Arrest of Harvard Professor and Racism/Racial Profiling

[PepperFritz]

Jeremy:

It sounds as though you have gained some important and valuable insights into your own behaviour and beliefs.

These are my biggest fears: that I am ponerized too much and that I will not make it. Therefor I try hard to belong to this group in the hope I can hop a ride. This is of course not how it works.

You may find the following post helpful:

http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=12867.msg93568#msg93568

 

[perfeksion]

Yep, it's deliberate "trolling" at worst and an unconscious attempt to "feed" at best. Perfeksion's prompt disappearance from the forum after failing to achieve his desired effect is very telling.

Hello again PepperFritz!

Just dropping a line to say that I am still around. I was away for work over the weekend, so I have not had the time to post again for the last few days, I've barely had time to read what has been said since my last post. I just wanted to let you know that I did not just disappear like you assumed, I have indeed been busy with things going on in my life. Unfortunately, internet message boards have to take a backseat to things sometimes, no matter how much I enjoy coming here to read and learn from everyone.

My initial post was not meant to be a troll post, but it's fairly obvious to me now that it was almost entirely influenced by the emotions I was feeling at the time (as were some of my other posts), something that is very atypical for me. For some reason, this story just got to me, and I'm really not sure why. I guess it is just one more thing for me to look at and analyze about myself to see what/where this emotional response came from. Since I have realized that, I have been able to take a step back and look at both the situation and my reaction (and the resulting post(s)) a little more closely, and it is almost even surprising for me that I reacted as I did.

I have been trying to keep up with new developments and articles as my time allows and I will try to respond to everything later on when I get off work, make it home and can relax a bit. Until then, thank you all for your posts that have helped me to see things more objectively.

*Edited for clarity, apparently my grammar isn't the best today*

 

[Buddy]

I agree with Lindorff's assessment:

[quote author=http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=13070.msg95152#msg95152]
Dave Lindorff: Cops Gone Wild
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Fri, 07/24/2009 - 3:15pm.

"He (Crowley) totally mishandled this call."[/quote]


Considering the following description:
"58 year old Harvard Distinguished Professor Henry “Skip” Gates, celebrated public intellectual, PBS host, [friend/acquaintaince of Barrack Obama] and MacArthur Award winner had just returned home on a flight from China and was being helped by his limo driver."


How likely is it that Gates has a rather large ego that was bruised upon seeing himself being treated like a 'common person'?
How likely is it that Crowley has a rather large power-fed ego that was bruised upon seeing himself being treated like a 'common person'?

We've all seen this pattern play out over and over since the days of watching school yard bullies. How many times have we seen two people blow up at each other, have a fight (or come close) and then wind up 'making up' after neither has backed down:

[quote author=http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=13070.msg95161#msg95161]
According to this Yahoo article, it looks like Gates and Crowley may be meeting each other over a beer at the White House.

_http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090725/ap_on_re_us/us_harvard_scholar_disorderly[/quote]


The only thing I find interesting about this story is the media attention it is getting, coming as it is, in a background context of psychopathic encroachment and the 'desperate push for total control' by STS forces.

Perhaps the story is useful as a vehicle for getting people like perfeksion all riled up so that some feeding can be done on the emotional energy vented in this manner.

Considering all the forums, blogs and social sites where this issue is being discussed, why was it brought here? For venting? That's the impression I got when the thread first started.


I found it interesting that someone who says he is familiar with so much material related to this forum and Laura's works and also says this:

[quote author=http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=13071.msg94983#msg94983]
I almost never take anything at face value and I always look for a meaning behind the words/actions.[/quote]


Allows himself to be played so easily:

[quote author=http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=13070.msg95061#msg95061]
All in all, this is not a case of racism or racial profiling, and I find it completely ridiculous that it is even considered as such, given the circumstances.[/quote]


[quote author=http://www.cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=13070.msg95078#msg95078]
My main objection to this situation is calling it "racism" or "racial profiling." If a black cop had arrested a white man for the same thing, there would most likely be no mention of racism whatsoever.[/quote]



My question to perfeksion would be "So now that we've 'stepped back' and taken another look at the situation, what about the next time?" Things are likely to get a lot worse.

Have you tried the breathing exercises?

