Last month Henry Louis Gates Jr., a famous academic, author, and professor at Harvard university, was locked out of his home. He made efforts to try to get into his home and when neighbors heard the commotions, they called the police. When police arrived, they questioned whether the home was actually Gates' and what happened next is a source of much debate; the police claim Gates raised his voice and offended the officer and was therefore arrested. Gates, however, claim that he showed the officer proof that it was his home and that the officer refused to give Gates his name and badge number.
My opinion is that the officer should have checked in on the situation more, maybe on his computer, and see whether Gates was telling the truth about it being his house.
I think this is a form of discrimination because he is a black man in a rich white neighborhood and the assumption was that he had to be committing a crime, however, it could be that anyone making a lot of noise late at night in this neighborhood would have the cops called on them and we just don't know what exactly happened before he was arrested.
No matter what happened, if I was in Henry Gates' shoes, I would be upset that despite all of my success and hard work I would be treated like a criminal because of my skin color.
Monday, August 3, 2009
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3 comments:
Hey Shawn,
Another great piece!
This thing with Dr. Gates has really become a soap-opera miniseries!
You probably heard that President Obama invited Dr. Gates and the Sergeant who arrested him to the White House for beer last week. He wanted to open up a candid dialogue between the men. The specific details of the conversation are confidential -- what do you think they said to each other? Do you think that this was a good idea, or should the President have taken a different approach?
Ms. Naomi
This is a great article, Shawn. I think this incident is really interesting.
I think that Dr. Gates was justified in being angry, and I don't think that he was wrong about this being what happens to black men in America. Maybe he was rude to the police officer, who at that point had not done anything wrong. Still- when did it become illegal to be rude? Should it be?
Another question- how often do you see the cops being respectful to people? How often do you see them be disrespectful? If you were the police chief, what would you say to your police officers about how they should handle situations like the one with Dr. Gates?
I do agree that the police should have checked into the situation further before acting.I am shure there was some way to check his ID.
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