The Struggle for Major Healthcare Reform and the Massive Corporate Interests Opposing It

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5907882/Barack-Obamas-health-reform-plans-are-a-bitter-pill-for-his-personal-doctor.html

All,

While Obama's heart is clearly in the right place regarding the fight for healthcare reform the ugly painful truth is that the very powerful and notoriously greedy insurance lobby as well as the general healthcare and pharmaceutical industry (not to mention politicians from both political parties who are in the hip pocket of these massive corporate interests) are determined to sabotage a universal healthcare plan by strangling it in its crib. Unless and until the American people actively demand that a truly democratic and just healthcare system is created there is in actuality very little chance that whatever highly compromised plan the President is able to get passed in Congress is seriously going to address the depth and breadth of the real crisis in healthcare as even Obama's former personal doctor insightfully points out in the article below. This is a pivotal moment in the history of the economic system of this country and the healthcare industry is at the very center of it. If we fail to do what is politically necessary on this issue (as we've thus far failed to do with regard to the banks for example) it is absolutely assured that the economic misery that we're currently experiencing will only get far worse--and soon,,,

Kofi



President Barack Obama's personal doctor for more than two decades is bitterly disappointed by the health care reforms being pushed through Congress at the urging of his former patient.

Barack Obama's health reform plans are a bitter pill for his personal doctor

By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Published: 25 Jul 2009
The Telegraph (London)

President Barack Obama has put the plight of the uninsured at the forefront of his domestic agenda

Dr David Scheiner remains a big fan of the man he treated for 22 years in Chicago. But does not believe the planned overhaul goes far enough to help the poor and uninsured, and will cost too much because of pressure from the health care industry.

The 71-year-old physician, who has treated low income patients for his entire career in the city's Hyde Park neighbourhood, believes Mr Obama favours an NHS-style "single payer" system, but backed away under pressure from the health industry.

"He's a pragmatist, he wants to get something done" Dr Scheiner told The Sunday Telegraph. "But this time he should have pushed back hard against the health care lobby."

He is bitterly disappointed in the way the reforms are being organised and says he was bounced from the invitation list to a White House event because of pressure from the health lobby.

"I was all set to go to an event, I got an email a few days before confirming it, and then suddenly I was told 'there were too many people' coming," he said. "I think they knew I was going to ask an awkward question about the single payer option."
He contends that the reforms winding their way though Congress "could bankrupt us because there are no real cost controls and the big beneficiaries will be private hospitals and insurance companies".

Dr Scheiner argues that Americans have been terrified by the advertising campaigns of what he calls the "medical industrial complex" into believing that they will lose their own health care coverage if a government-run plan is created.
Dr Sheiner's concern is for the 46 million Americans who are uninsured today and who will be covered by a government-backed insurance scheme.

He says the system being created will be far more expensive than it needs to be, as a result of pressure from the health care industry, he says. "The insurance companies will also play a major role in the administration of the new public plan'," he said "and that's going to be disastrous."

"I'm not sure he (Obama) really understands what goes on in primary care," Dr Scheiner said. "He doesn't see all the pain; it's so tragic out here. Obama's wonderful, but on this one I'm not sure if he's getting good advice."

The "single payer" system would cover everyone's health care and eliminate the huge profits of specialists, hospitals and insurers, Dr Scheiner believes. It was doomed from the outset by being labelled "socialised medicine," however. He said that Mr Obama was always "in magnificent health" and during the election campaign last year he vouched for the candidate's "excellent" condition.

Henry Louis Gates Caves In and Goes To the White House to 'Have Beer' with Cop

Librado Romero/The New York Times
Henry Louis Gates Jr. in his Manhattan apartment.

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/henry-louis-gates-deja-vu-all-over-again/

Ray,

Stanley Fish does right by Skip and expresses genuine respect, support, and compassion for him and his work in a virulently racist society. It's too bad that Gates doesn't have the guts and integrity to do the same on his own behalf. He would rather go to the White House and hobnob with the President and the racist cop who humiliated him while at the same time pretending that he's actually concerned with seriously addressing the issues of racial profiling and police abuse against people of color. How can one possibly respect and support a man who doesn't have the independent will or ethical clarity to choose Justice over Celebrity?

Kofi





JULY 24, 2009
Henry Louis Gates: Déjà Vu All Over Again
Stanley Fish
Opinion Page
New York Times


I’m Skip Gates’s friend, too. That’s probably the only thing I share with President Obama, so when he ended his press conference last Wednesday by answering a question about Gates’s arrest after he was seen trying to get into his own house, my ears perked up.

As the story unfolded in the press and on the Internet, I flashed back 20 years or so to the time when Gates arrived in Durham, N.C., to take up the position I had offered him in my capacity as chairman of the English department of Duke University. One of the first things Gates did was buy the grandest house in town (owned previously by a movie director) and renovate it. During the renovation workers would often take Gates for a servant and ask to be pointed to the house’s owner. The drivers of delivery trucks made the same mistake.

The message was unmistakable: What was a black man doing living in a place like this?

At the university (which in a past not distant at all did not admit African-Americans ), Gates’s reception was in some ways no different. Doubts were expressed in letters written by senior professors about his scholarly credentials, which were vastly superior to those of his detractors. (He was already a recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, the so called “genius award.”) There were wild speculations (again in print) about his salary, which in fact was quite respectable but not inordinate; when a list of the highest-paid members of the Duke faculty was published, he was nowhere on it.

The Associated Press Henry Louis Gates, Jr., during a book signing in 2006.
The unkindest cut of all was delivered by some members of the black faculty who had made their peace with Duke traditions and did not want an over-visible newcomer and upstart to trouble waters that had long been still. (The great historian John Hope Franklin was an exception.) When an offer came from Harvard, there wasn’t much I could do. Gates accepted it, and when he left he was pursued by false reports about his tenure at what he had come to call “the plantation.” (I became aware of his feelings when he and I and his father watched the N.C.A.A. championship game between Duke and U.N.L.V. at my house; they were rooting for U.N.L.V.)

Now, in 2009, it’s a version of the same story. Gates is once again regarded with suspicion because, as the cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson put it in an interview, he has committed the crime of being H.W.B., Housed While Black.

He isn’t the only one thought to be guilty of that crime. TV commentators, laboring to explain the unusual candor and vigor of Obama’s initial comments on the Gates incident, speculated that he had probably been the victim of racial profiling himself. Speculation was unnecessary, for they didn’t have to look any further than the story they were reporting in another segment, the story of the “birthers” — the “wing-nuts,” in Chris Matthews’s phrase — who insist that Obama was born in Kenya and cite as “proof” his failure to come up with an authenticated birth certificate. For several nights running, Matthews displayed a copy of the birth certificate and asked, What do you guys want? How can you keep saying these things in the face of all evidence?

He missed the point. No evidence would be sufficient, just as no evidence would have convinced some of my Duke colleagues that Gates was anything but a charlatan and a fraud. It isn’t the legitimacy of Obama’s birth certificate that’s the problem for the birthers. The problem is again the legitimacy of a black man living in a big house, especially when it’s the White House. Just as some in Durham and Cambridge couldn’t believe that Gates belonged in the neighborhood, so does a vocal minority find it hard to believe that an African-American could possibly be the real president of the United States.Gates and Obama are not only friends; they are in the same position, suspected of occupying a majestic residence under false pretenses. And Obama is a double offender. Not only is he guilty of being Housed While Black; he is the first in American history guilty of being P.W.B., President While Black.

