The 'unfathomable' arrest of a black scholar

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ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Boris Kodjoe owns a mansion in Atlanta. But when he goes to answer his door, the black actor knows what it's like to be an outcast.
"When I'm opening the door of my own house, someone will ask me where the man of the house is, implying that I'm staff," said Kodjoe, best known for starring in Showtime's "Soul Food."
It's a feeling some African-Americans say is all too common, even to this day in America: No matter your status or prominence in society, you're still typecast. That's why the recent arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation's most prominent African-American scholars, has stirred outrage and debate.
Jelani Cobb, an author and professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, says it's troubling on many levels when "one of the most recognizable African-Americans in the country can be arrested in his own home and have to justify being in his own home."
"It's really kind of unfathomable," Cobb said. "If it can happen to him, yeah, it can happen to any of us."
That's a sentiment echoed by Jimi Izrael. "If a mild-mannered, bespectacled Ivy League professor who walks with a cane can be pulled from his own home and arrested on a minor charge, the rest of us don't stand a chance," Izrael wrote Tuesday on The Root, an online magazine with commentary from a variety of black perspectives that's co-founded by Gates.
"We all fit a description. We are all suspects."
In an interview with The Root, Gates said he was outraged by the incident and hopes to use the experience as a teaching tool, including a possible PBS special on racial profiling.
"I can't believe that an individual policeman on the Cambridge police force would treat any African-American male this way, and I am astonished that this happened to me; and more importantly I'm astonished that it could happen to any citizen of the United States, no matter what their race," Gates said. "And I'm deeply resolved to do and say the right things so that this cannot happen again."
Gates was arrested last Thursday in broad daylight at his Cambridge, Massachusetts, home for disorderly conduct -- what the arresting officer described as "loud and tumultuous behavior in a public space." The charge was dropped Tuesday on the recommendation of police, and the city of Cambridge issued a statement calling the incident "regrettable and unfortunate."
Gates had just returned from a trip to China when a police officer responded to a call about a potential break-in at his home that was phoned in by a white woman. According to the police report, Gates was in the foyer when the officer arrived.
The officer asked Gates to "step out onto the porch and speak with me," the report says. "[Gates] replied, 'No, I will not.' He then demanded to know who I was. I told him that I was 'Sgt. Crowley from the Cambridge Police' and that I was 'investigating a report of a break in progress' at the residence.
"While I was making this statement, Gates opened the front door and exclaimed, 'Why, because I'm a black man in America?' "
According to the report, Gates initially refused to show the officer his identification, instead asking for the officer's ID. But Gates eventually did show the officer his identification that included his home address.
"The police report says I was engaged in loud and tumultuous behavior. That's a joke," Gates told The Root. "It escalated as follows: I kept saying to him, 'What is your name, and what is your badge number?' and he refused to respond. I asked him three times, and he refused to respond. And then I said, 'You're not responding because I'm a black man, and you're a white officer.'"
Known as Skip by friends and colleagues, Gates is the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard University, and an acclaimed PBS documentarian.
While Gates' arrest lit up talk radio and blogs, it prompted others to defend the police against charges of racial profiling.
"I'd be glad if somebody called the police if somebody was breaking into my house," neighbor Michael Schaffer told CNN affiliate WHDH.
For others, the incident symbolized something more. Seeing the police mugshot of Gates brought some African Americans to near tears.
Kim Coleman, a Washington radio host, cultural commentator and blogger, said she grew numb when she saw the mugshot.
"I was not prepared for that," she said. "To see one of my heroes in a mugshot was not something that I was expecting. ... It just tells me we're not in a post-racial society."
She said there's a reason why you don't hear about prominent white people arrested in their homes: "because it doesn't happen."
It's time for America to have a long overdue national conversation about race, Coleman said. "When are we going to have that," she said. "When are we really going to sit down and strip down and say, 'This is what I feel about you and this is what you feel about me. Now, how are we going to get over that?' "
Rebecca Walker, an award-winning author, said the arrest was devastating to scholars, writers, and artists "who work so hard to keep a free flow of information."
"It seems eerily ironic Mr. Gates was returning from China, where surveillance is so high and freedom of speech and ideas so curtailed," Walker said. "To see the mugshot of Skip was a blow to all of us who feel some sense of safety based on our work to try to mend all of these broken fences in America -- to make ourselves into people who refuse to be limited by race and class and gender and everything else."
"To end up, at the end of the day, treated like a criminal, unjustly stripped of our accomplishments and contributions even if only for a moment, is profoundly disturbing. We must ask ourselves what it means, and to allow ourselves to face various scenarios regarding power and freedom and how these will intersect in the coming years."
Last week, President Obama spoke at the 100th anniversary of the NAACP, saying that while minorities have made great strides "the pain of discrimination is still felt in America."
"Even as we inherit extraordinary progress that cannot be denied; even as we marvel at the courage and determination of so many plain folks -- we know that too many barriers still remain," the president said.
Kodjoe, the actor, said Obama "has affected a change in people's consciousness regarding such issues as racism and prejudice." But he said the arrest of Gates underscores that there's more work ahead.
"I think we're moving in the right direction. But no doubt, there still is a lot of work to be done," Kodjoe said. "It's not just a problem here. It's a problem worldwide. Racism is universal."
Gates said he has a newfound understanding of exactly what that means. "There's been a very important symbolic change and that is the election of Barack Obama," he told The Root. "But the only black people who truly live in a post-racial world in America all live in a very nice house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."
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Hmm.
 
