Harvard professor arrested for being black

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?p...d=akJAjYL66iMk

Gates is like, enormously famous (possibly the most well-known academic today?). He can already teach anywhere he wants. He's written/edited 16 books and filmed/hosted 8 documentaries that play on PBS all the time. He was one of Time magazine's 25 Most Influential Americans. Didn't Harvard create the WEB Dubois chair just lure him from Duke?

Now, I'm not a big fan of Gates. Personally, I find him grating and I'm unable to watch his movies for long. He seems like just the kind of person to quickly and completely flip out at a cop and aggressively berate him.

That said, there's no way he deserves being arrested for this. There's a bunch of horror-movie scary stuff here: (1) Being required to show ID in your own home. (2) Being arrested for no crime whatsoever, just because a cop personally disliked something you said. (3) Being lured onto your front steps for a trumped-up "disorderly" charge.

I hope the cop loses his job, and I hope other cops learn from this. If it takes a Gates to demonstrate that cops serve the citizens, then it's the best thing he's done in his career.

Isn't that a bit much, the guy doesn't deserve to lose his job he just arrested someone who was being loud and disruptive,you can't talk to cops any kind of way and expect nothing to happen just because this guy was a high class professor doesn't mean he deserved any kind of special treatment.Really if me or anyone on this forum would to get loud and disruptive with a cop we probably would get arrested,you have to be smart about these things.If you're stupid enough to get loud and belligerent with a cop you deserve to be arrestred no matter who you are.

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Originally Posted by Legend

Isn't that a bit much, the guy doesn't deserve to lose his job he just arrested someone who was being loud and disruptive,you can't talk to cops any kind of way and expect nothing to happen just because this guy was a high class professor doesn't mean he deserved any kind of special treatment.Really if me or anyone on this forum would to get loud and disruptive with a cop we probably would get arrested...

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Wrong for him, and wrong for the rest of us.

Charges have now been dropped according to AP: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090721/...lar_disorderly

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Originally Posted by Legend

If you're stupid enough to get loud and belligerent with a cop you deserve to be arrestred no matter who you are.

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If a cop comes to your door, accuses you of B&E and then refuses to believe that you're who you claim to be, don't you think you'd get loud and belligerent? I'm thinking his response was within reason.

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Originally Posted by Bobzz

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Originally Posted by Legend

If you're stupid enough to get loud and belligerent with a cop you deserve to be arrestred no matter who you are.

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If a cop comes to your door, accuses you of B&E and then refuses to believe that you're who you claim to be, don't you think you'd get loud and belligerent? I'm thinking his response was within reason.

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He was arrested after showing his id and liscense, so i think they probably know he who he was, he was probably making a big deal about them coming to his home and wanting to see his i.d, the cops probably didn't have any kind of idea who he was before hand so they asked him to identify himself after all someone call them about a breaking and entering.

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Originally Posted by Bobzz

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Originally Posted by Legend

If you're stupid enough to get loud and belligerent with a cop you deserve to be arrestred no matter who you are.

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If a cop comes to your door, accuses you of B&E and then refuses to believe that you're who you claim to be, don't you think you'd get loud and belligerent? I'm thinking his response was within reason.

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You read the article but you didn't understand it. He never accused him of B&E he said that someone reported a possible B&E, so the cop was following protocol, there was a possible home invasion going on.

So if anyone wants to do a home invasion in Boston this house is now open game, then cops will then be accused of not asking him out of his house because he is black, the truth would be because he is a ignorant asshole that likes to accuse people of being racist for trying to make sure he is safe.

Think about this, if it was a black cop that came to his door and asked him to do the exact same thing would he have reacted then same way? Who is the racist?

He failed to listen to Chris Rock and he paid the price. Good chance that you will be arrested if you insult the officer's mother too.

Maybe, just maybe, the cop was simply being an asshole and maybe, just maybe the good professor was itching for an opportunity to show that the system is biased against blacks (this is Boston, ya know). I'm pro cops but I'm also pro educators. I just think it's fucked up to have anyone get rousted out of their house and get arrested because he or she mouthed off to a cop.

Cops are not gods, they're people with guns, tough jobs and often, out of control egos. There's no shortage of egos with Harvard types either. This was one of those situations when an irresistible force meets an immovable object but an arrest? I don't think that's right.

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Originally Posted by deee757

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Originally Posted by JohnnyWalkerBlackLabel

his stock just went up

he can now (if he chooses) leave Harvard and go to another University and probably have a best seller book on the NY Times list in the coming months if he so chooses.........

up until now no one really knew who he was

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Nobody knew who Henry Louis Gates Jr was before now? are u serious?

Gates has been the recipient of nearly 50 honorary degrees and numerous academic and social action awards. He was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1981 and was listed in Time among its “25 Most Influential Americans” in 1997. On October 23, 2006, Gates was appointed the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. University Professor at Harvard University. In January 2008, he co-founded The Root, a website dedicated to African-American perspectives published by The Washington Post Company. Gates currently chairs the Fletcher Foundation, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is on the boards of many notable institutions including the New York Public Library, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Aspen Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Studio Museum of Harlem, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, HEAF (the Harlem Educational Activities Fund), and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, located in Stanford, California.[2]

In 2002 the National Endowment for the Humanities selected Gates for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities.[9] Gates' lecture was entitled "Mister Jefferson and the Trials of Phillis Wheatley"[10] and was the basis for his book The Trials of Phillis Wheatley.[11]

In 2006, Gates was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution after he traced his lineage back to John Redman, a Free Negro who fought in the Revolutionary War.[12]

The popular Harvard-area burger restaurant, Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage, sells a Professor Skip Gates burger topped with pineapple and teriyaki sauce.

All this and a man cant tell the police everything is ok, and they just leave?

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Deee, no disrespect but if you walked into any barbershop or stripclub or hair salon in the hood prior to his arrest the odds of anyone knowing who you were talking about had you said his name would have been rare if at all acknowledged.............cmon now.