Pres. Obama Steps Into Racial Profiling Debate...Racial Profiling Needs To Stop!

Politico----

(Pres. Obama ignites Racial Profiling Debate.)

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(Angry Cambridge Police respond to Pres. Obama's "Stupid Cops" remarks.)

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(Pres. Obama stands by his critique of Gates' arrest.)

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President Barack Obama has strained through his career in national politics to embrace nuance in all things, and never more than when the subject is race. But an off-the-cuff remark at the end of a news conference designed to further his health care agenda put him at the center of a familiar public melodrama of white cop and black victim in which big-city mayors — never mind presidents — tread with the greatest of caution.

The White House spent Thursday trying to both defend Obama’s words and to soften his position from the night before, when the president departed from his talking points, aides said, to express authentic disgust at the arrest of a black Harvard professor in his own home.

Press secretary Robert Gibbs stood by Obama’s statement that a Cambridge police officer, James Crowley, had acted “stupidly” in arresting Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. but added some implicit criticism of Gates’s conduct, suggesting “both sides” bear blame for the incident. Obama, who said that he was “surprised by the controversy,” said he wished that “cooler heads” had prevailed and described Crowley as an “outstanding” officer.

Police organizations attacked the president’s willingness to criticize a police officer without knowing all the facts, Republicans dusted off law-and-order attacks largely absent from the presidential campaign and everyone from comedian Bill Cosby to the Irish-American media piled on. Meanwhile, critics of police brutality praised Obama, and the Rev. Al Sharpton went so far as to tell POLITICO the words showed that the president is not really “post-racial.”

The strident accusations left little space for the nuances that this president would more typically explore: that the black man, Gates, was a distinguished professor with little appetite for public confrontation; and that the police officer was a police academy instructor in race relations best known for giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dying black NBA star.

Many observers — even those who agreed with the substance of Obama’s remarks — thought he’d committed a political error in departing from a carefully crafted image. “He can’t break character now,” said Michael Fauntroy, a public policy professor at George Mason University. “The character that America bought was a race-neutral guy who wasn’t going to mention race in any meaningful way.”

Others objected to his decision to comment without knowing all the details. “I’ve heard about five different reports,” Cosby said in a Boston radio interview. “If I’m the president of the United States, I don’t care how much pressure people want to put on it about race, I’m keeping my mouth shut.”

“I was shocked to hear the president making this kind of statement,” Cosby said.

Obama has always balanced caution and authenticity — on all issues, but on race most of all — and some observers praised his honesty.

“According to Washington conventions, it will be seen as a dumb move — he took an unnecessary risk for no obvious gain,” said Dan Gerstein, a Democratic political consultant. “But one of the reasons Obama is so widely admired, and why he came out of nowhere to become president, is precisely because he is not afraid to flout those norms and speak his mind on matters of right and wrong.”

And other observers said that in a changed country, the story of a police officer arresting a middle-aged professor in his own home was all the detail needed.

“The president was absolutely right on target in his comments last night,” said former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, no stranger to the complexities of police-community relations. “You couldn’t have a clearer situation when you have a guy who is well-known in a small community standing in his own home.”

The debate continued Thursday on just how clear the situation had been. Gates said, in an interview with his daughter on the Daily Beast, that the police report was full of “lies” and that the officer had refused to give his name.

But Crowley — who mentioned that “I support the president of the United States 110 percent” — refused to apologize or give ground, and Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas said his department was “deeply pained” by Obama’s criticism, rejecting any suggestion that Crowley was a racist.

Other police organizations were more critical of the president.

“Statements like that made without the facts don’t do much to assuage any mistrust between the community and the men and women that protect it,” said Jim Pasco, executive director of the right-leaning National Fraternal Order of Police. A spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations, which endorsed Obama, also criticized the comments. “We’re a little disappointed,” said spokesman Rich Roberts.

But civil rights leaders and African-American intellectuals defended Obama — if not, perhaps, always in the terms the president would have chosen.

“What he said was right, and many of us have been saying all along that we are not in a post-racial society yet,” said Sharpton, adding that the press “mesmerized themselves” into believing that Obama had somehow moved past race.

“The press has unfairly labeled him as not having dealt with these issues,” Sharpton said. “He met with Newt Gingrich and I about inequality and race in the schools, he issued statements about Jena,” he said, referring to the racially charged arrests in a Louisiana town that Obama condemned during the campaign.