Stanley Fish is the Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor and a professor of law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has also taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins and Duke University. He is the author of 10 books. His new book on higher education, "Save the World On Your Own Time," has just been published.

http://ethicist.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/why-henry-louis-gates-should-sue/

All,

Of course Gates should sue! And if he had any guts or personal integrity he would. The evidence is overwhelming that the cop Crowley clearly lied in his police report. The 911 tape and the public testimony of the woman who called the police indicates conclusively that she didn't identify the race of the men she said were at the door of Gates's home and she also mentioned in her call (which has been publically released) that she couldn't tell if the people on Gates's porch were strangers or actually lived at the house and that she saw two suitcases on the porch which she (correctly) surmised might be evidence that at least one of the two men she saw lived there.

It's also important to note that Gates has made a number of forceful comments in high profile TV and print media interviews since the incident that he firmly believed he was not only a victim of racial profiling but was harassed by the police--even going so far as to call Crowley a "rouge cop". In addition it's very clear that the President was absolutely correct initially in criticizing the idiotic and racist arrest as "stupid". Obama subsequently defended his remarks the following day only to go back on those same remarks and dishonestly claim that he didn't mean to impugn the police just one day after he had defended his initial comments.

Thus all the infantile and frankly insulting/ condescending spin by the white media as well as Obama and Gates both that this episode affords us all a "teachable moment" fails to reveal the obvious fact that if they only stood their ground and refuse to cave in the public pressure of the many American racists who hate and will continue to despise them no matter what they say and do that they could have used this episode to "teach us" that racial profiling and racist police abuse of African American citizens would not be tolerated under any circumstances. As it stands however this ridiculous "beer sip" meeting of Gates, Obama, and Crowley at the White House only serves to obscure, distort, and cover up the true meaning of what this heinous incident (and the ongoing thousands of such cases taking place every single day in black communities throughout this country) actually reveals about racism and the notorious criminal justice system in the U.S.

Kofi



July 27, 2009

Should Henry Louis Gates Sip or Sue?
By RANDY COHEN
New York Times



The Issue

Last week in Cambridge, Mass., Sgt. James Crowley arrested Henry Louis Gates Jr., a professor at Harvard, for disorderly conduct while responding to a reported break-in at Gates’s home. The charges were subsequently dropped, and the city of Cambridge expressed regret, but Gates holds out the possibility of suing Crowley, the city or its Police Department. President Obama has urged calm and conciliation, and invited Gates and Crowley to have a beer and a chat at the White House. Should Gates sip or sue?



The Argument

Gates should enjoy a cool one and then file suit, assuming he has legal grounds to do so. We Americans are often mocked for being overly litigious, but we are not nearly litigious enough. In the right circumstances, filing suit can be a way to pursue social justice, and that makes it thoroughly ethical.

I am not encouraging frivolous lawsuits or those inspired by TV pitchmen who use the words “slip and fall” as if invoking El Dorado. Rather, I refer to suits filed to oppose systemic injustice, for the benefit of the larger community, often at some personal risk and expense. This is not opportunism; it’s altruism, not self-interest but civic virtue. A lawsuit by Gates could lead to a formal examination of the troubled history of police interactions with African-Americans and hence would meet this standard.

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, an organization that has sued the New York Police Department many times on behalf of individuals and groups, told me that lawsuits can be “an important tool for reform when coupled with advocacy and public education efforts and when the circumstances are conducive to change.”

Such laudable results can flow not only from great historic decisions — Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade — but from local actions, like the N.Y.C.L.U.’s suits over the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policies and its handling of demonstrators during the 2004 Republican convention. Simply participating in such a suit can be regarded as the crowning achievement of a lifetime. When the pediatrician Howard Engle died last week, the headline of his obituary in The New York Times was “H. A. Engle, Tobacco Plaintiff, Dies at 89.”

Indeed, our popular culture lionizes those who sue righteously. Paul Newman wins a medical malpractice case in “The Verdict.” Julia Roberts takes on a polluting power company in “Erin Brockovich.” John Travolta sues a company dumping toxic waste in “A Civil Action.” (And these last two movies were based on actual people and cases.)

Even a losing lawsuit can compel a powerful institution — government agency or corporation — to disclose its policies and practices during legal proceedings. A lawsuit can provide a public forum to examine a significant issue, guided by a dispassionate judge. What could be more virtuous?

There are arguments against going to law. For Gates in particular, using the courts is hardly the only way to be heard. He has been widely interviewed about the arrest; even his daughter has spoken about it on television. (Crowley first told his side of the story on a local sports talk-radio show.) So prominent is Gates that a reporter at a White House press conference asked the president about the arrest. Gates could write a book about it, lecture about it at Harvard or explore it in a television series. (He was returning from shooting one in China the day of the incident.)

Nor is he ethically obligated to sue. Doing so is supererogatory, above and beyond the call of duty. Only he can decide if he has the stomach for a struggle and the resources — financial, psychological — to proceed.

And if he does, there is no guarantee that he would initiate real social change. David Feige, the former trial chief of the Bronx Defenders, public defenders in, well, yes, the Bronx, told me: “There is a fairly equivocal record in forcing reforms through individual lawsuits. Class-action suits have been more effective — those brought to improve prison conditions, for example. So what we really need is more broad, social-justice class-action suits.”

These arguments notwithstanding, Gates should sue. Social change proceeds through the combination of many forces — legislation, litigation and public discourse among them. For Gates to contribute to this effort would be laudable. (And given the high — and disheartening — number of African-American men who, since Gates arrest, have described their own similar encounters with the police, the class-action suit Feige calls for might be sadly possible.)

The president has softened his initial response to this affair, withdrawing his remark at the press conference that “the Cambridge police acted stupidly.” He now suggests that both Gates and Crowley “overreacted.” Quite likely. But if Gates overreacted, he did so only as an individual, an outburst that might be obnoxious but is not criminal. There is no law against Contempt of Cop. If Crowley overreacted, he erred as a professional, perhaps abusing his office in a manner that is particularly fraught, given the history of African-Americans and the police. That’s what should be examined in court.

Both Crowley and Gates have accepted Obama’s invitation. Courteous conversation is a fine thing; beer is a fine thing. But not even White House brew can resolve this conflict the way a trial can. Gates and Crowley should drink heartily, speak civilly and eventually reconvene in a courtroom.

President Obama Backs Down in Stand Against Racial Profiling and Invites Gates & Crowley to the White House

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/us/politics/25gatesblogs.html?pagewanted=all


All,

I have personally lost a great deal of respect for the President because of the clearly opportunist and cowardly manner in which he has responded to this incident. By inviting Gates and the police officer to the White House (both men have actually accepted the invitation!) all Obama has done is to ask these two people to "save his presidency" in the eyes of the millions of racists who despise him, Gates, black people in general and will continue to do so NO MATTER WHAT THE PRESIDENT DOES. Inviting these two individuals to the White House completely obscures and even attempts to obliterate the true meaning of what actually happened and gives the utterly false impression that racism and the blatant abuses of the criminal justice system is being addressed by the mere appearance of these two people coming to the White House and holding hands with Obama as the matchmaker. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ADDRESSING THE SERIOUS ISSUE OF RACIAL PROFILING AND RACIST ABUSE OF AFRICAN AMERICANS. NOTHING WHATSOEVER. This is nothing but a publicity ploy on the part of Obama with the active complicity of Gates and the racist cop. It's nothing but a mere photo-op for the President and does NOTHING to address the very serious issues of racism in this society. I am personally ASHAMED of how Obama has "handled" this situation and it goes a long way to showing that Obama typically wants it both ways in a situation that in reality requires a completely independent point of view and sticking by and for principle. THIS IS NOT LEADERSHIP AND I'M NOT GOING TO PRETEND IT IS JUST BECAUSE WE'RE BOTH BLACK. It's COWARDICE plain and simple and it makes me cringe when I even think about how badly Obama has dealt with this situation. All he's done in fact is to send a clear signal to his and our enemies that he is a weakling who will back down under public pressure (especially on issues dealing with race and class) and that they can take further abusive license with him and us because they know that when push comes to shove Obama will fold like a tent and allow himself and his supporters--especially the black ones-- to be politically CHUMPED. It's a sad commentary on not only Obama but the larger society and culture who continue to act as though nothing important is being revealed in this incident and the thousands like it that happen every single day in this country.

