"The facts agreed upon by the Cambridge Police Department’s report and the statement released by Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree, who’s serving as Gates’ counsel, are these: On Thursday, July 16, 2009, around 12:44 p.m., Gates forced open the door to his Cambridge home. Someone called 911 to report breaking and entering. An officer approached Gates’ home, when Gates was inside, and asked him to step outside. Gates declined. The officer went into Gates’ home, where Gates showed him ID that proved Gates lived there. Gates asked for officer’s name and badge number and Gates did not get them."
—
Skip’s Racist Wakeup Call (original story), The Police Report, & Gates’ Statement (via webmarc)
ah … normally I wouldn’t, but I have so much to say about this one …
- I can’t decide if what concerns me more, here, are the questions it raises about racism; or the perpetuation of the dumbification of America, and our ever increasing lack of common sense.
Even if the cop was a huge racist, shouldn’t he have known that this was all just going to come back and bite him (and police in general) in the ass. Has he not heard of the media? At best, he’s now seriously fucked up both his job and his social standing as a person. And shouldn’t have Gates — a, by all accounts, extremely intelligent man — have been able to impart that wisdom onto him?
CNN.com’s headline currently reads “Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates arrested”, which masks the ridiculousness of the story, and effectively misses the actual newsworthiness of it entirely. I’m not sure if they’re just denying the farcical aspect of it, or completely failing to even recognize it; but either way, I’m troubled.
- towards the end, this article mentions that this would be a great sketch on Chappelle’s Show — a show that’s been off the air since 2005. Since Dave took his comedy and went back home to Ohio … has there really been not a single show/entertainer that’s stepped up to fill that void? Bill Maher does a good job of cutting through the bullshit in politics/media, but he obviously can’t go as far, or bring the same racial perspective, as Dave did. As a fan of comedy — and truth in general — this might be the most heartbreaking aspect of the whole story, for me. Part of the reason Dave left was because he questioned what messages/examples he was sending out into the world, but apparently his show was the best we were ever going to do.
- I don’t know whether Gates was drunk, and overly (but understandably) confrontational; and I don’t know whether the officer was a huge racist, or just a truly intellectually bankrupt individual. What I do know is that there are going to be a lot of people (myself included) who want to talk about this, and share/shout out whatever conclusions they’ve managed to draw, via whatever medium/outlet they can gain access to. I’m hopeful that this will bring more sensibility and understanding into our society, but I’m fearful that it’s going to bring less.
Wikipedia’s ‘Gates’ entry currently reads:
Questions about racial profiling have been raised by the community, with other colleagues, such as neuroscience professor Allen Counter coming forward with similar stories of harassment by the Cambridge Police.[8][9]Questions have also been raised whether Gates was confrontational.
Wikipedia cannot answer this question.
… well, fuck.
