Racial Profiling or not?
Jul. 24th, 2009 07:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hkellickThere'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.
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.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-07-24 03:23 pm (UTC)In this particular case I'm inclined to believe the officer. Really its a good cop (no record of any misconduct) who TEACHES the racial profiling course and is by all accounts a good instructor or the professor who is known to have a bad personality and is completely in character to have been combative to the officer. If this was a white home owner or a colored officer there and it happened exactly the same way there would be no story here. Just some home owner being an ass to the cops who were just doing their jobs.
I'll end this by saying that people engaged in racial profiling should be fired and it should not be condoned. Eventually people are going to get tired of people "crying wolf" and the real cases will be ignored and the people involved will get away with it. That's a sad thought.