It is a shame she didn’t recognize him, but it seems to me you’re making a lot of assumptions about how easy it “should have been.”
We don’t know exactly what she saw. Gates wasn’t there alone – his driver was helping him. Gates could have been largely obscured from her view by the driver. She may very well have not seen him walking, nor had a view of his face or his cane.
There’s a difference between being employed by the same large entity and being a coworker in the sense of ever actually working with, or even running into, another of that entity’s employees. She worked in fundraising, not as an academic. She may very well have never had any dealings with him nor met him personally.
Just because he’s been on TV and in films doesn’t mean everybody has seen him there. I’m a college graduate who reads the newspaper daily and I never heard of the guy before this incident, much less saw what he looked like.
Busted. But I don’t exactly shy away from admitting to that sin.
Are you saying that she’s a Harvard employee? If she’s in fundraising, surely she’s seen the Rollo (Harvard prospectus). Gates is all over that thing. When I think about “famous” Harvard faculty that are known not just by name but also by face, I’d name Gates. Maybe Peter Gomes, maybe Steven Pinker as well but he’s 1000x less recognizable. That’s if you worked/went to school/lived there, not the general public.
You’re the same person who in this thread basically called people who didn’t like your food xenophobic and racist. You replied to all others to commented, yet not to mine. Again you are alleging racism in what is - for the most part - a cut and dried situation.
I’m responding to what I’ve quoted in order.
Above, you put your personal experience with the neighborhood, going so far as to suppose people “leave their doors unlocked”. How does that have any relevance whatsoever? And how would someone struggling to open the door not receive more attention if this were the case?
In the second and third paragraphs, you allege that nearly anyone would recognize him. Really? This is a country where the majority of people don’t know the Pledge of Allegiance or could even pass a citizenship test. This is illogical argument.
You acknowledge what the police did was SOP. And yet you extend your sympathy to him for refusing to show ID. He was obviously being disorderly.
You get mistaken for being a black stereotype? I get mistaken for being a poor immigrant hispanic all the time - and often black too. I got that a lot canvassing for Obama in white, lower-middle class neighborhoods, and even middle class ones. I know the inherent distrust. And yes, it’s disheartening. Really, really disheartening. I know how you feel. But you’re wrong to blame people. Because at the end of the day, the only thing that will help is less people fitting the stereotype.
A man is struggling to enter a home, a neighbor calls the police, the outsider is confronted and becomes hostile and disorderly and is arrested.
The flipside of all of this is, wouldn’t you want someone to call the police if someone was spotted struggling to open the door? I’ve “broken into” my home many times - via a 1st story window and via picnic tables stacked on one another to get into a second story window, which involved walking along an awning and gutters. Once the police were called and I was asked to provide my home security code - but shouldn’t it have been every time?
Where did I say people that didn’t like my food are xenophobic and racist? Cite, please. Not your “interpretation.” If you want to level accusations let’s be accurate here.
What’s your argument here? I’m trying to describe the neighborhood to people who don’t live in Cambridge.
Wrong. My exact words are quoted, can’t you copy them down? I’m talking about people in the city of Cambridge.
The less said about this gem above, the better. :rolleyes: Ignoring the syntactical issues, are you referring to the part about the Pledge and/or citizenship test? Because that has no connection to what I said.
Not exactly. I don’t know what SOP is; it may well be what the officer did. And I fail to see how that comment and feeling empathy for Gates are in contradiction.
You seem pretty certain about that. He was in his house initially when the officer arrived. Can you be specific? Was he being disorderly in his own house?
With all due respect, what the fuck are you on about?
Please break this down for me. How do you propose that I, you, and any other person who has been racially profiled “stop fitting the stereotype?”
One key point missing. He entered his home, then exited to unjam the front door. There’s absolutely nothing illegal about what he did; the man is just trying to enter his house. He’s probably a little annoyed about his door being screwed up, he just returned from a long trip. I’m thinking he might not be in the most ebullient mood.
BTW, who’s this outsider you’re referring to?
You are also choosing to believe the officer’s account wholly. According to Gates, he showed his ID, and then asked the officer for his name and badge number - and the officer refused to give it to him. Might this mitigate your take on Gates being “disorderly?”
I wouldn’t be surprised if both accounts are slightly divergent from the truth, with both parties obviously agitated. The difference is, one party has training and expertise in dealing with tense situations. You might expect a higher standard from him. So what if Gates pops off to him? That’s being hostile and disorderly? Grow a thicker skin, officer, let him say what he wants, and do your job.
Let me ask you a question. You seem so certain that racism, racial bias, prejudice, whatever didn’t factor into the situation. Am I right?
What makes you so sure, and why are you so vigorously arguing this point?
As far as I can tell, tumbledown inferred/implied that in the post that RNATB replied to.
And as others and I have noted, not everyone knows what their neighbors look like. I could probably only identify one, and that’s if he’s standing outside his house working on his yard. Then again, the houses next door and across the street are now empty, as are one or two others on the block.
I probably wouldn’t be the type to call the cops on any one of them, though, as I managed to (near dawn and a half-block away) misidentify a couple cops and a police dog as a “couple” walking their dog - in a town where pretty much no one owns a German shepherd. (It took me until coming upon the bank with cop cars around it to realize why my otherwise blissfully quiet nothing-but-some-underage-drinking-happens-here town was feeling “off” that day. I really shouldn’t be allowed out of the house while half-awake.)
