Race Relations

Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department arrested a Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. for disorderly conduct.

The facts are, the police responded to a burglary call to Gates’ house from one of his neighbors. The front door had been damaged from a previous burglary attempt. Gates was in the house and was uncooperative in identifying himself. When Crowley was explaining to Gates his reason for being there, which was that he was responding to a burglary in progress, Gates shouted, “Why? Because I am a black man in America?” interjecting race into it. He continued his tirade calling the officer a racist among other things until he was arrested for disorderly conduct.

Gates was outraged by his arrest when a white police officer entered his home without his permission, even though the policeman was doing his job. Professor Gates teaches African studies, and I wonder what is actually being taught in his class.

President Obama initially said the Cambridge officers acted “stupidly” regarding the incident, which he later retracted in later press statements. He went on to say that any one of us would be pretty angry and that it is a fact that African-Americans and Latinos are being stopped disproportionately by law enforcement in this country. He made those statements without knowing the facts of the case. But what would you expect from a Community Organizer?

The next day Obama’s teleprompter told him to say I wished cooler heads would have prevailed and the officer involved was outstanding, but stood by his racial profiling comment. Race relations will not get any better in this country when President Obama gives credence to and was influenced by race baiters like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, and Jeremiah Wright.

My question to Gates and Obama are, “Why the outrage? Why the anger?” The police were doing their job. Gates was the one who escalated the situation. What would they have said if it was not Gates, but actually burglars in the house and the police let them go? Also, I would not be angry for the police doing their job in trying to protect my property.

Statistics show that blacks commit a disproportionate amount of the crime. Therefore, what Obama should be concerned with is reducing the crimes being committed by African-Americans so they will not be “profiled.” Police may be reluctant to do their jobs because of the racial tension caused by Obama’s comments on this issue, thus causing the crime rate will rise.


Greg Zotta