Influential Writer Henry Louis Gates Jr. Arrest: Was it Racially Motivated?

There’s been plenty of media buzz in the last week regarding the recent arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., in what many are calling a case of racial profiling.

Professor Gates was arrested on July 16, when police were called to his Cambridge home after a report of a burglary in progress. The professor said he told the police that he lived in the house and that he was trying to force open a damaged front door. Still, the police report said he was arrested for “loud and tumultuous behavior in a public space.”

After he was released, Gates said, “This isn’t about me; this is about the vulnerability of black men in America.”

As Harvard’s most prominent black scholar, Henry Louis Gates Jr. teaches in the department of African American Studies, has written numerous books, and contributes to a number of prestigious publications. He was even included in Time magazine’s “25 Most Influential Americans” list in 1997! Last year, Gates offered a poignant foreword to North Atlantic Books’ author Cecil Brown’s The Life and Loves of Mr. Jiveass Nigger.

Was the arrest just a simple misunderstanding or was it indeed racial profiling? I asked the opinions of a few folks at North Atlantic Books, and here’s how they chimed in:

Allegra expressed frustration:

I find it disheartening and disappointing that something like this can even happen today. I don’t think that Henry Louis Gates Jr. overreacted, and I think that racial profiling comes out loud and clear to anyone that looks at the facts of this case. He is someone that is very well-educated about his rights as a citizen, and in my opinion, he is guilty of exercising his rights.

Philip disagreed:

The preponderance of the evidence in this case (notably the police report; the arresting officer’s career record, specifically as it relates to the subject of racial profiling; and the testimony of minority police who were at the scene) suggests no misbehavior on the part of the Cambridge police, who were responding to a specific call of suspicious activity (what appeared to be an attempted break-in of a residence). There is evidence that Gates was immediately unruly in his response to the police investigation, and his subsequent account of events seems at variance with the police report and with the one photograph of the incident, which appears to show him shouting.  I have personally witnessed a white neighbor being arrested for disorderly conduct when abusive to police, and I do not see how Gates’ purported expertise on racial issues should exempt him from the rule of law in this regard.  There is no credible evidence that the escalation of this incident to the level of an arrest (and national furor) was caused by anything but Gates’ uncooperative and insulting behavior to law enforcement officers.  President Obama did not help things by jumping into the fray here, and the whole incident has weakened his claims to be a “post-racial” president.

And Anne felt very strongly:

I’ve been following this story with great interest, particularly the ping-pong of intelligent responses on Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog. The most instructive for me was a post that included several legal opinions, the first by a longtime Massachusetts appellate lawyer, who cites state law and sums up, “I do not think you need to get far, if at all, into nuances of First Amendment law in order to discern that a “disorderly conduct” is an offense against the public peace, and it is difficult to fathom how it ever properly could be charged for one’s behavior in one’s own home.” The second, a Washington state criminal lawyer who has seen many an example of police overreaction, says, “Typically an officer would not cite an individual for disorderly conduct in a case like Gates.  Disorderly conduct has a specific definition in the statutes and state courts have interpreted those statutes to give a lot of leeway in favor of freedom of speech.  See State v. Montgomery, 31 Wn. App. 745, 644 P.2d 747 (1982). However, officers get around this by arresting those who commit POP (“Pissing Off Police”) with obstruction.  Obstruction has a much broader definition and covers anyone accused of “willfully hindering or delaying” an investigation.

Whether this was racially motivated or not, who wouldn’t be furious at such an intrusion? I cannot for the life of me see the justification for a police officer to arrest a homeowner in his or her own home for spouting off. Stories are legion of cops who have arrested people simply because they asked for an officer’s badge number or disputed their treatment or reason for being stopped, and these stories disproportionately involve people of color. So I am highly skeptical of the police report as an objective document, and I don’t see any reason for Obama to have backpedaled from his comment that the police action was stupid. You’ve established that the man yelling at you is in his rightful home? Then leave already!

What’s your opinion? Do you agree with any of these different takes on the situation?

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