Word: racial
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...said at the press conference, be mindful of the fact that because of our history, because of the difficulties of the past, you know, African Americans are sensitive to these issues. And 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...
...intense interest in the Gates case is not surprising—the bitter irony of a man renowned for his erudite scholarship on race becoming the victim of alleged racial profiling turns what would otherwise be a forgotten jot in a police blotter into a centerpiece of the conversation on race in America...
...These racial flare-ups were all the product of implicit assumptions about who belongs in a wealthy neighborhood or Harvard quadrangle and who does not—judgments made by police and nervous white neighbors—and the understandable indignation that African-Americans express when confronted with these assumptions. Gates grew angry when the cops come to ask him what he was doing in his own home because he, of all people, knew exactly why they were there...
...slightly sordid history proves that Cambridge’s police officers are racists, though. James Crowley, the officer who arrested Gates, seems to be a model citizen. Sources describe him as a “stellar” policeman who coaches youth softball and, ironically, teaches a class on racial profiling at the Lowell Police Academy. It is possible that he may have, as he claims, followed police protocol when taking the professor down; the actual course of events of the arrest is difficult to piece together given the conflicting accounts offered by Gates and Crowley...
...regardless of Sergeant Crowley’s moral character, Gates was the victim of racial prejudice, just as the picnickers in the Quad were the victims of racial prejudice, just as every black student who has ever been asked to show ID to prove that he belongs in Harvard Yard has been the victim of racial prejudice. But the prejudice involved in these cases is subtle rather than overt...