Word: racially
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...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...
...psychologists have been quick to note in the aftermath of the Gates arrest, racial biases are often implicit and unconscious, and their effects insidiously creep into even the most tolerant among us. Several studies find that even when we erase prejudice from our conscious mental processing, it lingers in the older, murkier corners of our cognitive architecture. In one experiment, researchers discovered that even subjects who demonstrated no racist attitudes still had increased activity in the amygdala—a part of the brain associated with fear and emotion—when shown images of black faces, and the results...
...first, we saw the post-racial Obama, defusing the situation with a joke about how he would “get shot” if he tried to jimmy open the door of his current residence. But then he moved away from the script. His eyes narrowed, his voice grew somber, and he explained how the Cambridge police had “acted stupidly,” how the incident demonstrated that “race remains a factor in this society...
...persistent, subtle effects of implicit racial biases highlight the limits of the meritocracy. Gates’s arrest is a troubling reminder that overcoming the flaws of our society and minds requires more than talent and effort. Sometimes, try as we may, we can?...