Is it just me, or is this whole Skip Gates versus Sgt. Crowley thing getting WAY too much air play? I'm not trying to engage the whole race debate here, but why the heck is this still headline news and why are these two getting invited to the White House to talk it over?
In my honest opinion, Gates probably should not have been arrested but I don't really think this has a thing to do with racism in America. I'm not even trying to say that racism doesn't still exist in this country... it does... as does sexism, ageism, classism, and every other "ism" you can think of. I'm just saying that in this case the police responded to a report that two men were possibly breaking into a house... which they were, it just happened to be the house belonging to one of them who locked himself out.
The caller was apparently a Portuguese woman who worked in the area but had no idea who lived there and when asked said she could not positively identify the race of these people, but one was possibly hispanic. Clearly, she was not trying to start a race thing. The police responding were looking for 2 men who possibly broke into the house... one man opened the door. Everything is reasonable so far.
In Gates's defense, the man had just gotten home from the airport where he had arrived on a flight from China. He was probably very tired. Reports are that he was having some sort of respiratory issues as well, so likely on top of being tired he was not feeling well... and add on the fact that he locked himself out of his house which was certainly not a happy circumstance. All of this would make any person less than inclined to be cooperative when suddenly confronted by the police.
The police had the obligation to make sure that nothing was amok. You can see where they might be a little on edge given that there had been recent break-ins in that area, so it might be an opportunity to catch a bad guy. The typical response one would expect from a home owner in this situation wouldn't be extreme happiness, but you would tend to expect some cooperation instead of someone going off on you and calling you a racist when thus far, race hasn't really played into it. From the officer's point of view, the guy is calling him a racist, calling the police commissioner, and pulling the "Don't you know who I am?!?" deal... I can see the "well, let's just go for a visit with the police commissioner, SHALL WE?" coming into play.
Seems to me that both parties could have and in fact SHOULD have handled this differently so that it didn't have to end in an arrest and all this hoopla. .
For the record, this kind of thing doesn't just happen to 60+ yr old black Harvard professors. It happens to 25 year old white girls in Shawnee, KS too. I locked myself out of my house one morning and one of the neighbors called the police because someone was trying to break into my house. A police officer approached me, gun at the ready, as I was trying to climb in my bedroom window. I was not amused at all after landing on my back in a huge , vining rose bush when ordered to cease and desist with my effort to get in the window. I explained myself and had the officer run the plates on my car which was sitting (running) in front of the house... and had him peek in the front window where my house keys (attached to a small wallet containing my ID) were clearly visible right there on the coffee table. Net result: I got a boost through the window. Sure, I did have to go unlock the front door and show him my ID... no problem. No arrest. No news.
Just seems to me that a race conversation at the White House between these two isn't going to do much good. Crowley is going to maintain that he wasn't motivated by racism, which it seems more and more like he wasn't. Gates is going to maintain that he is, but then again he has likely encountered racism throughout his life and as a law professor who tends to focus on the issue of racism in his teachings, therefore is a little predisposed to look for it. About all this might accomplish is maybe smoothing things over a little for Obama and his comment about the police acting foolishly... and might continue to take the focus off the important things like the ongoing wars and the horrible economy.
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MM
That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.
Yeah, that is the latest development... Obama is having them over sometime this week "to have a beer and talk it over". The mainstream media has been all over this since it happened.
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MM
That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.
Is it just me, or is this whole Skip Gates versus Sgt. Crowley thing getting WAY too much air play? I'm not trying to engage the whole race debate here, but why the heck is this still headline news and why are these two getting invited to the White House to talk it over?
Because CNN has nothing better to cover. But yes, it is way out of hand. It just needs to all go away. This is not news. Neither is the Michael Jackson mess.
I know we all weren't there, but if you mouth off and give a police officer a hard time, what do you think they are going to do?
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Stop trying to be what you see. Be what you ought to be.
That is kind of what I think happened. From all of the coverage I have seen and read, Gates was beligerant, which is a little understandable given all of the circumstances, but I think he way over-reacted to the deal. ANYBODY who blows up like that at a cop for long enough is GOING to be arrested.
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MM
That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.
Thanks. I've got the news on right now and the talking heads are now finally saying that maybe they jumped to the racism conclusion a bit too quickly and what a shame it is that Crowley's reputation has been besmirched with this charge. I agree.
They are also saying that perhaps this is an issue more of "classism" rather than racism. I agree. I think that played in on both sides.
They are still more or less giving Gates a pass for behaving badly because he expects to be treated in a racist manor by the police and because a Harvard professor should be expected to be arrogant... I disagree. I still don't think that Gates should have been arrested, but I think that had he been a little more reasonable it would have turned out differently.
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MM
That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.
T-minus 3 hours until "The Beer Summit". This circus now involves lawyers and union reps. The talking heads are critiquing the beer choices involved. Again I as, WHY?!?
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MM
That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.
It was apparently Sgt. Crowley's idea. Even a lawyer for the lady who called in the suspicious activity report to 911 is getting into it... complaining of course that her client was snubbed by "they boys club".
So now this is about racism, classism, and sexism instead of just about a citizen and a police officer who both went overboard about a benign situation.
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MM
That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.
And they wonder why we have the problems we have in this country. This is not news. Unfortuantely, things like this probably happen everyday and they don't make the news.
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Stop trying to be what you see. Be what you ought to be.
It does happen all the time. As long as there are people, there will be some form of bias at play. A person is the sum and total of their thoughts and experiences. Those factors will always sway the way a person looks at the world. Nothing will ever change that.
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MM
That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.
For the largest part, most of us do. Most people are reasonable. Most people will do the right thing most of the time. This is just a dumb situation blown out of proportion because Gates happens to be somewhat famous in the intellectual community and because he happens to be friends with the President.
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MM
That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.
