For someone as highly educated as I am, this was stupid.
I jacked that headline straight from the Washington Post.
I feel like, as someone concerned with the role of race and an overcrowded fucked up judicial system, that I should comment on this story. Two things: 1. I’m not going to go into the back story, so if you have no clue what I’m on about, read the Post article I linked; 2. I’m not even gonna try to write something funny. And will be a bit of a rant that will likely wander.
This situation just irritates me. Not because this man was arrested. He was arrested because he fucked up AFTER the cops showed up, not because of this bullshit weak minded racial profiling noise.
Look, you’re on a porch and your slamming into a door. You forgot your key, okay. To someone who doesn’t know you, however? Yeah, they might call the cops. Yeah, the cops might come. How often do people complain about police NOT showing up when shit goes down? Often.
Gates has come to see the incident as a modern lesson in racism and the criminal justice system.
Gates plans to use the attention and turn his intellectual heft and fame to the issue of racial profiling.
I really, really, hope this man goes out to learn what racial profiling is. Because this is NOT IT. It just isn’t. He was screaming racial profiling when they showed up at his house. Like they were in the wrong for investigating a break in and 911 call.
No, he got arrested because he barked at cops and sometimes cops like to swing their dicks unnecessarily. Look, if the cops come to your house after you just forced open a jammed door, anything that happens to you after is brought on by yourself. If Mr. Gates comes to the door and hands the officer ID, he’s GOLDEN. Nothing happens.
If you play the “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?!” or the all-purpose “Fuck the Police” card, shit like this has a tendency to happen.
For the folks who are crying racism on this one: How should the cop respond to a breaking and entering of a house by force call when the person inside refuses to cooperate? What, the cop should just take the guys word for it? “I live here.” Oh okay, you’re cool then. Come on. No cop is going to do that.
Look, it sucks the dude got arrested in his own home, but he got arrested because he apparently had a huge chip on his shoulder and thought he was better than the average person. We make fun of athletes and celebrities who get drunk and do this, so why give Gates a pass just because he’s an egotistical Professor?
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He needs a cop’s boot placed firmly up his ass.
This guy is a complete race tool! I grew up a couple of miles from Harvard University and the bottom line is that these properties(not mine of course) are extremely expensive. A 2 story house in Cambridge can run a million easy, seriously. My point is this, you want the police to respond to alleged and real break-ins. You want them there fast! This guy shoulders in his front door and is seen by someone and they do the right thing – call the police. They come fast and he refuses to show id to prove he lives there so they arrest him, as they should have. Not because he is Black, he could have been Asian or Caucasion or albino, the point is that he chose to make it racial instaed of criminal. I think the Cambridge Police did the right thing and he should apologize to them for being an ass, Harvard Prof or not. The police were trying to protect his house from unknown person(s) and they made the right call!
yeah, only real thing this shows is that the police respond quickly to 911 calls for the rich…which, uh, is nothing new in this country.
Speaking of tools, why was the Teleprompter-In-Chief commenting on this story? He said he didn’t know the facts, yet he accused the cops of acting “stupidly.” Class.
Racism is indeed alive and well in America, particularly with college professors, and the empty suit we have in the White House. Oh, and the soon to be confirmed wise latina scrunt.
I don’t know necessarily if I’d call what Gates did racist. Same with Obama. I would just consider them both opportunistic. For Gates, he saw opportunity to make a huge fuss about something, so, going by his account, it seems like he tried to get arrested when he followed up with the cops when they left. Gates brought the possibility of arrest into play so he could make headlines. If he sincerely knows what racial profiling actually is and does a good documentary/book about it, then the extra attention could do some good.
Obama saw an opportunity to throw support out there for a topic getting attention where he likely won’t get burned. I mean, I definitely don’t think this was racist and I obviously think Gates was stupid and brought this on himself, but I also think the cops acted stupidly and should have been able to shrug off Gates’ words.
The problem overall, is that if the central part of this issue is racism, nothing will really happen. Cops arrest people unnecessarily, it happens way too much. Gates is naive if he truly believes an old white man doing what he did wouldn’t have been arrested by those same cops. He would have.
But, if Obama said the cops acted stupid in a racially tinged manner, he should take a lot of heat for that. I don’t know what he said, exactly, though.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/276348
Gates made it about race, by accusing the cops of profiling.
Obama made it about race by calling the white cops stupid, then going on to tie in profiling of blacks and latinos, which the cops didn’t do, all the while stating that he didn’t know the facts. Nowhere does Obama mention Gates’ belligerence. I guess that was the fact he chose to “not know.”
Reading that link, watching the video, first thing that is obvious is that Obama fucked up the facts in an AWFUL way. He didn’t even give Gates’ side of the story, he went further than that by saying Gates was arrested after showing the ID.
That said, what he is saying about profiling of blacks and latinos, I agree with. I just don’t connect it to Gates. I think Obama did enough to separate what he was saying about profiling in general from Gates, but if you want to rip him for the two things being tied, I have no problem with that. I don’t think racial profiling gets talked about enough in this country, and while this was definitely not an instance of racial profiling in my mind, if it leads to talking about racial profiling more, that could be a good thing.
Also, “Obama made it about race by calling the white cops stupid”, I don’t agree with, because as I said above, I think you can separate stupid and race in this instance.
Obama AND Gates need to both shut the F up because they’re both in the wrong and they’re both trying to use the OJ race card needlessly. Obama needs to stay out of local issues and leave them to local officials. You want to build up some boiling hatred? Keep throwing the race card into the ring and see how many ‘on the fence’ people who would have been open-minded start taking a defensive posture and begin thinking racial. People need to get a life and stop over-thinking these things. I heard today that the police sargeant will not be making an apology since that would affirm that the issue was racial. He said he was just doing his duty as required by law. Good for him! Isn’t that what we pay them for? Oh yeah, to get shot at too, by people of all races.