Being at Home While Black

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates is a well known scholar, author, teacher, has been featured on various radio and television documentaries and is a one of the foremost scholars on African-American history in the world. Professor Gates is a man slight of build, walks with a cane and is in his mid to late fifties. He has lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the home of Harvard University for a long time.  Last week Professor Gates was arrested at his home in Cambridge. The charge being disorderly conduct.

One of Professor Gates neighbors who obviously did not recognize who he was, the black professor who has lived at this address for quite some time, called the Cambridge Police Department to report that two black men with backpacks were breaking into Professor Gates home. When the police arrived at the scene, they found Professor Gates inside of his home. They asked him to step outside; he refused and informed the police that he lived there. The police officer then asked for some identification from Professor Gates to prove that he indeed lived at this address, which Professor Gates produced.

The police claim that Professor Gates was acting “tumultuous” in his own home a claim that the professor denies. Once the professor followed the police officer out of his front door onto the porch, it was then that the professor was arrested.

What the police did not know or fail to ask Professor Gates after arriving at his home, was that upon returning from a trip to China, the professor and his driver found the front door jammed shut, and attempting unsuccessfully to open the door, the professor went around to the back, opened the back door with a key, turned off the alarm, opened the front door and let the driver go. When the police arrived on the scene, Professor Gates was on the telephone speaking with the Harvard University property management company that manages the property, wanting them to come over immediately to repair the damaged door.

I guess if you are a black man, regardless of your economic and social standing, you are still treated by the police as a criminal, even after you have proven to the police that you have done nothing wrong. If this had been Larry Summers or Henry Kissinger, I wonder if they would have been treated the same as Professor Gates? I seriously doubt it.