Henry Louis Gates’s Arrest: A Teachable Moment? Laura Flanders, guests

[EFerrari]

There’s been an endless cycle of commentary on the Henry Louis Gates affair since the Harvard Professor was arrested in his home and President Obama made the off script remark that the Cambridge police had “acted stupidly.” Both men are now saying it is time to move on and that what happened was a teachable moment. But what, if anything, have we learned?

Bill Fletcher, Jr., Executive Editor of Black Commentator, Ron Kuby a Civil Rights Attorney and the host of Doing Time with Ron Kuby on Air America, Dennis Parker, Director of the Racial Justice Program at the American Civil Liberties Union, and Rev. Irene Monroe, a Ford Fellow and Doctoral Candidate at Harvard Divinity School on race, class, and law enforcement in America. The ACLU has recently published a report on racial profiling that you can find here.

http://lauraflanders.firedoglake.com/2009/07/28/henry-louis-gatess-arrest-a-teachable-moment/

Video shows these guests discussing their different takes on the primary problem in this incident -- class, race, or police miscondust. Please go to link for hotlinks.

[mzteris]

1. bottom line -

if Gates had been white, he'd've never been arrested.

if Obama had been white, he'd've never been asked about it.

[EFerrari]

2. Yep. Apparently, Ms. Whalen is having a press conference tomorrow.

911 caller in Gates case to speak publicly
July 28, 2009

BOSTON—The woman who called police to report a possible break-in at the home of black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. plans to speak publicly for the first time Wednesday.

Gates was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge July 16 after Cambridge police responded to a 911 call by Lucia Whalen. The charge was dropped, but Gates' arrest sparked a national debate about whether he was a victim of racial profiling.

Whalen's attorney, Wendy Murphy, said Whalen plans a news conference Wednesday in Cambridge because she wants to get on with her life. Murphy said Whalen has been hounded "relentlessly" by the news media and was upset when her mother was approached by reporters Tuesday.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/07/28/911_caller_in_gates_case_to_speak_publicly/

[EFerrari]

3. Professor Gates and the Criminalization of Black Men in America

"Benign" Bigotry
The Psychology of Subtle Prejudice
by Kristin J. Anderson, Ph.D.


Kristin J. Anderson, Ph.D. is a professor at the University of Houston-Downtown and the author of Benign Bigotry: The Psychology of Subtle Prejudice (Cambridge, November 2009).
July 28, 2009, Law and Crime

Professor Gates and the Criminalization of Black Men in America
Do we live in a "post-racial" America?

The recent arrest of Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. reminds us of Alexis de Tocqueville's prediction nearly two centuries ago that the eventual end of slavery would be the start of a protracted and bloody struggle in America driven by the engine of racial inequality. During the Jim Crow era, the statutory category of "vagrancy" served much the same function as "disorderly conduct" appears to serve now. And, like vagrancy in its vagueness and discretionary margin for law enforcement, the case of Professor Gates allows police officers to determine when his behavior has become sufficiently "loud and tumultuous" to warrant arrest in his own home.

In what some claim as "post-racial" America, individual instances of African Americans' experience with the criminal justice system do not convince people, particularly whites, that these incidents add up to much. In "post-racial" America, where we are encouraged to believe that there is virtue in ignoring race, it is African Americans, not whites who seem to want to inject race into every event involving people of color. Any notice of the dimension of race is subject to accusations of "playing the race card."

If racism is understood only in terms of slavery and lynchings, then we might live in a post-racial era. But this is not an accurate view of how racism and discrimination work. Racist violence still takes place, but today discrimination more often occurs in seemingly little ways, in treatment that, if viewed as isolated events seem to not amount to much. But for African Americans, the hundreds of indignities that have been described as death by a thousand nicks, accumulate as a lifetime of regular and repeated confrontation with racism. And while most African Americans, and likely every single African American man, have had negative experiences with the criminal justice system, these instances do not seem to count for much in the collective white American mind. Psychological research lends support for these individual experiences of African Americans.

A common stereotype about African Americans, particularly African American men, is that they are angry, hostile, and aggressive. Research on facial perception suggests that white Americans over interpret anger in black men. One study found that white Americans interpreted anger in the faces of African American men whose faces were actually neutral. This did not happen when white men or African American women's faces were viewed. How do these biases in the interpretation of black men come about? Most white Americans have relatively little actual contact with African Americans. We live in segregated communities and workplaces. One place whites do see African Americans is on television. What does television teach people about African Americans?

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/benign-bigotry/200907/professor-gates-and-the-criminalization-black-men-in-america