Is it possible that the initial caller, the witness, the woman who made the call, thought that this was a burglar because he was black in a way she wouldn't have had he been white. Is it possible that Sergeant Crowley, though he is not by all appearances a bigot in any sense of the word, may have perceived Professor Gates's behavior as more belligerent than he would have had this been a white person.
Tim wise then goes on to state that we all have implicit biases that often times lead us to view a certain group of people in a negative light (many times without us even realizing it). Check out the following website in how to evaluate your own implicit biases towards a number of different groups (yes, you can test yourself):
Implicit Association Tests
I took this test and found that I too have biases, which doesn't surprise me given how I was raised and what I see through the media.
All individuals who may not find themselves especially biased have unconscious preferences and beliefs that lend to an implicit prejudice of others. It is uncertain in this particular incident wether the officer was acting on bigoted sentiments when he approached the professor, however, considering that racial profiling in currently a hot issue it is no surprise that the media is dissecting and scrutinizing every aspect of this particular occurrence. The interesting question is how does a society go about eliminating or reducing the implicit biases the people are prone to have?
ReplyDeleteI am not sure if any of you read the official police report, or if you heard the 911 phone call, but neither of them point to any racism on the part of the police officer or the caller. Quite the contrary, it would seem that Prof. Gates's own super-sensitivity to racism caused Prof. Gates to act belligerently when approached by a white police officer. Based on this incident, it appears that Prof. Gates is racist. I think it would be much more productive to discuss this situation as a case of reverse-racism.
ReplyDeleteI submit that when we have a president who denounces reparations because they don't go far enough, racism amongst the black community is becoming far worse a problem than racism against the black community.
Ren: I don't understand how "the media" is a problem here. I would think careful consideration helps reduce or eliminate implicit bias.
ReplyDeleteDavid: Calling our president, the professor, and the "black community" racist based on the white police officer's report doesn't seem anywhere near responsible or appropriate to me.
I agree with David but maybe I wouldn't go as far as to call blacks racist. But I did listen to the 911 calls and police report and I didn't think it implied any kind of racial issues but I think Prof. Gates made it into a racial issue. I think some neighbors are nosy and maybe they put their nose in where it didn't belong but in my opinion it didn't seem to be led my any prejudice.
ReplyDeleteAnd with that, shouldn't we be more mad at the woman that called and calling her racist more than the police officers? The police officers were doing their job by following a call but the woman is the one that would be considered to have overreacted when seeing two black men try to get into the house.
I think the lady who called should have payed more attention to who the black men outside the house were. Perhaps if she would have taken a second look she would have recognized her neighbor professor Gates trying to get into his own home. Instead she saw two black men in a rich neighborhood trying to get into a house and she called the police.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if Gates had simply answered the police officer's questions instead of immediately bringing race into it, this whole fiasco could have been avoided.
I apologize for being so blunt, but this is really a no-brainer. There wasn't even a hint of racism on the part of Sgt. Crowley, and claiming anything otherwise is nothing short of ignorance. Sgt. Crowley, for years has taught at a class to fellow officers about racial profiling and how to appropriately handle the situation. Back in 1993 it was Sgt. Crowley who gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Reggie Lewis. I think if he hadn't been so qualified he would have had a much harder time defending himself from such a ludicrous accusation. And I am utterly disgusted with Prof. Gates for making such a claim. It was made by pure malice on his part and not because of any factual basis. I am also very disappointed in Pres. Obama for making a comment about the quality of the behavior of the officer's (who were just trying to protect Gates' home when they responded to the call) by saying that the officers "acted stupidly." Gates was being disorderly by both definition and penal code. He broke the law by being disorderly and continued to be disorderly up until he was arrested.
ReplyDeleteAfter all the accusations of the 911 call being racially motivated I think it's interesting that the only race/ethnicity referenced in the call is the unknown hispanic. I can see how the unrecognized person would cause panic but I think the suit cases she identified might have made me think twice as a suitcase doesn't seem like the transport of choice in theft. The caller sounds unsure about the specifics of the people she saw other than the 'hispanic' label to me. That points more towards the call being racially motivated. I think the witnesses saw an aggressive behavior first and an unrecognized person of another race second and the combination of the two observations caused the assumption of forced entry.
ReplyDelete