On 27 July 2009 Mike Palij wrote:
ABC News (US version) has a short article on its website about
prior racial problems in Cambridge, >MA, and at Harvard and MIT;
see: http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=8170735
In the cited article Prof Gates is quoted as saying: "But really it's
not about me -- it's that anybody black can be treated this way, just
arbitrarily arrested out of spite."
I don't doubt that there still remain problems about some white
perceptions of blacks in certain situations, and that had the police
officer been black the contretemps may well not have occurred, but just
a reminder that the police can be just as heavy-handed towards whites:
"The bespectacled professor says he didn't realise the 'rather
intrusive young man' shouting that he shouldn't cross there was a
policeman. 'I thanked him for his advice and went on.'
"The officer asked for identification. The professor asked for his,
after which Officer Leonpacher told him he was under arrest and, the
professor claims, kicked his legs from under him, pinned him to the
ground and confiscated his box of peppermints.
"Professor Fernandez-Armesto then spent eight hours in the cells before
the charges were dropped. He told the Times that his colleagues now
regard him as 'as a combination of Rambo, because it took five cops to
pin me to the ground, and Perry Mason, because my eloquence before a
judge obtained my immediate release'."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6251431.stm
N.B. Despite the name, Professor Fernandez-Armesto is British, born in
London.
Allen Esterson
Former lecturer, Science Department
Southwark College, London
http://www.esterson.org
-----------------------------------------------
From: Mike Palij <[email protected]>
Subject: A Larger Problem Involving Gates
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:39:18 -0400
ABC News (US version) has a short article on its website about prior
racial problems in Cambridge, MA, and at Harvard and MIT; see:
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=8170735
The larger issue is how well represented are African-Americans as
faculty in our institutions of higher learning (outside of
traditionally Black colleges)? Apparently, not very well. Can
departments of psychology claim to have any better representation?
Maybe summer reading lists can add Robert Guthrie's "Even the Rat was
White" as a prompt for some self-reflection. Available at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0205392644
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
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