Racial Profiling Debate triggered by Obama comments on Prof Gates

Thank you for this Rhonda. 

You are very welcome, albertacowpoke.  And, again, thank you for this story!

Is Handcuffing not standard procedure in some States?

Since I do not know the details either I shall abstain from Judgement.

I am not sure though since when a President gets involved in Local Police matters?

Sadly in deed the debate is going on and little is changing for the better no matter wish side, all seem to enjoy putting full into a fire we shout let go out.

I think in this case it is best to reserve judgment until the results of the investigation are made public.  Incidents like this cause emotions to rise, especially when the details aren't known. 

Again a lost society when at one time you knew your neighbours instead of staying cloistered behind your curtains.

If anyone regardless of colour is skulking around a home trying to get it, naturally the cops upon hearing this take precautions and detain the suspect until it is proven otherwise they are the homeowner.

You cant blame the cops, blame the good neighbour policy, clearly none existent in todays society, where everyone is suspicious of everyone in their neighbourhood.

The man who was detained would be surely relieved if someone was caught by police breaking into his home, especially if the break in artist had priors or was violent.  Using black as an excuse shows many are quick to use the race card, including the President.

If society is quick to lambast the police with the race card, then police in time may be reluctant to arrest anyone for fear of the race card. Certainly not a society many of us, including this harvard professor would want to live in.

Thanks very much for your comments Barry.  Isn't it amazing here in the country we know our neighbours for miles around, while in the city some don't know who lives next door.

Thank you, Roy!:)

I think is is fantastic that Barack Obama is in a position to intercede on behalf of his friend.

He knows that the Police arrest black people all the time just because they are black and the Cambridge Police are no different.

Obama is lucky that he did not get arrested for his admitted cocaine use. Otherwise he would never have become president and he would not be able to defend the undeniable right to break into Cambridge University property by its staff.

Obama is willing to weigh in on subjects that he knows nothing about, but is unwilling to tend to business that is his responsability.

....and I thought he was cool.

Thanks for commenting QueensHeart.

As we have additional NowPublic coverage on this issue, it would be great if you could link to the previous stories in your post.

I find this issue very interesting as a "white person" I have never seen people as black or white! There are only two types of people in the world I live in, the good ones and the bad!

At the risk of sounding racist I believe that what Obama said about blacks and hispanics beening stop more offen than whites is problably right, but I think that this happens ,not only because there is racist cops, but more likely because there is a larger majority of blacks and hispanics living in high crime neighbourhoods.

Was his comments right or wrong, I think, is not the issue, I think the issue is, as President he should have kept his mouth shut until all the facts were in!! His office requires him not only to lead the country but also to know when diplomacy and not opinion are required.

Furthemore Sergeant James Crowley did his job and in the process was the victim of a type of racism from Henry Louis Gates Jr..

I for one am happy to see that there are officers of law still doing there jobs, even when the bell of the race card is ringing so loud as to call in the linching mob!! 

As to your comment "Isn't it amazing here in the country we know our neighbours for miles around, while in the city some don't know who lives next door." I think this is a whole other issue which involves the steady polerization the government and media constantly ram down our throats to separate us from each other! As a united society we are strong, separate us into small little groups and we fall like domminos. They purposely separate us ,blacks, whites, hispanics, muslim, catholic, conservative, democrat, North American, European and on and on. Of course the goal is to keep us in our home with no actual fisical contact with other human beings, which further isolates us to the point, where like the good little worker bees they want us to be, we we feel that the only people we can trust is the same people trying to take everything from us The Government!! But I digress.

Good reporting Albert Cow Poke !!!!

Thanks very much for your comments Concerned Citizen.  You certainly gave us a lot to think about:) 

Thanks for your comments Roy, good question.

Thanks Roy:)

very good report.

OK - my respects to Alberbtacowpoke (ACP) an' all but this case has annoyed me for some time and it's time I set this straight.

Professor Henry Louis Gates is not the victim of racism. Professor Henry Louis Gates is the member of the "frou-frou-blancmange" elite and untouchable class unfortunate and mistaken enough due to an unlikely incident to be the recipient of the long arm of law enforcement's "standard practice" (intimidate and take no sh1t) as it is applied to the plebeian and/or common citizenry.

I can imagine well enough that the newly-capped, highly-placed, intellectual class ensconced in Boston, the Hamptons and other fine areas would be outraged (OUTRAGED) at this handling. They long ago sold their souls to the ruling elite in return for some exclusive shelf space on the gated community compound's trophy display wing. Now they're being man-handled by these common centurions? Outrageous!

To give you today's anecdote as enlightenment:

When I worked in CitiGroup it became abundantly clear that every single trader was a member of the upper class (the "jet set" as they are now known as).  I supposed this was a necessary component to speaking both Japanese and English fluently. The requirement that they'd lived in both California (or other parts U.S.) and Japan (e.g.) pre-supposed some form of mobile, disposable wealth.

