Poor Choice of Words or the Truth?
July 28th 2009 15:40
Like every normal person, who's able, we all go on vacations. We can get so caught up in the excitement of getting away from our troubles, that sometimes we may forget some simple things, like keys! Heck, I don't have to be going on a vacation to forget my house or car keys when running out the door. But to come back to reality and realize, 'Oh Crap', I can't get back into the house cause my keys are sitting on the dinning room table is a bit of a conundrum. After panicking, there are two choices: either call a locksmith and come up with whatever ridiculous amount they charge you for being forgetful, or attempt to break in through a window that's easy to clean up and might be cheaper to replace if you do it yourself. This sounds like a normal thing that probably happens on a daily basis in some neighborhood, in some town, in some country! Not really a news worthy headline right? WRONG.
A couple of weeks ago, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested for doing the exact same scenario I just described above. He broke into his own home! Now, I've had to break into my own house before, and luckily enough, no one called the cops on me for scaling the front of my house to my bedroom window trying to climb in because I'd left my keys at a party the night before. But in the case involving Mr. Gates, one of his neighbors did, in fact, call the police to report someone possibly breaking into a home in broad daylight. The Cambridge, Mass. Police Dept. did what they were supposed to do as officers of the law, by responding to the call, accosting the suspect and questioning his intentions. But, this is where it begins to take a turn for the worse. When Mr. Gates explains that he was just returning from a long vacation, that he had somehow lost his keys, and was breaking into this house because it was in fact his home, the police should have laughed at the situation, maybe given him advice to call a locksmith the next time this happens, and left the premises.
Well, that didn't happen and instead, Mr. Gates was arrested on bogus charges, taken into custody, later released with charges dropped, and then began a hailstorm of questions and comments and debates about what went wrong to lead up to President Obama making a statement concerning the situation that was later seen as a possible' poor choice of words'. The idea of racial profiling entered the conversations around media debate tables because of the fact that Mr. Gates is indeed African American and his home is in a very affluent and predominately white area. If Mr. Gates was white instead, would the police have acted in the same manor as far as handcuffing and arresting him once they saw legal documentation proving that he was the owner of the home? Would neighbors have been so quick to call the police about someone, especially an old man on a cane, breaking a window in broad daylight to gain entry into a home if he had been white?
I, and thousands of other Americans including our own President, would like to think that the police would have, but honestly and realistically we can't be sure. The President's choice of words hit the nail on the head, the police department did act 'stupidly' in the handling of this case. They were correct in how they responded to the call and their investigation of the situation, but they should have also been able to walk away from the scene after verification of the ownership of the home with a simple apology or advice on how to better handle being locked out one's home. Now, their ridiculous behavior has opened Pandora's box of the question of racial profiling in handling routine calls. Although, President Obama has recanted his original remarks and has even offered an olive branch to sit down and discuss the underlying issues about this situation, the fact still remains that his supposed 'poor choice of words' were the ugly truth about our societal views concerning law enforcement and race. Do legal lines get crossed depending on race, who's at fault, and how can simple circumstances such as being locked out of one's home not turn into possible racially motivated errors versus funny misunderstandings??
A couple of weeks ago, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested for doing the exact same scenario I just described above. He broke into his own home! Now, I've had to break into my own house before, and luckily enough, no one called the cops on me for scaling the front of my house to my bedroom window trying to climb in because I'd left my keys at a party the night before. But in the case involving Mr. Gates, one of his neighbors did, in fact, call the police to report someone possibly breaking into a home in broad daylight. The Cambridge, Mass. Police Dept. did what they were supposed to do as officers of the law, by responding to the call, accosting the suspect and questioning his intentions. But, this is where it begins to take a turn for the worse. When Mr. Gates explains that he was just returning from a long vacation, that he had somehow lost his keys, and was breaking into this house because it was in fact his home, the police should have laughed at the situation, maybe given him advice to call a locksmith the next time this happens, and left the premises.
Well, that didn't happen and instead, Mr. Gates was arrested on bogus charges, taken into custody, later released with charges dropped, and then began a hailstorm of questions and comments and debates about what went wrong to lead up to President Obama making a statement concerning the situation that was later seen as a possible' poor choice of words'. The idea of racial profiling entered the conversations around media debate tables because of the fact that Mr. Gates is indeed African American and his home is in a very affluent and predominately white area. If Mr. Gates was white instead, would the police have acted in the same manor as far as handcuffing and arresting him once they saw legal documentation proving that he was the owner of the home? Would neighbors have been so quick to call the police about someone, especially an old man on a cane, breaking a window in broad daylight to gain entry into a home if he had been white?
I, and thousands of other Americans including our own President, would like to think that the police would have, but honestly and realistically we can't be sure. The President's choice of words hit the nail on the head, the police department did act 'stupidly' in the handling of this case. They were correct in how they responded to the call and their investigation of the situation, but they should have also been able to walk away from the scene after verification of the ownership of the home with a simple apology or advice on how to better handle being locked out one's home. Now, their ridiculous behavior has opened Pandora's box of the question of racial profiling in handling routine calls. Although, President Obama has recanted his original remarks and has even offered an olive branch to sit down and discuss the underlying issues about this situation, the fact still remains that his supposed 'poor choice of words' were the ugly truth about our societal views concerning law enforcement and race. Do legal lines get crossed depending on race, who's at fault, and how can simple circumstances such as being locked out of one's home not turn into possible racially motivated errors versus funny misunderstandings??
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