Okay the first 2-3 sentences I can see what is going on I mean its Georiga ffs I mean its the south. But Cambridge up in the north? That there is just sad.
 
Never heard of this scholar before this little incident. If I saw a person I didn't know doing suspicous activity I'd call the police, my house or not. And by him not listening to the policeman's demand (ID yourself), he was asking for trouble.
 
If I saw a person drive up to a house, put a key in the door, turn the key, and then enter like a normal person would enter his home, I would not call the police. Also, the man had a right to ask the officer for his name and badge number, and an officer is obliged to do that if asked if I remember correctly, so if the officer had done so, I am sure that Henry Gates would have obliged had the officer properly responded to his request.

Also, to be honest, I'd be pissed off too if a police officer was accusing me of breaking and entering into my own home.
 
...who calls the cops on someone using a key to open the front door? Honestly? If he had a freaking baseball bat or something, sure, but the dude just comes back from vacation...

Nice to see how America's still populated by total morons. I mean, seriously. The guy looks like a normal, everyday guy. I don't imagine he's got five tattoos up his arm that say "THUGZ4LYF" and shit like that, and coming back from a vacation, I'd imagine he'd be in a T-shirt and jeans, rather than some badly-fitting tank top... Plus, with the report saying he had an "accomplice" in a car... was the car some shitty thing with the bumper falling off blasting loud rap music? He's a college professor, I'd not doubt he'd be in something a hell of a lot better (not that I know what the make and model of the car are).

Seriously, though. What idiot called this shit in? You're supposed to at least know your neighbors enough to not call the cops on them when they're trying to get into their own house.
 
If I saw a person I didn't know doing suspicous activity I'd call the police, my house or not.
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I totally agree. A black man using a key to enter a mansion -- or really, any house nicer than Section 8 -- is extremely suspicious. How dare he!!!!11
 
He didn't just waltz in after unlocking the door. His front door was jammed and he went around back while his driver tried to wedge it open. A neighbor thought it was a break-in and called the police. The police came because of the reported suspicison.

The incident began when Gates had to force his way through the front door of his home because it was jammed, his lawyer said Monday.

Cambridge police say they responded to the well-maintained two-story home near campus after a woman reported seeing "two black males with backpacks on the porch," with one "wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry."

The woman, Lucia Whalen, is the circulation and fundraising manager at Harvard Magazine, a news and alumni magazine affiliated with the school. The magazine's offices are down the street from Gates' home.
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32010985/ns/us_news-race_and_ethnicity/
 
Yeah, I've got to agree with Nicoleta01. Also, it seems like the scholar automatically assumed that it was racism (which is racism in itself), and that he provoked the police officer by saying that it was racism.
 
Well, in that case, I can somewhat understand the woman's concern to an extent (although someone who works for Harvard Magazine not knowing one of the local scholars is bad, unless she only saw them from a distance). What happened after that was inexcusable. Unless I am wrong (which I don't believe I am, but I am not exactly an expert on law), a citizen has a right to know an officer's name and badge number... mainly because there are people who do masquerade as cops and are able to prey on unsuspecting individuals. A police officer who would refuse to give these simple details could be mistaken for a fraud, to which I would not give any details to someone who I feel might be a fraud.

Provoked or not, the police officer refused to supply any sort of proof verifying that he was a valid officer of the law initially.
 
Satoshi-kun said:
Well, in that case, I can somewhat understand the woman's concern to an extent (although someone who works for Harvard Magazine not knowing one of the local scholars is bad, unless she only saw them from a distance). What happened after that was inexcusable. Unless I am wrong (which I don't believe I am, but I am not exactly an expert on law), a citizen has a right to know an officer's name and badge number... mainly because there are people who do masquerade as cops and are able to prey on unsuspecting individuals. A police officer who would refuse to give these simple details could be mistaken for a fraud, to which I would not give any details to someone who I feel might be a fraud.
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Yeah, that's true too. I think it all started with the misunderstanding of the cop thinking it was a break-in, and the scholar thinking that it was racism. It all really went bad from there.
 
