I\u2019ve been following the issue of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr and his arrest. BTW Why do they always have to say \u201cHenry Louis Gates Jr?\u201d Why not just \u201cHenry Gates\u201d or even \u201cDr. Gates\u201d or \u201cprofessor Gates?\u201d Are their that many Professor Gates at Harvard? Any way to the big issues.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve listened to interviews with both Dr Gates and the police officer who arrested him. The stories don\u2019t completely match which is to be expected. But honestly I didn\u2019t hear anything in the interview with the police officer that made it clear why Gates was arrested. It seems to me the officer could have given Gates his name and badge number and just left. Yelling at police officers isn\u2019t illegal is it? I mean as long as their are no physical threats its still free speech right? SO why the need to arrest Gates? That I just don\u2019t get.<\/p>\n
The police arrived to investigate a robbery. Gates was upset about being a suspect. I can understand that. He assumed that it was because he was a black man. There don\u2019t seem to be any real evidence that this was the case though. One would have to be naive to think this sort of thing doesn\u2019t happen to white men. Oh it probably does happen to black men more than white men but I find it hard to believe that a white man would have been treated any differently up to that point. If a call came in about a burglary I would expect the police to ask anyone they found in the house to produce ID no matter what race they were.<\/p>\n
I would also expect most people to get upset being questioned like that in their own home. Most of us though are more intimidated by men with guns and would go out of their way to avoid confrontation with the police. I was stopped for a \u201ctraffic violation\u201d once and the officer got quite belligerent when I calmly tried to explain that there was a delayed light and that the light on my side was still green even though the light he could see was red. Frankly I was afraid for my safety and I\u2019m a white guy. So I shut up and prepared to fight the ticket in court. Fortunately when the officer called this in the office cleared things up and I didn\u2019t get a ticket. No apology either I might add. Yes I still harbor bad feelings about that officer. I think he acted stupidly. But getting police to admit error is very difficult. Gates should get an apology unless there is more to the story than what I have heard from the police side but based on my own experience I see that as unlikely.<\/p>\n
In the Gates case I think both Gates and the officer acted stupidly. I\u2019m sure they are both really smart people and mean well but either one of them could have calmed things down before they escalated the way they did. The officer should have calmed things down because that is his job. If Gates is so smart and professional and mature he should have seen that no good was going to happen with what was going on and calmed things down. Likewise there were other police there who should have stepped in to avoid the confrontation that led to the arrest. <\/p>\n
Speaking of acting stupidly, the President should never have made the comments he did. I don\u2019t disagree with his opinion but I think it was unhelpful to the situation. If nothing else it hardened the stance of both individuals which is not good. Now of course neither will own up to any mistakes which is a shame.<\/p>\n
Also it hurt his credibility with the police. Did it help him with some people? Perhaps but to what practical good. I think he should have said something like \u201cIt is a very unfortunate situation that I am disappointed to see see happen. I am happy that the charges were dropped. I\u2019m sure a complete investigation will be done and will wait for that before making more specific comments.\u201d Privately he could have supported his friend and he could have requested an independent Federal investigation. But to publicly state something was stupid without more information was ill advised. <\/p>\n
You know, just because something bad happens to a black man doesn\u2019t mean race was a factor. There actually are black\/white\/Hispanic\/Asian\/native American people who do bad things. No really. I\u2019ve also seen white people get arrested by non-white police and don\u2019t know of many cases where they were arrested because they were white. Though honestly having seen white students being beaten up because of their race I would not be amazed if people were arrested in some cases because they are white. But assuming race is a factor without evidence is, well, its racist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve been following the issue of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr and his arrest. BTW Why do they always have to say \u201cHenry Louis Gates Jr?\u201d Why not just \u201cHenry Gates\u201d or even \u201cDr. Gates\u201d or \u201cprofessor Gates?\u201d Are their that many Professor Gates at Harvard? Any way to the big issues. I\u2019ve listened […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}