Kofi

July 25, 2009

Varied Opinions on Gates Controversy Light Up the Web

By MARIA NEWMAN
New York Times

The arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black Harvard scholar, for disorderly conduct in his home in Cambridge, Mass., by a white police officer, is fueling an often emotional dialogue on Web sites and blogs.

The encounter between the two men on the front porch of a Victorian home near the Harvard campus has resonated with columnists and ordinary people alike, all trying to make sense of what happened and what it says about race relations in the United States.

Many of the commentators identify themselves by race. Their remarks — raw, heartfelt, confused, and some perhaps offensive — are a remarkable snapshot of how people are viewing the same event through a racial lens.

A commentator on The New York Times’s Web site, who identified himself as Anthony E. Russell, wrote, “Black males hold the distinction of being the only group in America who are expected to be responsible full-blooded men and acquiescent boys, simultaneously.”

Mr. Russell added: “I also know that every man who shares my pigmentation or genotype is not a criminal. I would hope that this nation’s police would eventually come to the same conclusion, where appropriate.”

On Slate.com, a commenter named Ohio Granny wrote: “There is definitely racism in America. You can’t be friends with a black person because they are always black first and man/woman/American/christian/etc second. Professor Gates claims ‘they wouldn’t treat me like this if I were white’. See? How does he know that? It is the classic assumption that goes throught their heads all the time.”

The news of Mr. Gates’ arrest has become fodder for conversations all over the country. Even President Obama commented on the matter, in remarks that themselves drew fire, on the Internet and on television.

Keith N. Hampton, who studies social networking at the University of Pennsylvania, said that “information definitely travels more quickly as a result of the Internet, particularly as a result of new social media such as Twitter and Facebook.”

But Mr. Hampton, an assistant professor in the university’s Annenberg School for Communication, said the discussion might still have spread quickly without the Internet.

“While the Internet changes the expectation for how fast information travels, and how long it should take for people to respond to information, an issue as important and resonant as this would probably have garnished significant attention with or without the Internet,” he said.

Many of the comments on the Web came in response to columns on the topic that have been posted all week, on news sites, or Web sites with more left-leaning or right-leaning slants. As people expressed views on the event, readers were prompted to respond more quickly.

Mr. Hampton said, “There is a bit of a paradox in that the Internet allows us to access information faster, but the speed that information travels may change our expectation for how fast all the information should come forward.”

On Twitter, the social networking site, the arrest drew thousands of comments.

Someone who writes under the name TheRealAlSex wrote: “this whole henry louis gates jr arrest thing will probably start a race war.”

Another commenter, dwon8, wrote, “Henry Louis Gates asking a cop for his badge # is disorderly conduct, if u r black. thats lesson #4 in the hood. now u know.”

Some of the comments are full of pain and humiliation the writers say they suffered at the hands of the police, while others discuss whether there is racism in America.

“As a white person having been in the same situation once with the Chicago police I handled it much differently than Gates,” one commenter wrote to Slate.com. “I was appreciative of the police suspicion and action (what if I were breaking into someone’s home? I was immediately polite, obedient and aware of my every move (I did not want to get arrested or worse shot dead).”

He went on to say, “Perhaps the officer should not have arrested him, but Gates did not conduct himself properly either.”

On the right-leaning blog Reihl World View, one poster identified as notapundit wrote:

“The cops have walked right into the ‘racist trap’ that Obama helps set up by his premature bullying of a white cop (a black cop would never have come under such criticisms). No matter what the cops did, they’re racist.”

Another poster named Mrs. Peperium wrote:

“Obama stepped in it big time with this as many people voted for him hoping a black man in the White House would finally put to bed our racial problems.”

On The New York Times Web site, articles posted this week on the Gates arrest have drawn several thousand comments.

An article in The Times on Fridayby Susan Saulny and Robbie Brown focused on how people of ethnic backgrounds, especially black males, believe they have to operate under a different code of conduct in their encounters with law enforcement. The article drew hundreds of comments by the end of the day.

In the article, Al Vivian, a diversity consultant in Atlanta who is black, counseled that quiet politeness “is Rule No. 1 in surviving an incident of racial profiling.” He added: “So is the frequent use of the word ‘sir.’ ”

“That’s how you survive anything, not just racial profiling,” wrote one commenter, detroit dog of Detroit. “You learn to talk to your parents like that when you’re a kid; that’s how you survive to adulthood. What happened to Gates is a common reality for all people that make a bad situation worse. (And I’m a ‘minority’ and I hate that word.)”

The subject seemed to resonate with people, many of whom posted messages on blogs about having experienced similar encounters with police. Some people sympathized with Mr. Gates, saying the police acted wrongly, while others defended the officer, Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Mass., Police Department, saying that Mr. Gates should have been more respectful.

On Slate.com, many people commented on a column by Richard Thompson Ford.

“The baseless arrest of one of the nation’s most esteemed scholars is wrong and unfortunate, whether racism or simple abuse of authority is to blame,” Mr. Thompson wrote.

A commenter to Mr. Ford’s column, who describes himself as a white American man living in Brazil, sided with Mr. Gates, but admonished him:

“I’m sure you have been mistreated. But you are a privledged, elite man. Your anger should be directed at the people who hurt people with less power than you. It’s not about you. You are a professor, a scholar, a brilliant writer,” he said.

“You, me, a white guy, are the same, we proably will get off in a situation like yours,” he said. “Stand up, be a man, and realize that it’s not about you, it’s about all of us, the injustice of our entire socieity, and your getting off, as just as it is, is proof that the elite need not feer what the average joe or jane does. Wake up Mr. Gates, the lesson here is not quite what you think it is.”

President Obama addressed the matter again on Friday, saying he “could have calibrated” his words more carefully, after having said earlier in the week that the police “acted stupidly,” and then more commenters weighed in.

A commenter to The Washington Post named ravitchn wrote:

“O’Bama is smart enough to know he is in trouble. But he has gone too far in being black; we whites will never trust him again.”

Another commenter to the Post named “luca_20009” wrote:

“Like I said before, Gates is to the civil rights cause what Perez Hilton is to gay rights. Thanks for setting things back 10 years ... but at least you’re going to get a little PBS special out of it. Quisling.”

And there was also this comment in The Post, from “jlkreutzer”: “C’mon guys. The charges were dropped. That means they were not good charges to begin with.”

The same commenter went on to say: “I hope both protaganists have a reasonable discussion at the White House. We really do need to evolve and get along; this country has enough challenges”

On Facebook, Larry King Live’s fan page also drew comments on the Gates arrest.