 

[Beau]

I suppose I would like to think that the majority of observers would think it outrageous that Mr Gates should be arrested under the circumstances described whichever account of the story one believes. (Although that is probably just “wishful thinking” on my part)

Actually, reading comments by readers on other blogs, sites, etc., their were plenty of people who thought very much the same way as perfeksion i.e. that Gates deserved what happened to him. You'd be surprised how many people have been taken in by the pathocracy.

 

[JEEP]

Actually, reading comments by readers on other blogs, sites, etc., their were plenty of people who thought very much the same way as perfeksion i.e. that Gates deserved what happened to him. You'd be surprised how many people have been taken in by the pathocracy.

FWIW, I think this writer has the situation nailed the most accurately:

Power comes into play in arrest
Thursday, July 30, 2009 7:54 AM
By Eugene Robinson

If race were the only issue, there would be much less hyperventilation about Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s unpleasant run-in with the criminal justice system. After all, it would hardly be the first time a black man had unjustly been hauled to jail by a white police officer. The debate -- really more of a shouting match -- is also about power and entitlement.

This is a new twist. Since the triumph of the civil-rights movement, minorities have been moving up the ladder in politics, business, academia, just about every field. Only in the past decade, however, has a sizable cohort of African-Americans and Latinos broken through to the tiny upper echelons where real power is exercised.

I'm talking about President Barack Obama, obviously, but also Citigroup Chairman Richard Parsons, entertainment mogul Oprah Winfrey, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor and many others -- a growing number of minorities with the kind of serious power that used to be reserved for whites only. In academia, the list begins with "Skip" Gates.

He's a superstar, one of the best-known and most highly acclaimed faculty members at the nation's most prestigious university. A few years ago, when he made noises about leaving, Harvard moved heaven and Earth to keep him. The incident that led to his arrest occurred as he was coming home after a trip to China for his latest PBS documentary. Following the traumatic encounter, he repaired to Martha's Vineyard to recuperate. This is how the man rolls.

Obama's choice of words might not have been politic, but he was stating the obvious when he said the police behaved "stupidly." Gates is 58, stands maybe 5-feet-7 and weighs about 150 pounds. He has a disability and walks with a cane. By the time Sgt. James Crowley made the arrest, he had already assured himself that Gates was in his own home. Crowley could see that the professor posed no threat.

But for the sake of argument, let's assume that Crowley's version of the incident is true -- that Gates, from the outset, was accusatory, aggressive and even obnoxious, addressing the officer with an air of highhanded superiority. Let's assume he really recited the Big Cheese mantra: "You have no idea who you're messing with."

I lived in Cambridge for a year, and I can attest that meeting a famous Harvard professor who happens to be arrogant is like meeting a famous basketball player who happens to be tall. It's not exactly a surprise. Crowley wouldn't have lasted a week on the force, much less made sergeant, if he had tried to arrest every member of the Harvard community who treated him as if he belonged to an inferior species. Yet instead of walking away, Crowley arrested Gates as he stepped onto the front porch of his own house.

Apparently, there was something about the power relationship -- uppity, jet-setting black professor vs. regular-guy, working-class white cop -- that Crowley couldn't abide. Judging by the overheated commentary that followed, that same something, whatever it might be, also makes conservatives forget that they believe in individual rights and oppose intrusive state power.

There was a similar case of collective amnesia at the Sotomayor hearings. Republican senators, faced with a judge who follows precedent and eschews making new law from the bench, forgot that this is the judicial philosophy they advocate. The odd and inappropriate line of questioning by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., about Sotomayor's temperament was widely seen as sexist, and indeed it was. But I suspect the racial or ethnic power equation was also a factor -- the idea of a sharp-tongued "wise Latina" making nervous attorneys, some of them white, male attorneys, fumble and squirm.

Is a man of Gates' station entitled to puff himself up and remind a policeman that he's dealing with someone who has juice? Is a woman of Sotomayor's accomplishment entitled to humiliate a lawyer who came to court unprepared? No more and no less entitled, surely, than all the Big Cheeses who came before them.

Yet Gates' fit of pique somehow became cause for arrest. I can't prove that if the Big Cheese in question had been a famous, brilliant Harvard professor who happened to be white -- say, presidential adviser Larry Summers, who's on leave from the university -- the outcome would have been different. I'd put money on it, though. Anybody wanna bet?

Eugene Robinson writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

 

[Buddy]

FWIW, I think this writer has the situation nailed the most accurately:
[...]

Robinson is right on in his recognition of amnesia setting in when a power-play is involved. It's the STS blind spot exposed in plain language.