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Jumping the shark - Henry Louis Gates Jr.

When the Henry Louis Gates Jr. story first broke, I was interested. Here is a man who is a highly respected and lettered professor at Harvard University. He was returning from a trip in the afternoon, the door on his house was stuck, he broke in and was subsequently arrested by the Cambridge police even after showing his drivers license and Harvard employee card. Then, it turns out that he was inside when the cops showed up; the cops were leaving the house and he followed them outside haranguing them until, finally, one of them placed Dr. Gates under arrest and took him down to the pokey to cool off for a couple hours. Now, Dr. Gates' feathers are ruffled, his panties are in a bunch and he is Outraged I tell you, OUTRAGED. After all, as he was quoted (repeatedly): "This is what happens to black men in America." The story at the Washington Post:

Gates Says He Is Outraged by Arrest at Cambridge Home
Prominent Black Professor Says He Will Use Experience to Further Academic Work

Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. cast his recent arrest in his home in Cambridge, Mass., as part of a "racial narrative" playing out in a biased criminal justice system. The professor who has spent much of his life studying race in America said he has come to feel like a case study.

"There are one million black men in jail in this country and last Thursday I was one of them," he said in an exclusive interview with The Washington Post Tuesday morning. "This is outrageous and that this is how poor black men across the country are treated everyday in the criminal justice system. It's one thing to write about it, but altogether another to experience it."

He was still outraged but he said he has had time to take a step back and will now apply the scholarship that has been his life's work to the issue of race in the criminal justice system.

Hey Henry -- nice job setting race relations back another 100 years. The Cambridge police officer at the front right (yes, the black one) seems to be thinking: "Why do I always get the assholes." He has fifty times more content of character in his little pinkey than Gates has in his whole inflated ego. And if by some fluke of the internet this should happen to be noticed by one of Dr. Gates' 'people': Henry -- it is not about you. It is not about Black. It is about everyone. Maintaining the divide, studying it, analyzing it and talking about it only serves to perpetuate it. Drop it and move on. You have a very valuable position in which you can do incredible good for all of the people of this great nation. Do not fuck up. Do not become another laughingstock like Ward Churchill or Cornell West. Do good... Posted by DaveH at July 21, 2009 7:34 PM | TrackBack