“Darrell” told Mr. King’s fans this afternoon: “Obama commented on the situation and now Larry King says he’s stirring racial passions ... Larry, it’s the media like yourself who cause all this tension by sensationalizing it!”


Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

President Obama Backtracks on His Statement About Cambridge Police in the Henry Louis Gates Case

www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/us/politics/25gates.html?_r=1&ref=global-home&pagewanted=all

All,

This is nothing but cowardly doubletalk on Obama's part and a blatantly obvious capitulation to the racism of millions of white Americans throughout the country who have done nothing but openly malign and attack Gates, Obama, and black people generally in this situation and propped up the racist white police officer as a man who was "simply doing his job." The power of the doctrine of white supremacy AS ALWAYS strikes again. Nothing surprising there...

As for the President however this episode and his absurd and utterly false suggestion/assertion that both Gates and the police were "equally overreacting" I have nothing but contempt. It's nothing but a BIG LIE meant to try to assuage racist white voters and their political representatives (e.g. the racist and sexist rightwing in particular and the Republican Party in general). It demonstrates incredible weakness and weakminded sophistry on Obama's part and indicates once again that the white backlash fallout of the fact that Obama only received 43% of the white vote in the presidential election (as opposed to the 55% of the white vote that McCain received!) is continuing to have a fatal impact on Obama's general political agenda and his opportunist flipflopping stances on a number of important political and economic issues facing the black community and the rest of the nation as well.

It takes genuine courage and independence to be a real leader and this kind of weakassed running scared performance on Obama's part ain't it! Not by a long shot. it To say that I am "bitterly disappointed" in the President on his pathetic response to the Gates case is seriously understating by a very large margin. I AM THOROUGHLY DISGUSTED...

Kofi

Obama Says He Regrets His Language on Gates Arrest

President Obama made a surprise appearance at the daily White House briefing on Friday shortly after Sgt. James Crowley appeared at a news conference in Cambridge, Mass.

By JEFF ZELENY and LIZ ROBBINS
Published: July 24, 2009
New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Friday that he “could have calibrated” his words more carefully in the controversy over the arrest of a black Harvard professor by a white police officer, but added that there had been an “overreaction” by both sides in a case that touched off an intense discussion about race in America.

“To the extent that my choice of words didn’t illuminate, but rather contributed to more media frenzy, I think, that was unfortunate,” Mr. Obama said, making an unusual unannounced visit to the White House briefing room in an effort to ease the controversy.

The president, who on Wednesday said that the police in Cambridge, Mass., “acted stupidly” in the arrest of Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr., a prominent Harvard scholar of African-American history, sought to clear up the matter. He said he hoped the case could become “a teachable moment” to be used to improve relations between minorities and police officers.

The president said that he conveyed his sentiment to Sgt. James Crowley in a telephone call on Friday afternoon. The call, which lasted about five minutes, came after police officials in Massachusetts and beyond accused Mr. Obama of maligning the character of Sergeant Crowley and the entire Cambridge police force.

“I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up, I wanted to make clear that in my choice of words, I think, I unfortunately, I think, gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically,” Mr. Obama told reporters. “I could have calibrated those words differently, and I told this to Sergeant Crowley.”

Mr. Obama did not specifically use the word “apology,” but aides said that was the sentiment conveyed during his call with the officer. Mr. Obama, the nation’s first black president, has walked a careful line in his writings and in his political career when addressing race. Since taking office six months ago, he has delivered only a handful of speeches devoted specifically to race.

But an unscripted remark at a news conference on Wednesday evening — particularly the two words “acting stupidly” — touched off a widespread discussion about race that overshadowed the promotion of the president’s health care plan and other agenda items.

“I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station,” Mr. Obama added. “I also continue to believe, based on what I heard that Professor Gates probably overreacted as well. My sense is you’ve got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve the incident in the way that it should have been resolved and the way they would have liked it to be resolved.”

Professor Gates was arrested on July 16, when the 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 jimmying open a damaged front door. Still, the police report said he was arrested for “loud and tumultuous behavior in a public space.”

The disorderly conduct charges against Professor Gates were later dropped, and the city of Cambridge, its police department, the Middlesex County district attorney’s office and Professor Gates issued a joint statement calling the incident “regrettable and unfortunate.”

The brief and surprise appearance by Mr. Obama before reporters on Friday afternoon was an attempt by the White House to move beyond the controversy that has dominated the last two days.

Only hours earlier, Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, said the president had made his final remarks about the issue. But advisers said the mounting criticism from police groups and others persuaded the president to address the matter in an attempt to move on.

Mr. Obama, carefully measuring his words to avoid further criticism from either side, said, “Even when you’ve got a police officer who has a fine track record on racial sensitivity, interactions between police officers and the African-American community can sometimes be fraught with misunderstanding.”

One hour after calling Sergeant Crowley, Mr. Obama reached Professor Gates by telephone. An administration official said the call was "a positive discussion," and that it ended with an invitation for the professor and the police officer to meet at the White House — to have a beer, as the president said in his remarks to reporters. There was no immediate word on whether Professor Gates accepted the invitation.

Trying to lighten the moment in the press room, Mr. Obama said of his conversation with Sergeant Crowley: “He also did say he wanted to find out if there was a way of getting the press off his lawn. I informed him that I can’t get the press off my lawn. He pointed out that my lawn is bigger than his lawn.”

And though he conceded that he should have approached the issue somewhat differently on Wednesday night, Mr. Obama said he disagreed that he should not have stepped into it at all.

“The fact that this has become such a big issue I think is indicative of the fact that, you know, race is still a troubling aspect of our society,” Mr. Obama said. “Whether I were black or white, I think that me commenting on this — and hopefully contributing to constructive, as opposed to negative, understandings about the issue — is part of my portfolio.”

The president’s impromptu news conference defused the bold statements by leaders of the Cambridge and Massachusetts police officer unions made two hours earlier in seeking apologies from Mr. Obama and Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts for linking racial profiling to the arrest.

At a news conference in a Cambridge hotel Friday morning, Sergeant Crowley stood flanked by other officers. While he did not speak, a day after offering two long interviews to Boston news organizations, his union representatives spoke for him, with forceful words for the president.

Sgt. Dennis O’Connor, the president of the Cambridge Police Superior Officers Association, said he was offended by President Obama’s assertion that the police department had acted “stupidly,” and by his connecting those actions to a history of racial profiling in America.

“The facts of this case suggest that the president used the right adjective, but directed it to the wrong party,” Sergeant O’Connor said, suggesting that Professor Gates had introduced racial concerns. “His remarks were obviously misdirected, but made worse yet by a suggestion that somehow this case should remind us of a history of racial abuse by law enforcement.”

Governor Patrick had weighed in Tuesday when the charges of disorderly conduct against Professor Gates were dropped, calling the incident “troubling,” and saying that it was “every black man’s nightmare.”

Sergeant O’Connor said, in prepared remarks, that the Cambridge police officers “deeply resent the implication and reject any suggestion that in this case or in any other case, they allow race to direct their activities.”

And to President Obama and Governor Patrick, he said, “We hope they will reflect on their past comments and apologize to the men and women of the Cambridge police department.” Steve Killian, the president of the Cambridge Police Patrol Officers Association, who described himself as a third-generation Cambridge police officer, said even more bluntly, “I think the President should make an apology to all law personnel throughout the entire country.”

He started his statement by saying, “Cambridge police are not stupid.”