Indeed. To be honest, I can understand both sides somewhat. The scholar did not know that someone had seen him trying to open the stubborn door, and probably felt that it was harassment that he was being questioned when he was in his own home. Personally, if a police officer came by without my knowing what prompted his visit, and asked me to verify that I was the person who was supposed to be in my own home, I would be annoyed. I'd be thinking "crap, I want to just sit down and watch some television after that flight and the trouble I had getting into my home after returning from the long flight!"

I can also understand the officer, he was making a visit to a home that was suspected of being broken into, which is his job. I can also understand his annoyance at his visit being accused of being racially motivated. This is where my understanding does end though. I would think that a public servant, like any employee who serves the public, would be required to be respectful to anyone who is not actually under arrest, and who is not resisting arrest. The scholar was not under any sort of arrest yet, nor was resisting any arrest since there was none to speak of yet, so he should have handled the situation as calmly as possible and if he was able to see that the scholar had no weapons on him (which we don't know if he was able to have a full view of the man, but for all intents and purposes I will say that he was able to since the door had been opened by this point and the officer did have visibility) should have complied with the scholar's reasonable request for name and badge number.

Basically, when all is over with, both did complicate the situation, but the officer was in power to keep it from becoming what it did.
 
Nicoleta01 said:
Never heard of this scholar before this little incident. If I saw a person I didn't know doing suspicous activity I'd call the police, my house or not. And by him not listening to the policeman's demand (ID yourself), he was asking for trouble.
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I just threw up a little bit in my mouth. I do not have to show my "papers" to any police officer, especially in my own home. And once the guy did show him his ID that proved he lived there, the fucker still had to charge him with something!

Cops are just a band of thieves, vandals and predators who do what they want because they have more guns then we do. The amount of people they have helped pales in comparison to the amount of lives they've destroyed.
 
Wait, automatically assuming an incident constitutes racism is...itself racist? How?

And with respect to the issue itself, if the officer was being a dick about the incident, well, he's stupid. But really we don't know enough yet to draw overarching conclusions. From what has been said so far, though, it looks like the officer got a overexcited.
 
evkl said:
Wait, automatically assuming an incident constitutes racism is...itself racist? How?
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I think about it like this: Someone like that is basically thinking something like: "I'm black. Obviously, this guy is white (not a minority). The problem I'm having with this guy is because I'm black, and he's racially motivated". I'm not saying that it's always racism (that's a reasonalbe thought process in many circumstances, especially if someone directly called you out for skin color). I just think that it's racist to automatically assume that someone else is racist, when the only reasons you have to think that are because you're a minority, and he isn't.
 
And how do you not know who your neighbors are anyway?

Wait, automatically assuming an incident constitutes racism is...itself racist? How?
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evkl, it's one of the things uppity "OMG I'M COLORBLIND!!!11" people (who are usually white, since only white people have the privilege of being colorblind) pull on anyone who calls racism on anything. They think by not talking about racism, it will make it go away, so they call people racist for daring to see something as racist.

It's like what fourth-graders say when someone farts, "He who smelt it dealt it." It's really stupid and immature.
 
Ok, a man was harrassed and arrested in his own home for absolutely no reason. Who cares what his skin color is? This is a blatant violation of the bill of rights committed by America's "finest." It wasn't the first time this has happened, and it certainly won't be the last.

Things like this are all too common in our society. Though racism is probably an issue here, it is not the biggest issue that needs to be addressed.
 
Ketsuban said:
evkl, it's one of the things uppity "OMG I'M COLORBLIND!!!11" people (who are usually white, since only white people have the privilege of being colorblind) pull on anyone who calls racism on anything. They think by not talking about racism, it will make it go away, so they call people racist for daring to see something as racist.

It's like what fourth-graders say when someone farts, "He who smelt it dealt it." It's really stupid and immature.
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Did you even bother to read my explanation of why I think it's racist? It isn't productive to this debate to just flame me and people with the same opinion as being immature. I'm just saying that when this man automatically jumped to the conclusion of racism, that he was obviously thinking "I'm black, he's white, it's racism".
 
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Black men shouldn't live in rich neighborhoods, they don't have any money anyway after paying child support on their 500 illegitimate kids.
 
Ketsuban said:
evkl, it's one of the things uppity "OMG I'M COLORBLIND!!!11" people (who are usually white, since only white people have the privilege of being colorblind) pull on anyone who calls racism on anything. They think by not talking about racism, it will make it go away, so they call people racist for daring to see something as racist.

It's like what fourth-graders say when someone farts, "He who smelt it dealt it." It's really stupid and immature.
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Yes, I have the "priviledge" of being colorblind. >.> Oh wait, I don't, I get crap from both sides of the aisle (Speaking from my life expereinces, more so from minorities than the majority). Racism goes both ways, and for assuming the cop was being racist for responding to a suspicous activity, he displays racist malice towards the cop. And quite frankly, you don't p*** off a cop and he be nice to you. Right now the details are fuzzy, so it's wait and see at this point.
 
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