“Obama rarely uses such language around issues that are potentially divisive. He is very measured and careful so as not to alienate people, and this was a rare moment of bravery and honesty on the racial front. He thought he could say it without penalty, but he went a little too far,” said Marc Lamont Hill, an African-American studies professor at Columbia University. “He is not in a moment where he can do that sort of thing. He is in a dogfight over health care, and you don’t want a pile-on effect with these tangential issues sort of pulling away support.”

“It was a bold move for him,” said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University. “It was a pleasant surprise for him to take sides. He presented the other side and said I am going to side with my friend Skip, and that was refreshing to see. For him to defend blacks and to acknowledge that there is structural racism is a departure.”


Sources: Politico, MSNBC

Famous Black Harvard Professor Arrested Just For Being Black...Racial Profiling At Its Finest!

Huffington Post, The Root----



BOSTON — Police responding to a call about "two black males" breaking into a home near Harvard University ended up arresting the man who lives there – Henry Louis Gates Jr., the nation's pre-eminent black scholar.

Gates had forced his way through the front door because it was jammed, his lawyer said. Colleagues call the arrest last Thursday afternoon a clear case of racial profiling.

Cambridge police say they responded to the well-maintained two-story home after a woman reported seeing "two black males with backpacks on the porch," with one "wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry."

By the time police arrived, Gates was already inside. Police say he refused to come outside to speak with an officer, who told him he was investigating a report of a break-in.

"Why, because I'm a black man in America?" Gates said, according to a police report written by Sgt. James Crowley. The Cambridge police refused to comment on the arrest Monday.

Gates – the director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research – initially refused to show the officer his identification, but then gave him a Harvard University ID card, according to police.

"Gates continued to yell at me, accusing me of racial bias and continued to tell me that I had not heard the last of him," the officer wrote.

Gates said he turned over his driver's license and Harvard ID – both with his photos – and repeatedly asked for the name and badge number of the officer, who refused. He said he then followed the officer as he left his house onto his front porch, where he was handcuffed in front of other officers, Gates said in a statement released by his attorney, fellow Harvard scholar Charles Ogletree, on a Web site Gates oversees, TheRoot.com

He was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge after police said he "exhibited loud and tumultuous behavior." He was released later that day on his own recognizance. An arraignment was scheduled for Aug. 26.

Gates, 58, also refused to speak publicly Monday, referring calls to Ogletree.

"He was shocked to find himself being questioned and shocked that the conversation continued after he showed his identification," Ogletree said.

Ogletree declined to say whether he believed the incident was racially motivated, saying "I think the incident speaks for itself."

Some of Gates' African-American colleagues say the arrest is part of a pattern of racial profiling in Cambridge.

Allen Counter, who has taught neuroscience at Harvard for 25 years, said he was stopped on campus by two Harvard police officers in 2004 after being mistaken for a robbery suspect. They threatened to arrest him when he could not produce identification.

"We do not believe that this arrest would have happened if professor Gates was white," Counter said. "It really has been very unsettling for African-Americans throughout Harvard and throughout Cambridge that this happened."

The Rev. Al Sharpton is vowing to attend Gates' arraignment.

"This arrest is indicative of at best police abuse of power or at worst the highest example of racial profiling I have seen," Sharpton said. "I have heard of driving while black and even shopping while black but now even going to your own home while black is a new low in police community affairs."

Ogletree said Gates had returned from a trip to China on Thursday with a driver, when he found his front door jammed. He went through the back door into the home – which he leases from Harvard – shut off an alarm and worked with the driver to get the door open. The driver left, and Gates was on the phone with the property's management company when police first arrived.

Ogletree also disputed the claim that Gates, who was wearing slacks and a polo shirt and carrying a cane, was yelling at the officer.

"He has an infection that has impacted his breathing since he came back from China, so he's been in a very delicate physical state," Ogletree said.

Lawrence D. Bobo, the W.E.B Du Bois Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard, said he met with Gates at the police station and described his colleague as feeling humiliated and "emotionally devastated."

"It's just deeply disappointing but also a pointed reminder that there are serious problems that we have to wrestle with," he said.

Bobo said he hoped Cambridge police would drop the charges and called on the department to use the incident to review training and screening procedures it has in place.

The Middlesex district attorney's office said it could not do so until after Gates' arraignment. The woman who reported the apparent break-in did not return a message Monday.

Gates joined the Harvard faculty in 1991 and holds one of 20 prestigious "university professors" positions at the school. He also was host of "African American Lives," a PBS show about the family histories of prominent U.S. blacks, and was named by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential Americans in 1997.

"I was obviously very concerned when I learned on Thursday about the incident," Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust said in a statement. "He and I spoke directly and I have asked him to keep me apprised."



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Sources: Huffington Post, The Root, Guardian.co,uk, Google Maps