Gates to Black People: 'Don't Step Onto That Porch!'

(NEWSER) - Another black member of Harvard's faculty has accused the Cambridge Police Department of racism, the Boston Globe reports. S. Allen Counter, a Harvard Medical School professor, was arrested outside his home in 2006 on assault and battery charges. “I was polite, and yet police lied and said I was loud, just as they did with Professor Gates,” said Counter, who was acquitted. More»

Harvard prof kidded Cambridge cop at White House

(AP) - A black Harvard scholar said today he has been able to joke about his arrest by a white police officer that led to a national debate on race, despite receiving death threats and bomb threats. In his first public appearance since meeting with Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley at the White House, Henry Louis Gates said he and the officer found some humor in the incident and have since discussed going out to eat or taking in a Boston Red Sox or Celtics game. More»

(NEWSER) - Henry Louis Gates and Barack Obama have been “very publicly slapped down for speaking up and speaking out about police misbehavior,” but African-Americans “need to roar out their anger at such treatment,” Bob Herbert writes in the New York Times. Gates, not the officer who arrested him, is in the right, and we need to “focus a spotlight on such outrages and the urgent need to stop them.” More»

Tapes show I'm not a racist, says woman who alerted police

(NEWSER) - The Massachusetts woman who called 911 on Henry Louis Gates and his chauffeur as they wrestled with the Harvard professor’s front door said today she never mentioned race to Sgt. James Crowley, the officer who arrested Gates. Lucia Whalen’s statement contradicts the police report filed by Crowley, which states that Whalen described “two black males with backpacks,” after he arrived in person, the New York Times reports. More»

Both sides overreacted; people should 'cooperate' with police

(NEWSER) - Speaking to Larry King about Henry Louis Gates’ arrest, Colin Powell said he’d faced racial profiling “many times,” and suggested both the professor and the police were at fault in the incident, the Huffington Post reports. Gates “should have reflected on whether or not this was the time to make that big a deal,” Powell said, while police shouldn’t have taken things so far. More»