Racial Profiling or not?

[hkellick]

There's been a very interesting event happening in Boston this last week regarding a White Police Office arresting an elderly African American scholar in his own home.

Details seem to still be emerging from the case but what we knew more or less immediately was the following: Henry Louis Gates Jr. came home one day from overseas and found out he could not find his keys. So he and his driver, an African, decided to break into his own house.
Somehow the police got involved and handcuffs came out. Gates acknowledges he got upset at the officer and ended up in Jail.

Gates is screaming Racial Profiling. The nation, as a whole, seems to be backing him up.

Putting aside the color of Gates's skin.. my question is simply: what should the Police Officer have done if he arrived at a house to see ANY man trying to break into it?

I think the only real trick here.. the potentially damning part is simply the question of how Gates was approached. If the Police Officer saw a black man breaking into a house and brought out the cuffs immediately, then I agree it's racial profiling.

If the police officer approached him, as he says he did trying to find out what was going on and Gates' doesn't respond helpfully and THEN the cuffs came out.. I'd say it's maybe not so cut and dry. I can understand how a number of misunderstandings could have occurred and we got to where we are.

I'd really love to see the two stories.. Gates' story and the officers story put side by side and examined. I'm sure it'd be very "Rashomon" but I think it would at least give us a clearer picture of what really happened.

Comments

[phoenixsong]

My understanding is that a neighbor called the police, and that Gates was already in his home and provided ID and other proof that it was indeed his home when the police arrived. I don't know if anyone outside the situation knows if things started escalating before or after he provided ID, but even with the ID, he was still cuffed and taken away. THAT is the part that has everyone yelling "racial profiling."

I hadn't heard about another person being with him when Gates broke into his house.

On the one side, you have police officers who arrested a black man in his own home in a well-to-do Cambridge, MA neighborhood. On the other hand, you have someone who is known for having a somewhat...abbrasive personality, who at some point during the incident started yelling "you don't know who you're dealing with!" at police officers trying to do their job. I don't know if we'll ever know for certain who crossed the line first; I'm inclined to say both parties screwed up and should apologize.

ETA: Well, that was my opinion before I read the WP article you linked to. I'm now even more inclined to think that it was Gates, not the officers, who overreacted -- especially since the charge was "disorderly conduct," not "breaking and entering."

[hkellick]

The article was interesting. I was waiting to withhold judgment until we heard from the Police Officer because some of the statements Gates' made did seem abrasive and not a little bit divisive.

Now that I read that article.. I'm inclined to agree that this isn't really Racial Profiling so much as an ugly misunderstanding.