Never ascribe to malice what can adequately explained by [del]stupidity[/del] ignorance.
“Stupidity” doesn’t really seem appropriate here since I still don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume she wouldn’t recognize Gates. Remember, HH, your people all look alike.
I went to a major metropolitan university for five years (and I’ve lived within 15 miles and attended football games and commencements for another five) and couldn’t have picked the university president, athletic director, or any department chair from a lineup.
Well, one department chair, but he was my advisor.
Though I’m kind of having a hard time reconciling the type of person who notices something like two guys trying to force a stuck door (in my mind, that’s kind of busybody behavior) and the kind of person who is so oblivious to her neighbors that she doesn’t realize a minor celebrity like Henry Louis Gates is a neighbor (I don’t see that sort of person as being aware someone was trying to get into the door). Not that it isn’t possible that those two things are combined into one person - or that someone normally oblivious just happened to notice this one event - just that it makes the story a little more off for me.
But keep in mind that even if she could recognize Gates and identify him as the resident of the house, that doesn’t mean she saw him there in a recognizable form. She may have seen a stranger (the driver) heaving at the door, with enough of a second person visible to determine his presence but not enough of him visible to know it was Gates. Someone helping to open a door is likely to be facing away from the street, and from her point of view may have been largely obscured by the other guy – who she knew wasn’t Gates, or anyone she had seen before.
Here’s the thing: it’s ridiculous to assert that she could tell it was her neighbor there and went ahead and called the police anyway. It’s quite plausible for any number of reasons that she didn’t know it was her neighbor, and only one of those many possible reasons needs to apply. WHY she didn’t know it was her neighbor doesn’t really matter. To assert that she should have known is overlooking a lot of reality, in my view.
I never asserted that she should have known, I said that the fact that she didn’t, apparently, and even when she was standing on the sidewalk with the cops never pinged on it, is sad and hinky.
Is this sorta thing becoming more common (racially motivated and/or improper/illegal police action)?
I’ve always been a supporter/defender of the police. However, in the past year I have had a couple of incidents that leave me wondering.
A friend (who is black) will no longer come “out to the country” to visit me. I’m a white guy. The last two times she came to visit, she has been stopped by the police in what had to be a “driving while black” violation. The first time she was asked if she was lost. (she was not; she knows where I live and was driving straight to my house) Her second stop, she was told she had a brake light burned out. No ticket, just a warning. When she arrived at my home, we checked and the light was fine.
A month ago, I was pulled over for running a stop sign. It was three in the morning, and I came to a full stop. In fact, when I tried to recreate the scenario, my gf and I realized it would be impossible to see the stop sign from where the cop was sitting. It was a thinly veiled sobriety stop, and I had not been drinking. I was let go with a warning to stop at stop signs.
One of my friends had moved to Hanover to work in Dartmouth admissions and was moving INTO his apartment and someone called the cops, who came and sat across the street watching him. I was so angry but he just kind of seemed resigned about it, which sucks.
Probably less common but better known. This thread deals with an incident that made national news; it didn’t obviously involve racism, but appears to many to be an egregious example of “contempt of cop” (a policeman overreacting when not getting the respect he thinks he deserves). I wouldn’t be surprised if “contempt of cop” was a more significant factor than racism in the escalation of the Gates incident.
Good for you. I doubt I could recognize more than two people who live on my floor of the apartment building I’ve been in for over a year. In college, I frequently had people greet me **by name **and I’d have no clue who they were. Calling the cops because you see someone breaking into a house doesn’t make you a racist.
That being said… The cop was right to ask for ID, but was completely out of line with the arrest. Whether it was racially motivated or because the cop was a power-tripping asshole, I can’t say.
I locked myself out…found a window, got the screen off and crawled in (this was late evening. I made it inside and within 2 minutes a cop car with flashing lights pulled up and ran to my door.
Now, when I answered it, I realized that what I did looked suspicious and thought the officer had a good reason for being demanding and acting with suspicion so I did what he asked.
In fact, I was HAPPY…because I realized if I had been a burgler I would have been caught…so someone who broke into my house would have been busted fast. I even sent a letter to the police department thanking them for their quick response and how this reflected on their competence IMO. This is exactly what I thought about this…the police came when someone reported a possible crime. This is a GOOD thing!
Now, I am white. If I would have gotten upset…well isn’t this what a burgler would do if they were trying to buy time to excape? If I pulled the race card…well I bet this happens to cops all the time.
Now, I’m not saying (because I do not have the facts) that this is what happened to Gates…but I have enough reasonable doubt to not automatically join his side.
I think the question the Prof. Gates is asking is if all things being equal, but instead of black, the men were white, would the woman have called the police?
You have two white men, one, according to Prof Gates was well dressed and Gates himself a slight 58 year old man, dressed in a jacket with a polo shirt and grey slacks, using a cane and pushing on a door at 12 pm in the afternoon in well to do neighbourhood. Would you have called the police on them?
I don’t know, but I don’t think I would have; then again I wouldn’t have called the cops on Gates either. Now make them younger and at night, then the dynamic changes.
I think once the cop heard blacks, he went into the situation with his ‘game face’ on, and wasn’t able to withdraw. The question is and I can’t answer it, is if the woman had said white guys, would the cop have gone into the situation thinking some professor lost his keys and not some black guys breaking in and therefor handled the initital contect differently?
