**Updated** Skip Gates: loud and tumultuous
Renouned Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates: still black.
**UPDATE** Prosecutors have dropped the charges against Skip Gates, calling the incident “regrettable.” The City of Cambridge and the Cambridge police released a statement:
“This incident should not be viewed as one that demeans the character and reputation of Professor Gates or the character of the Cambridge Police Department. All parties agree that this is a just resolution to an unfortunate set of circumstances,” the statement read.
Also, the neighbor who called police has been identified as 40-year-old Lucia Whalen of Malden. In other words, it was she, and not Professor Gates, who was in the wrong neighborhood. Oh, irony!
Gates now has this lovely mug-shot to remember Cambridge by.
Original post:
What do you get when you combine two Black men, a stuck door, and someone on a tony Cambridge block who apparently never took a good look at their Harvard professor neighbor? The Boston Globe explains:
His front door refused to budge, which is why Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., just home from a trip to China filming a PBS documentary, set his luggage down and beckoned his driver for help.
The scene – two black men on the porch of a stately home on a tree-lined Cambridge street in the middle of the day – triggered events that were at turns dramatic and bizarre, a confrontation between one of the nation’s foremost African-American scholars and a police sergeant responding to a call that someone was breaking into the house.
It ended when Gates, 58, was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct in allegedly shouting at the officer; he was eventually taken away in handcuffs.
Huh? Henry Louis Gates is the head of the Harvard University W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. He got the job in 1991, after a series of sit-ins by Harvard students (in which I participated, and which were led by a group of African-American Studies students) protesting the dearth of tenured Black faculty at the college. The main sticking point for these students was that the then chair of the African American Studies Department was a white woman — and a French literature expert at that, and her department included few if any Black faculty. The fall after I graduated (in 1991), Gates was brought in to head the department, and with him came other Black professors and scholars, briefly including Cornell West (who famously clashed with then-president Larry Summers over hip-hop and scholarship and then departed for Princeton…) plus philosopher K. Anthony Appiah and sociologist William Julius Wilson. The fight over professors was part of a larger den of “issues” at Harvard involving race — including an ongoing, negative vibe between Black Harvardians and the campus police.
I can testify that they could be a nasty bunch. During my junior year (I took a year off after freshman year, so it should have been my senior year) I attended a bunch of senior formals. One particular outing involved two Black couples, including myself and my date, who was an ROTC member, headed for the armed forces. On our date, he was in full dress uniform, in the driver’s seat. We were pulled over by Harvard police, who proceeded to shine a flashlight into the car, and despite seeing four people dressed in formal attire, questioned where we were going. It was only when my date began talking military with the officer, who was himself a retired troop, that we were allowed to go. That same year, two Black Harvard students were arrested by Harvard police, pulled off a shuttle and humiliated, because the police were looking for a couple of guys who robbed a store. This despite the fact that the robbers had been described as being wither white or Hispanic. These two were neither. Which brings us back to Skip Gates (as he’s called) and the po-po:
Gates’s lawyer and Harvard colleague, Charles Ogletree, said what angered his client was that the police officer stepped inside Gates’s Ware Street house, uninvited, to demand identification and question him. Gates showed his Harvard identification and Massachusetts drivers license with his home address, Ogletree said, adding, “Even after presentation of ID, the officer was still questioning his presence.’’
Said Bobo: “The whole interaction should have ended right there, but I guess that wasn’t enough. The officer felt he hadn’t been deferred to sufficiently.’’
The Cambridge police report describes a chaotic scene in which the police sergeant stood at Gates’s door, demanded identification, and radioed for assistance from Harvard University police when Gates presented him with a Harvard ID. A visibly upset Gates responded to the officer’s assertion that he was responding to a report of a break-in with, “Why, because I’m a black man in America?’’
“Gates then turned to me and told me that I had no idea who I was ‘messing’ with and that I had not heard the last of it,’’ the report said. “While I was led to believe that Gates was lawfully in the residence, I was quite surprised and confused with the behavior he exhibited toward me.’
When the officer repeatedly told Gates he would speak with him outside, the normally mild-mannered professor shouted, “Ya, I’ll speak with your mama outside,’’ according to the report. Gates was arrested after “exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior’’ toward the officer who questioned him, the report said.
I find myself wondering whether any of us — Black or White, would have reacted any differently than Professor Gates, having a police officer questioning us for being in our own home. Harvard has apparently appointed a commission to look into the racial atmosphere on campus, specifically regarding the police. Stories of Black students and professors rousted by the Harvard cops abound, including the Globe article. Having been out of there since 1991, I can’t say I’m surprised, but it’s more than disappointing to find out how little has changed in Cambridge. And in case you think this incident was a one-off, consider the case of Gates’ friend, neuroscience professor Allen Counter:
Allen Counter, who has taught neuroscience at Harvard for 25 years, said he was stopped on campus by two police officers in 2004 after being mistaken for a robber. They threatened to arrest him when he could not produce identification.
Comments
2 Responses to “**Updated** Skip Gates: loud and tumultuous”
Leave a Reply
TOP STORIES
Follow & Friend
Links
The Reid Report named Best National Blog in the 2010 Florida Netroots Awards! Thanks to all who voted, and congrats to all the nominees and winners! Full list of winners here
Finalist: Best Liberal Blog
WTF Has Barack Obama Done So Far?
not knowing either party to this confrontation and reading only what has been presented what is the possibilty of two proudful men taking a routine burglary call and turning it into a media event. one would think an educated harvard man would have the temerity to know how to handle this situation , thank the officer for looking out for his residence in his absence and muttered something under his breath as the maybe not to polite but needing respect officer went his way. it doesn’t matter what the color of your skin is if you take license with the judgement of just about any officer in most police departments it is not going to go over real well. mr gates of all people should be more aware of this than most folks of other stripes might. the synical side of me sees another race book in the offing, countless tax dollars again spent on sensesitivity training for the locals and numerous nabob lib talking heads shaking their heads side to side with that look that shames. funny how one of the homes ,only yale being worse, of liberal humanism is stiil afflicted by the old whitemans burden prime sins. the only good thing out of this is that it helps maybe to prevent some other like type happenings.
Yes, but how many of us would be able to keep our composure when a police officer was accusing you of burglarizing your own house? Even after he produced ID, the officer didn’t end it. He basically arrested him for “talking back,” only Mr. Gates is not a child, and is allowed to talk back (or so I thought.)