Since the arrest occurred on the front porch of Professor Gates’s home in Cambridge last Thursday afternoon, both the sergeant and the professor have offered divergent accounts, each accusing the other of belligerent and strange behavior.

At heart, the dispute between Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley centers on two things: which one treated the other rudely and whether they properly identified themselves. Professor Gates, 58, says the sergeant repeatedly refused to reveal his name or badge number; Sergeant Crowley, 42, says the professor initially refused to provide identification, then produced only his Harvard ID card, which included no address, to prove he lived in the house.

Earlier in the week, Professor Gates requested a personal apology from Sergeant Crowley. But on Thursday, the sergeant said he would not offer one.

President Obama fueled the story — and the polarizing national debate about race and law enforcement in America — on Wednesday night by commenting on the arrest at the end of a national news conference that was primarily about health care reform.

Sergeant O’Connor said at Friday’s news conference that the president went too far. When a person says up front they do not know the facts, as President Obama and Governor Patrick both said in their separate comments, Sergeant O’Connor said, “one would expect the next statement to be, ‘So I cannot comment.’ ”

Mr. McDonald, his group’s lawyer, said the president’s conclusion about the case “was dead wrong.”

“If he knew all the facts,” Mr. McDonald said, “he would have concluded that had Professor Gates simply cooperated with the investigation that Sergeant Crowley was undertaking, Sergeant Crowley could have cleared the matter.”

He added: “In our view there was nothing stupid about what happened. What happened to produce a different outcome was directly under the control of Professor Gates. That’s something the president didn’t fully appreciate.”



Jeff Zeleny reported from Washington and Liz Robbins from New York. Abby Goodnough contributed reporting from Boston. Ariana Green from Cambridge, Mass., and and Helene Cooper from Washington.


Obama Shifts Tone on Gates After Mulling Debate

By PETER BAKER and HELENE COOPER
Published: July 24, 2009
New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Obama tried Friday to defuse a volatile national debate over the arrest of a black Harvard University professor as he acknowledged that his own comments had inflamed tensions and insisted he had not meant to malign the arresting officer.

Mr. Obama placed calls to both the professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and the man who arrested him, Sgt. James Crowley, two days after saying the police had “acted stupidly” last week in hauling Professor Gates from his home in handcuffs. Mr. Obama said he still considered the arrest “an overreaction,” but added that “Professor Gates probably overreacted as well.”

“I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up,” the president said in an appearance in the White House briefing room. “I want to make clear that in my choice of words, I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department or Sergeant Crowley specifically, and I could have calibrated those words differently.”

Mr. Obama’s unusual personal intervention and public statement came just four hours after the White House said he had no more to say on the matter. But after talking with Michelle Obama and some of his closest friends amid unrelenting publicity, his advisers said, the president reversed course in hopes of quashing a dispute that had set off strong reactions and made it harder for the White House to focus attention on his efforts to pass health care legislation.

The Gates case has become the first significant racial controversy Mr. Obama has confronted since being sworn in as the nation’s first African-American president. The improvisational handling of it underscored the delicate challenges for a leader who has tried to govern by crossing old lines and emphasizing commonalities over differences.

Advisers said both his sharp statement, which was made at Wednesday night’s news conference, and his toned-down remarks on Friday reflected strains of his experiences. He was personally outraged by the arrest and wanted to speak bluntly about it, aides said. And they said he was distressed that his words proved polarizing and contrary to his instincts for conciliation.

Whether he succeeded in tamping down the emotions of the case remained to be seen. In their telephone conversation, Mr. Obama said, Sergeant Crowley suggested that he and Professor Gates come to the White House to share a beer with the president. Mr. Obama then conveyed that idea in his phone call with Professor Gates.

Professor Gates said in an e-mail message afterward that he was “pleased to accept his invitation” to come to the White House and meet Sergeant Crowley. “After all, I first made the offer to meet with Sgt. Crowley myself, last Monday,” he wrote. “I told the president that my entire career as an educator has been devoted to racial healing and improved race relations in this country. I am determined that this be a teaching moment.”

Sergeant Crowley made no public comments after his conversation with the president. He has denied doing anything wrong and has declined to apologize to Professor Gates.

The episode stemmed from a misunderstanding when Professor Gates returned to his Cambridge home on July 16 and found his door stuck. A woman reported seeing someone trying to break into the house and the police responded. Although the arresting police officer became aware that Professor Gates was in his own home, the police said he was belligerent and arrested him for disorderly conduct. The charge was later dropped.

Mr. Obama defended his decision to weigh in. “The fact that this has become such a big issue I think is indicative of the fact that, you know, race is still a troubling aspect of our society,” he said. “Whether I were black or white,” he said, commenting “is part of my portfolio.”

Mr. Obama first discussed with aides how to address the arrest during a meeting before his Wednesday news conference. Aides said Mr. Obama, a Harvard-trained lawyer, zeroed in on the fact that the arrest came after police confirmed that Professor Gates was in his own home.

But his use of the word “stupidly” at the news conference that evening generated angry responses from Cambridge police, and some of his aides privately rued the word choice. Mr. Obama, who said he was surprised at the response, discussed the issue over dinner with friends at his home in Chicago on Thursday during a quick trip there for a fund-raiser, according to people close to the family. On Friday morning, they said, he also talked it through with Mrs. Obama.

By then, the controversy had dominated White House staff meetings. Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, had told reporters at 10 a.m. that Mr. Obama had nothing more to say. Some advisers had concluded the furor would not dissipate unless Mr. Obama made another statement, while others were wary of him revisiting the episode and particularly did not want him to apologize, they said.

During the morning, police union members held a news conference in Cambridge calling on Mr. Obama to apologize for demeaning Sergeant Crowley and suggesting it was Professor Gates who had made it a racial incident.

“The facts of this case suggest that the president used the right adjective but directed it to the wrong party,” said Sgt. Dennis O’Connor, president of the Cambridge Police Superior Officers Association.

Sgt. Leon Lashley, an African-American officer at the Gates house that day, separately told The Associated Press that he supported Sergeant Crowley’s actions “100 percent.”

The police event contributed to what one White House aide called a “critical mass,” but aides said it was not the deciding factor, noting that Mr. Obama had not watched. Shortly after noon, Mr. Obama called his senior adviser, David Axelrod. “I’m going to call Sergeant Crowley and then I think I ought to step into the press room and address it,” Mr. Axelrod said he said.

The president dictated some thoughts intended to avoid directly blaming either the professor or the officer, and speechwriters had less than two hours to craft remarks. Mr. Obama called Sergeant Crowley about 2:15 p.m. and they spoke for five minutes. He went to the briefing room to make his statement, then called Professor Gates about 3:15 p.m.

Mr. Obama said the issue was making it harder for him to focus attention on health care. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but nobody has been paying much attention to health care,” he said.

He did not apologize but softened his language. “I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station,” he said. “I also continue to believe, based on what I heard, that Professor Gates probably overreacted as well.”

Mr. Obama described Sergeant Crowley as an “outstanding police officer and a good man” who has “a fine track record on racial sensitivity.” But he said the incident showed that “because of the difficulties of the past, you know, African-Americans are sensitive to these issues.”

John Payton, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said that unlike white presidents who could dance around racial issues, Mr. Obama had to be direct. “That’s the whole difference. Bush could punt. Obama can’t punt,” he said. “This issue resonates with him.”