After a year and a half CitiGroup's FOREX floor finally got its first Indian Trader employee. Long overdue in my opinion since (everyone will agree) their agility at mental maths is like a magician's trick compared to everyone else. Inventors of the "0" and all that. Well... you should have heard the cheer that went up amongst my colleagues in the IT department. Every single one of them (excluding me) recent hires from Mumbai by CitiGroup as a new cost-control measure. I was conflicted about the process but I liked all of them. Each one was a variegated individual with his own dreams and quirks, I genuinely felt happy in their company despite the implied job threat they represented (I was axed a 1/2 year later).

I turned to them in Pyrrhic triumph and noted the following:

"You don't get it do you? This guy is no more a representative of you lot than Sonia Gandhi. You and I have more in common than you do with him. Haven't you listened to his conversation? Holidays as a child in Hawaii, Skiing in St. Moritz... He'S just another member of the elite. The fact he Indian is just a happy coincidence. He looks down on us the same as the rest of them."

True to my description and to the chagrin of the other IT staff, our new hire made a point of asking for me (the only white person) exclusively on every PC troubleshooting call, avoiding the Indian staff like the plague. Why? Who knows. Maybe he preferred the English intonation. Maybe he was embarrassed to be mingling with his own kith and kin in that prestigious environment. But it served the lesson to these guys well. The issue is not race but class.

To return to Professor Henry Louis Gates. He will be the recipient of much "you Poor Dear" shoulder massaging amongst his community and I imagine he will write the odd polemic or two on how hard it is to be a "black man"  in the USA. But the fact is, he got a shock introduction into what life is like for ordinary people even though he got kid gloves treatment (due to his address) compared to what would've happened to "normal" citizens. Haven't we read enough about 72 year old women getting tasered at speeding checks to know what the real issue is?

I have zero sympathy for this pampered elitist, skin colour be damned.

Thanks for you comments hidflect. 

It seems Obama agrees to some degree...

Obama also placed the incident within the larger narrative of race relations.

"[B]ecause of our history, because of the difficulties of the past, you know, African-Americans are sensitive to these issues," Obama said. "And even when you've got a police officer who has a fine track record on racial sensitivity, interactions between police officers and the African-American community can sometimes be fraught with misunderstanding. My hope is that as a consequence of this event, this ends up being what's called a teachable moment where all of us, instead of pumping up the volume, spend a little more time listening to each other and try to focus on how we can generally improve relations between police officers and minority communities, and that instead of flinging accusations, we can all be a little more reflective in terms of what we can do to contribute to more unity."

It seems Dr. Gates forgot the first rule most African American males learn at a very early age regarding dealing with the police, that being to avoid giving the police a reason to arrest you if you are confronted by them.

After establishing that Dr. Gates belonged in the house, that should have been the end of it.

No matter what Dr. Gates' dialog/statements may have been as he headed to the porch, whether as he stated, he continued to request the officer's name and badge number or the account given by the police, that he was loud and abusive, the officer arrested Dr. Gates to save face in front of his fellow officers who were now gathered on the professor's porch.

It has been the experience for many in the African American community, no matter where you may find yourself, low or middle class or high society, that the police behave differently in our community and with us. I speak from personal experience.

The police do not act and react as portrayed in those episodes of Cops and other law enforcement shows where they always follow the rules and go by the book, never losing their cool.

Those officers filmed for television are aware the cameras are rolling.    

I think the question was planted so Obama could respond.  It backfired.  President Obama should have done what every other president in history has done during an on going investigation,  "I have no comment"

So ... think the three of em sharing a beer at the WH will make it all go away?    (^_^)

He offered to have a beer with Sean Hannity too. Hannity said he would even buy it. 

Thanks for you comments QH. 

We could move this debate further along simply by acknowledging that although skin color exists, "race" does not.  How will we ever become a "post-racial" nation if we keep trying to bootstrap skin color into some sort of genetic wall between people that doesn't exist, which is what happens when we use the word "race" ubiquitously.

The fact is that the discussion of the last few days has been about skin color.   Since I haven't heard anyone mention the human genome or DNA or biology, I know this discussion couldn't possibly be about "race" because none of the vocabularly of biology is being used.

If we turn to biology, we find this at the Federal Government's Human Genome Project:

"DNA studies do not indicate that separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans. While different genes for physical traits such as skin and hair color can be identified between individuals, no consistent patterns of genes across the human genome exist to distinguish one race from another. There also is no genetic basis for divisions of human ethnicity. People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other."  U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Human Genome Program,Human Genome Program,

 In other words, the Human Genome Project has proven that, as a matter of scientific fact, that which we call "race" does not exist as a matter of biology, and so all references to "race" are references to a fallacy. http://amjca.blogspot.com/

For so long as people in the USA continue to insist that they are divided by a biological wall that does not exist in biology, we will continue to try to overcome difference based on a difference that never existed in the first place.

In fact, "race" is the most-used biological term that has no basis in biology. It's actually a metastasized white supremacist fantasy. We certainly have not become "post-racial" when we still use the fantasy word and biological concept of "race" ubiquitously.  American Journal of Color Arousal

Look for the text of President Obama's comments today at the White House News Conference today in the main text of the story.

Lynn Sweet, who was the reporter that asked this question has been queried by many of her journalist friends if the question was planted.  The explanation/story on her question is also in the main text.