issue (when it was not one). See how the victim mentality actually causes that which it most fears?

chud,
My comment in that thread was out of context; I'd not meant to refer to the actual article or author themselves, but to the bruhaha that article would trigger in the anti-Semitic world. Just as Bernie Madoff's indictment spurred a huge buzz in all quarters of the anti-Semitic world about Jews taking over all the finances and robbing the innocent of billions, the article about Goldman Sachs sparked a similar avalanche of Jewish Conspiracy buzz across the Internet. You don't have to say "Jew" in the article or thread; just the name, "Goldman Sachs" says "Jew." It's a Jewish-founded -- named for two Jewish founders -- and Jewish run firm (6 of the 9 executive staff are Jews), with many Jewish employees, and is -whether it wants to be or not - in the sights of Jewish Conspiracy believers as one of the proofs of the evilness of Jews.

Here's a report from last fall regarding the financial crisis vis-a-vis Jews:
http://www.adl.org/main_internet/Anti-S ... sHeading_2

Hey - just Google "Goldman Sachs" and "Jews" or "Jewish" and see what comes up. Do same with "Bernard (or Bernie) Madoff" and "Jews".

Taibbi himself might not have been thinking about that when he wrote the piece, but trust me, the implications do not slip beneath the radar for many who read the article and used it to further fan their flames of bigotry.

It's not paranoia, it's just that people are out to get me.

[chud]

Interesting, I didn't realize that so many people latched on to it as a Jewish thing, I never thought of Jewish people when I read that article about Goldman Sachs.
It's unfortunate that people do that, because there is a legitimate discussion that needs to occur about what GS did, but if it's obscured by anti-semitism than the discussion never gets to occur.