Christopher Edley Jr., a former adviser to President Bill Clinton on race issues and now law school dean at the University of California, Berkeley, said the episode dispelled the “rosy hopefulness” stemming from Mr. Obama’s election “in case anybody needed more evidence that we’re not beyond race.”


Peter Baker and Helene Cooper reported from Washington. Abby Goodnough contributed from Boston, Liz Robbins from New York and Jeff Zeleny from Washington.

President Obama Takes a Stand on the Henry Louis Gates Case & Racial Profiling

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/us/23race.html?_r=1&nl=pol&emc=polb1

All,

Thank you Mr. President for getting involved and taking a clear public stand on the heinous issue of racial profiling. IT'S WHAT YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO DO...

Kofi


Obama Wades Into a Volatile Racial Issue


In response to a question at his prime-time news conference about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard professor, left, President Obama declared that the Cambridge, Mass., police had "acted stupidly."


By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: July 23, 2009
New York Times

Americans got a rare glimpse Wednesday night of what it means to have a black president in the Oval Office.

In response to a question at his prime-time news conference about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black Harvard professor, in his own home over the weekend, Mr. Obama declared that the Cambridge, Mass., police had “acted stupidly.”

Mr. Obama’s response was his most animated performance of the hourlong news conference, and represented an extraordinary plunge by a president into a local law-enforcement dispute. And it opened a window into a world from which Mr. Obama is now largely shielded, suggesting the incident had struck a raw nerve with the president.

In the public spotlight, Mr. Obama has sought to transcend, if not avoid, the issue of race. As a candidate, he tried to confine his racial references to the difficulty of catching a cab in New York, although he was forced to confront it directly during the Pennsylvania primary when his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, became an issue. And last week, at the 100th convention of the NAACP in New York, he spoke in uncharacteristically personal terms about his rise to power as a black man, while warning black Americans not to make excuses for their failure to achieve.

Wednesday night’s press conference seemed to be a different deal as the president leaped into a highly charged controversy that has ignited passions across talk radio, the blogosphere and the old-fashioned water cooler.

But in fact, racial profiling was a major issue for Mr. Obama when he was in the Illinois legislature. He was the chief sponsor of a bill, which became law, that requires police to record the race, age and gender of all drivers they stop for traffic violations and for those records to be analyzed for evidence of racial profiling.

And so the substance of his response was not as surprising as the fact that a president so quickly joined the fray.

The police were called to Professor Gates’s house after a report of a robbery in progress. Professor Gates, saying he was jimmying open a damaged front door, said he told the police he lived in the house. Still, the police report said he was arrested for “loud and tumultuous behavior in a public space.” He was held in police custody for four hours. Professor Gates said he was the victim of racial profiling and has demanded an apology but the police officer involved has said he has nothing to apologize for.

On Tuesday, disorderly conduct charges against Professor Gates were dropped, and the city of Cambridge, its police department, the Middlesex County district attorney’s office and Professor Gates issued a joint statement calling the incident “regrettable and unfortunate.”

Mr. Obama, asked Wednesday what the incident said about race relations in America, noted up front that Professor Gates is a friend and that his comments might be biased. He said “words” had been exchanged and added:

“Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know, separate and apart from this incident, is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. And that’s just a fact.” He added later that the incident was “a sign of how race remains a factor in this society.”

He also used biting humor, grinning broadly as he imagined being in Professor Gates’s seemingly preposterous circumstance of being arrested after trying to get into his own home.

“Here, I’d get shot,” Mr. Obama said, referring to his new address of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The statement was a bit of political jujitsu that acknowledged the intense security that surrounds any president while letting sink in the image of what would happen to a black man who might seem to be breaking into the White House.

Mr. Obama’s response immediately lit up the blogosphere, where a debate developed over whether he had gone too far.

“I agree that there was probably some stupidity involved here, but I just don’t think him weighing in on it benefits anyone,” one commenter wrote online, adding, “By the end of the week this will be spun so ridiculously that you’d swear he called the Cambridge police pigs while eating brie and sipping pinot noir.”

Another commenter posted this: “Why should the president remain neutral about anything? He’s the PRESIDENT, for god’s sake. The last thing anyone wants is a president who refuses to take a stand.”

It could not be determined how well Mr. Obama knows Professor Gates. But the professor, a widely respected expert in the field of race relations, had very kind words for Mr. Obama’s pivotal speech on race relations after the Wright affair threatened to sink his candidacy.

“I think it was brilliant,” Professor Gates said of the speech in an interview with Tavis Smiley at the time. “It is a great speech about race, and race relations, particularly between black people and white people at the beginning of the 21st Century.”

Dr. Gates and the Racist U.S. Criminal Justice System

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-21/skips-racist-wakeup-call/p/

Skip's Racist Wakeup Call
by Touré
July 21, 2009
The Daily Beast


This booking photo released by the Cambridge Police Dept., shows Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who was arrested while trying to force open the locked front door of his home near Harvard, July 16, 2009.

The arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, the country’s most important black academic, in his own home means America can forget all the post-racial nonsense, The Daily Beast’s Touré writes.

It could’ve happened to any black man. This sort of thing happens all the time. But this particular instance—legendary Harvard professor Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr., arrested on his own front porch—tells you that even if a black man is a brilliant, famous, rich, classy, Harvard professor who’s 58 years old, walking with a cane because of hip-replacement surgery, and ensconced in his own Cambridge home during the day, he can still be arrested.
After the arrest of Skip Gates, the most important black academic in the country, we can put all that kumbaya we’re-post-racial crap in the toilet.

That’s because Malcolm X’s 40-year-old quote is still true: “What do you call a black man with a Ph.D.? A nigger.”
Some people were thinking, “We’ve got a black president, America is beyond racism, we’re post racial now.” Some think racism has become a boogie monster that only blacks fear is under the bed, but there’s nothing but paranoia.

Well, after the arrest of Skip Gates, the director of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, the most important black academic in the country, we can put all that kumbaya we’re-post-racial crap in the toilet.

In the hours after the story broke, the actor/playwright Sarah Jones tweeted, “Do we still need our Free Papers?” Yes, the incident sent shock waves so deep that people felt echoes of being post-slaves and having to prove their liberty to anyone who asked. Gates told me in an email, “I am outraged.” Many are.

Being a black man is often Kafkaesque, and this situation definitely is. The facts agreed upon by the Cambridge Police Department’s report and the statement released by Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree, who’s serving as Gates’ counsel, are these: On Thursday, July 16, 2009, around 12:44 p.m., Gates forced open the door to his Cambridge home. Someone called 911 to report breaking and entering. An officer approached Gates’ home, when Gates was inside, and asked him to step outside. Gates declined. The officer went into Gates’ home, where Gates showed him ID that proved Gates lived there. Gates asked for officer’s name and badge number and Gates did not get them.

Gates was handcuffed on his own front porch, where several officers had amassed. He was charged with disorderly conduct and taken to the Cambridge Police Station, where he spent four hours locked up. Those are the points of agreement, but the differences between the two accounts are so many they suggest two entirely different sets of people interacting.

The police account paints Gates as belligerent and tumultuous from the encounter’s beginning, while the officer is polite and accommodating in the face of an unruly person. A neighbor sees a man breaking into a home and calls 911. When an officer shows up at Gates’ home he says he’s investigating a break-in in progress and Gates responds, “Why, because I’m a black man in America?”

Gates arrogantly berates the officers, his mouth never stopping, telling the officer that he has no idea who he is messing with and that he’s racist. When the officer asks Gates to step outside, Gates says, “I’ll speak with your mama outside.”

