If you can stand another take on the Gates arrest, check this out (just got it in an email)

[proud2BlibKansan]

Here are two classic examples of how police in general approach and deal with black males and white males. If after reading this, whatever your race, you don't see the difference, you have a problem. Here goes:

Situation #1:

Back in the latter days of the Clinton administration, a lone white man climbed over the Whitehouse fence with a large caliber rifle! Remember this guy is on the Whitehouse lawn with a rifle! The Secret Service and the D.C. police spent about 2 hours negotiating with this gun tot ing nut before finally shooting him in the leg and arresting him!

Situation #2:

A short time prior or shortly thereafter the Whitehouse incident, a lone black immigrant was confronted by 4 or 5 New York City cops. This man had committed no crime and was not a threat to anyone. He reached for his wallet, possibly to show his identification and the cops shot at him 44 times in his own doorway! That’s right, the man was plugged with at least 19 bullet holes in a matter of seconds standing in the doorway of the place where he lived!

If these two stories don’t make you understand the how policemen often react to people of different races, and possibly why Professor Gates reacted the way he did, then nothing will!

Think about it! An armed white man goes to the Whitehouse, is negotiated with, then taken into custody with a bullet in the leg. An unarmed black man guilty of no crime is shot dead by a firing squad of policemen in the doorway of his own home!

[Life Long Dem]

1. Comparing NYC to Harvard Square?

Maybe not... Maybe it isn't one city or one cop.

[countmyvote4real]

2. Maybe this will help connect the dots...

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/24/wright.police.gates/index.html

[Life Long Dem]

4. I have the dots connected. But thanks.

[progdonkey]

3. not really "classic," since they're extremely different situations...

If you want to compare two things and focus on one issue, everything else needs to be relatively similar--setting, actors, etc. These two events are very different and it's very difficult to attribute that difference to race.

The White House itself is a fortress, so once they established it was a lone nut with a rifle, there was very little to no danger to the president or to anybody in the building. I wouldn't expect the Secret Service (whom I would consider far better trained and more professional than NYC beat cops) to just start shooting at anyone, even a guy with an automatic rifle. It takes a lot more to become an SS agent (most. unfortunate. initials. ever.) than a cop on the NYPD. There's also the day/night issue and the fact that in the first event it was quickly clear what the situation was--lone nut with an assault rifle--so they could take more time with it, whereas in the latter the cops didn't know what exactly the situation was and they were afraid the situation was escalating (though I'm not denying at all that that was clearly a bunch of idiot cops acting jumpy because there was a black guy in their sights).

In other words, you're only focusing on the race issue to serve your point, but I could just as easily make it a "professionalism of the Secret Service vs. the idiocy of the NYPD" argument. You'd really have to give two cases of a guy storming the White House with an automatic rifle--one black, one white--with the white one being negotiated with and the black one getting shot on sight. Right now, the cases just are too dissimilar to be illustrative.

I'm not denying that blacks generally get much more hassle and grief from cops--who are predominantly white--and therefore have reason to be suspicious of them but rather just criticizing the relevancy of the examples given.