July 23
When the news broke that Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates (who’s excellent work for the New Yorker is profiled here) was arrested in his own home in Cambridge a couple days ago in a widely reported racial profiling incident, many people were understandably shocked. But I would guess Dave Chappelle was not. He was more likely nodding his head when he heard the news, saying, “I told you so.”
This is Chappelle from 2000:
“My house is too nice! I mean it’s not that nice…but they’ll never believe I live in it.”
And for those who question how you can get arrested in your own home for yelling at a police officer, here is a breakdown of the Gates incident, the charge of “disorderly conduct,” and how it cuts against free speech.
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And on a side note, I am always a little amused (and I’m guessing cops are too) when I end up reading about some police report where the guy getting arrested gets quoted as saying something like “You don’t know who you’re messing with!!” Of course, this is almost always the point in the story when the person is sitting in the back of a cop car, with his hands cuffed behind his back. If I was a police officer, hearing “You haven’t heard the last of me!” would probably be my favorite part of the job.
So even if the officer doesn’t want to apologize (and in all honestly, he seems like a decent guy), I just hope he just can admit, after watching the President of the United States call him out in a prime time news conference on national television, that he unequivically–and without a doubt–did not know who he was messing with.
Trevor Timm is a Blast Magazine staff writer
We have three observations about the Harvard professor incident:
1. We find it interesting that the fact that this was the professor’s home was evidently not established early on way before the dispute escalated;
2. We find it fascinating that the versions of two members of society, who most would ordinarily view as responsible and honest citizens (this obviously does not include politicians), would vary so dramatically from a factual point of view.
3. Finally, considering that the reading and viewing public were not present at the scene (and thus have no first hand knowledge), and that there is no video tape to our knowledge of the sequence of events and what was said, how so many have formed conclusions, and made assumptions, about who did what and who was wrong.
There are some things which Professor Gates might have considered upon the arrival of the police, no matter how incensed he may have been.