Still, there is this sentence: “While I was led to believe that Gates was lawfully in the residence, I was quite surprised and confused with the behavior he exhibited toward me.” That’s so precious—the officer has entered a man’s own home and asked him if he’d broken into it and asked him to prove that it’s his home and still is confused about why the man is angry.

Gates’ account, as presented by Ogletree, paints Gates as a gentleman while the officer is strangely quiet. Gates had just returned from a trip to China, where he was shooting his new PBS documentary. The door was broken and needed to be forced open. Shortly afterward, an officer arrived and Gates told him who he is and provided ID. But when the officer walked out of Gates’ house, saying nothing, Gates followed him, asking fruitlessly for his badge number.
The officer said, “Thank you for accommodating my earlier request,” meaning to come outside, and then, for no apparent reason, placed Gates under arrest, handcuffing him on his own front porch. There must be more to both stories.

This is surely not over—there’s a gulf between those two accounts wide enough to drive a Hummer through. And many questions are left unanswered: Why did Gates’ neighbor, who works at Harvard magazine, fail to recognize him? When the Harvard University Police showed up, couldn’t they have realized what was happening and whose home it was and found another way to resolve all this? And most important, why did the officers find it necessary to arrest a man who was in his own home and who had not posed or made a threat to them? The worst crime in the police report is Gates yelling at an officer who was telling him to calm down. Is that a crime?

Skip Gates has long been an extraordinary figure, but it’s more than his stature, it’s that the incident happened in his home that makes it a frightening, tragicomic moment worthy of Chappelle’s Show. Black intellectual who’s navigated his way up the ladder to the top of academia but suddenly can’t handle a cop asking rude questions. Comedian Paul Mooney jokes about certain blacks having something horrible happen to them that serves as their “nigger wakeup call,” as in, a reminder that no matter their money or status, being black will eventually catch up with them. This time I think we all got a nigger wakeup call.

Touré is a columnist for The Daily Beast. He's also an NBC contributor and the author of Never Drank the Kool-Aid, Soul City, and The Portable Promised Land. He is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, was CNN's first pop culture correspondent, and was the host of MTV2's Spoke N Heard. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker and the New York Times.

Interview with Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. On His Arrest and Racial Profiling in America

Published on The Root
(http://www.theroot.com)

Skip Gates Speaks

By: Dayo Olopade
Posted: July 21, 2009

Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. speaks out on racial profiling after his arrest by Cambridge police.

The Root's Editor-in-Chief Henry Louis Gates Jr. talks about his arrest and the outrage of racial profiling in America.


In an interview with The Root, Henry Louis Gates Jr. talks about his arrest and the outrage of racial profiling in America.


The Root: We’ve all seen the police and media reports around your arrest last Thursday in Cambridge, Mass., Charles Ogletree issued a statement to The Root that included a synopsis [1] of the incident. But what have you been going through since Thursday?

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: I’m outraged. I can’t believe that an individual policeman on the Cambridge police force would treat any African-American male this way, and I am astonished that this happened to me; and more importantly I’m astonished that it could happen to any citizen of the United States, no matter what their race. And I’m deeply resolved to do and say the right things so that this cannot happen again.

Of course, it will happen again, but … I want to do what I can so that every police officer will think twice before engaging in this kind of behavior.

TR: Can you describe, in your own words, what went on in and outside of your home? When did you suspect you were the victim of racial profiling?

HLG: I just finished making my new documentary series for PBS called “Faces of America.” It was a glorious week in Shanghai and Ningbo and Beijing, and on my trip, I took my daughter along. After we finished working in Ningbo we went to Beijing and had three glorious days as tourists. It was great fun.

We flew back on a direct flight from Beijing to Newark. We arrived on Wednesday, and on Thursday I flew back to Cambridge. I was using my regular driver and my regular car service. And went to my home arriving at about 12:30 in the afternoon. My driver and I carried several bags up to the porch, and we fiddled with the door and it was jammed. I thought, well, maybe the door’s latched. So I walked back to the kitchen porch, unlocked the door and came into the house. And I unlatched the door, but it was still jammed.

My driver is a large black man. But from afar you and I would not have seen he was black. He has black hair and was dressed in a two-piece black suit, and I was dressed in a navy blue blazer with gray trousers and, you know, my shoes. And I love that the 911 report said that two big black men were trying to break in with backpacks on. Now that is the worst racial profiling I’ve ever heard of in my life. (Laughs.) I’m not exactly a big black man. I thought that was hilarious when I found that out, which was yesterday.

It looked like someone’s footprint was there. So it’s possible that the door had been jimmied, that someone had tried to get in while I was in China. But for whatever reason, the lock was damaged. My driver hit the door with his shoulder and the door popped open. But the lock was permanently disfigured. My home is owned by Harvard University, and so any kind of repair work that’s needed, Harvard will come and do it. I called this person, and she was, in fact, on the line while all of this was going on.

I’m saying ‘You need to send someone to fix my lock.’ All of a sudden, there was a policeman on my porch. And I thought, ‘This is strange.’ So I went over to the front porch still holding the phone, and I said ‘Officer, can I help you?’ And he said, ‘Would you step outside onto the porch.’ And the way he said it, I knew he wasn’t canvassing for the police benevolent association. All the hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and I realized that I was in danger. And I said to him no, out of instinct. I said, ‘No, I will not.’

My lawyers later told me that that was a good move and had I walked out onto the porch he could have arrested me for breaking and entering. He said ‘I’m here to investigate a 911 call for breaking and entering into this house.’ And I said ‘That’s ridiculous because this happens to be my house. And I’m a Harvard professor.’ He says ‘Can you prove that you’re a Harvard professor?’ I said yes, I turned and closed the front door to the kitchen where I’d left my wallet, and I got out my Harvard ID and my Massachusetts driver’s license which includes my address and I handed them to him. And he’s sitting there looking at them.

Now it’s clear that he had a narrative in his head: A black man was inside someone’s house, probably a white person’s house, and this black man had broken and entered, and this black man was me.

So he’s looking at my ID, he asked me another question, which I refused to answer. And I said I want your name and your badge number because I want to file a complaint because of the way he had treated me at the front door. He didn’t say, ‘Excuse me, sir, is there a disturbance here, is this your house?’—he demanded that I step out on the porch, and I don’t think he would have done that if I was a white person.

But at that point, I realized that I was in danger. And so I said to him that I want your name, and I want your badge number and I said it repeatedly.

TR: How did this escalate? What are the laws in Cambridge that govern this kind of interaction? Did you ever think you were in the wrong?

HLG: The police report says I was engaged in loud and tumultuous behavior. That’s a joke. Because I have a severe bronchial infection which I contracted in China and for which I was treated and have a doctor’s report from the Peninsula hotel in Beijing. So I couldn’t have yelled. I can’t yell even today, I’m not fully cured.

It escalated as follows: I kept saying to him, ‘What is your name, and what is your badge number?’ and he refused to respond. I asked him three times, and he refused to respond. And then I said, ‘You’re not responding because I’m a black man, and you’re a white officer.’ That’s what I said. He didn’t say anything. He turned his back to me and turned back to the porch. And I followed him. I kept saying, “I want your name, and I want your badge number.”

It looked like an ocean of police had gathered on my front porch. There were probably half a dozen police officers at this point. The mistake I made was I stepped onto the front porch and asked one of his colleagues for his name and badge number. And when I did, the same officer said, ‘Thank you for accommodating our request. You are under arrest.’ And he handcuffed me right there. It was outrageous. My hands were behind my back I said, ‘I’m handicapped. I walk with a cane. I can’t walk to the squad car like this.’ There was a huddle among the officers; there was a black man among them. They removed the cuffs from the back and put them around the front.

A crowd had gathered, and as they were handcuffing me and walking me out to the car, I said, ‘Is this how you treat a black man in America?’

TR: What was the jail experience like? Was it humiliating?

HLG: By the time I was processed at the Cambridge jail, I was booked, fingerprinted, given a mug shot and answered questions. Outrageous is the only word that I can use. The system attempts to humiliate you. They took my belt; they took my wallet, they took my keys, some change; they counted my money. And I knew that because they said, ‘We’re going to release you upon your own recognizance, and the fine is $40, and we know you can pay it because we went through your wallet.’

It’s meant to be terrifying and humiliating. And I couldn’t believe that this was happening to me. And I said I can’t wait to get out, I am eager to talk to my lawyer, and they said they had to book me first. Then I was told that Charles Ogletree was in the building, and that he was there with three other Harvard professors—my friends Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Larry Bobo and Marcelina Lee Morgan.

I was in jail for four hours. I told them that I was claustrophobic, that I couldn’t be in this cell. And a very nice police officer said here are some of your friends and I could talk to them one at a time in the interview room until the magistrate came and signed the form allowing me to leave. I was there just between 1:00 p.m. and 5:15 p.m., which is an interminable amount of time. I spent the rest of the time in another room, slightly bigger, and my friends just had to sit there and wait. And it was kind of like a Senate filibuster; we had to tell stories in the prison cell.

TR: How has this resonated within the academic community at Harvard? I know that Larry Bobo and Charles Ogletree, also black men, have expressed dismay. President Barack Obama has talked about how difficult it is to hail a cab, even as an elected official. Is there an irony to your notoriety and the incident?

HLG: There is such a level of outrage that’s been expressed to me. I’ve received thousands of e-mails and Facebook messages; the blogs are going crazy; my colleagues at Harvard are outraged. Allen Counter called me from the Nobel Institute in Stockholm to express his outrage. But really it’s not about me—it’s that anybody black can be treated this way, just arbitrarily arrested out of spite. And the man who arrested me did it out of spite, because he knew I was going to file a report because of his behavior.

He didn’t follow proper police procedure! You can’t just presume I’m guilty and arrest me. He’s supposed to ask me if I need help. He just presumed that I was guilty, and he presumed that I was guilty because I was black. There was no doubt about that.

TR: What do you make of the suspicious neighbor who called the police with an erroneous report of “two black men” trying to enter your apartment? Was this neighborhood watch gone wrong?



HLG: I don’t know this person, and I’m sure that she thought she was doing the right thing. If I was on Martha’s Vineyard like I am now and someone was trying to break into my house, I would hope that someone called the police and that they would respond. But I would hope that the police wouldn’t arrest the first black man that they saw—especially after that person gives them an ID—and not rely on some trumped-up charge, which is what this man was doing.

TR: The charges have been dropped. What are your plans for legal action against the city of Cambridge, its police department or the individual officer?

HLG: I’ll be meeting with my legal team, and we will be deciding what kind of legal action I should take. I haven’t made the decision yet. But I am determined that this experience, my experience, as horrendous as it was and as outrageous as it was, be used for the larger good of the black community. There are 1 million black men in the prison system, and on Thursday I became one of them. I would sooner have believed the sky was going to fall from the heavens than I would have believed this could happen to me. It shouldn’t have happened to me, and it shouldn’t happen to anyone.

As a college professor, I want to make this a teaching experience. I am going to devote my considerable resources, intellectual and otherwise, to making sure this doesn’t happen again. I’m thinking about making a documentary film about racial profiling, and I’m in talks with PBS about that.

TR: Does this put to rest the idea that America is post-racial?

HLG: I thought the whole idea that America was post-racial and post-black was laughable from the beginning. There is no more important event in the history of black people in America than the election of Barack Obama. I cried when he was elected, and I cried at his inauguration, but that does not change the percentage of black men in prison, the percentage of black men harassed by racial profiling. It does not change the number of black children living near the poverty line. Which is almost a similar percentage as were under poverty when Martin Luther King was assassinated.

There haven’t been fundamental structural changes in America. There’s been a very important symbolic change and that is the election of Barack Obama. But the only black people who truly live in a post-racial world in America all live in a very nice house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Dayo Olopade is Washington reporter for The Root.


MORE ON THIS ISSUE

Charles Ogletree gives Gates' side of the story [1].

Lawrence Bobo asks what do you call a black man with a Ph.D.? [2]

Karen Grigsby Bates on when apologies aren't enough [3].


Source URL: http://www.theroot.com/views/skip-gates-speaks

Links:

[1] http://www.theroot.com/views/lawyers-statement-arrest-henry-louis-gates-jr
[2] http://www.theroot.com/views/what-do-you-call-black-man-phd
[3] http://www.theroot.com/blogs/insincerity/when-sorry-isnt-enough
[4] http://www.theroot.com/views/skip-gates-speaks



http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/07/21/racial_talk_swirls_with_gates_arrest/


Racial talk swirls with Gates arrest
Harvard scholar taken from home


His front door refused to budge, which is why Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., just home from a trip to China filming a PBS documentary, set his luggage down and beckoned his driver for help.

The scene - two black men on the porch of a stately home on a tree-lined Cambridge street in the middle of the day - triggered events that were at turns dramatic and bizarre, a confrontation between one of the nation’s foremost African-American scholars and a police sergeant responding to a call that someone was breaking into the house.

It ended when Gates, 58, was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct in allegedly shouting at the officer; he was eventually taken away in handcuffs.

But the encounter is anything but over. Some of Gates’s outraged colleagues said the run-in proves that even in a liberal enclave like Harvard Square, even with someone of Gates’s accomplishments, a black man is a suspect before he is a resident.

“It’s unbelievable,’’ said Lawrence Bobo, a Harvard sociologist who visited Gates at the police station last Thursday and drove him home after Gates posted the $40 bail. “I felt as if I were in some kind of surreal moment, like ‘The Twilight Zone.’ I was mortified. . . . This is a humiliating thing and a pretty profound violation of the kind of trust we all take for granted.’’

Neither Gates - who was named one of Time magazine’s most influential Americans in 1997 and now directs the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard - nor police would comment on the incident yesterday.

Gates’s lawyer and Harvard colleague, Charles Ogletree, said what angered his client was that the police officer stepped inside Gates’s Ware Street house, uninvited, to demand identification and question him.

Gates showed his Harvard identification and Massachusetts drivers license with his home address, Ogletree said, adding, “Even after presentation of ID, the officer was still questioning his presence.’’

Said Bobo: “The whole interaction should have ended right there, but I guess that wasn’t enough. The officer felt he hadn’t been deferred to sufficiently.’’

The Cambridge police report describes a chaotic scene in which the police sergeant stood at Gates’s door, demanded identification, and radioed for assistance from Harvard University police when Gates presented him with a Harvard ID. A visibly upset Gates responded to the officer’s assertion that he was responding to a report of a break-in with, “Why, because I’m a black man in America?’’

“Gates then turned to me and told me that I had no idea who I was ‘messing’ with and that I had not heard the last of it,’’ the report said. “While I was led to believe that Gates was lawfully in the residence, I was quite surprised and confused with the behavior he exhibited toward me.’’

Continued...