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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2009
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 OPINION 
49

Gates' Rage: It's Class, not Race

'Gates is Ivy League pissed with a dash of Black anger. Not the other way around.'

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(Newser) – Skip Gates isn’t outraged because he was the victim of racial profiling. He’s outraged because the cops didn’t recognize his Ivy League credentials, a fellow black Ivy Leaguer writes anonymously on This Week in Blackness and Salon. "He didn’t resent being identified as Black; he resented being identified as that kind of Black, the kind of Black that can be hassled and pushed around by simpleton cops. How dare you hassle me? I’m Skip Gates: Harvard professor!"

It's the Ivy League Effect, the writer says, that seems to have made the professor think he could harass the cops he thought were harassing him. Sure, they were almost certainly in the wrong. “But I’m also sure the good doctor was talking some shit. That Ivy League Effect has washed out his healthy fear of the police.” Gates says he’s “joined the ranks of the million incarcerated black men in America,” but that’s laughable, the writer says. “He does not see those million men as kin.”

Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., is seen during an interview in his home in Cambridge, Mass., Friday, Jan. 18, 2008.
Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., is seen during an interview in his home in Cambridge, Mass., Friday, Jan. 18, 2008.   (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds)
Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. participates in a panel on CNN's live show 'Moment of Truth: Countdown to Black in America 2,' Wednesday, July 22, 2009 in New York.
Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. participates in a panel on CNN's live show 'Moment of Truth: Countdown to Black in America 2,' Wednesday, July 22, 2009 in New York.   (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
In this photo taken by a neighbor, July 16, 2009, Skip Gates, the director of Harvard's Institute for African and African American Research, is arrested at his home in Cambridge, Mass.
In this photo taken by a neighbor, July 16, 2009, Skip Gates, the director of Harvard's Institute for African and African American Research, is arrested at his home in Cambridge, Mass.   (AP Photo/Demotix Images, B. Carter)
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Before we heed the call of racism, let’s be mindful of the tower from which that call came. This has something to do with race. But it has a lot more to do with messing with Skip Gates. - Anonymous black Ivy Leaguer

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49 comments
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IN RESPONSE:
Shannonals
Jul 26, 09 10:40 PM CDT
You have to check the newspapers, not the media stations. Rev. Al Sharpton made comments in the Boston Globe and Jesse Jackon spoke with CNN & Fox News.
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0
weglad
Jul 24, 09 8:31 AM CDT
"Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am?" Yes, Professor, we sure do now... Reply
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+7
IN RESPONSE:
Timinator2K
Jul 24, 09 9:33 AM CDT
A Pompous Ivy League Asswipe looking to be on Oprah, signing a big bucks book deal, a TV movie deal and extending his 15 minutes of fame into another BS feature-length Michael Moore documentary....and MAYBE a Black Elitist Action Figure with a Kung-fu Grip!
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+2
IN RESPONSE:
Snarfeh
Jul 24, 09 10:43 PM CDT
I'm going to have to break from my liberal crowd & go with pompous ivy leaguer on this one. The only thing the cop did wrong was to let this old man get to him. He had an opportunity to be the better man by walking away, but he didn't. He did not arrest that man for being black; he arrested him for pissing him off. Not fair, but he's got that power when one is disorderly. The old man was screaming & posing for the crowd. Not every cop is a racist; my father was chief of police in my hometown all the years I was growing up. He stood up to the KKK, even to the point of an old western style showdown on our three stoplight main street. A known klansman was walking around town with his gun holstered & unconcealed (this was the late 50's-early 60's). He backed away when my father arrived because he knew he had to draw or go to jail. He ran to his car, according to some of the older folks who have related this to me, & drove off. He later turned himself in, but an informant within the KKK then alerted the SBI that a contract was put on my dad. My father, I am proud to say, stood up for civil rights & the law. He had other run-in's with the KKK, but no one ever fulfilled the contract, thank all higher powers. So I can honestly say I was not raised to be a racist despite growing up in the south. And yes, I know there are many cops today who are full of themselves & their power, but if we all step back a moment, look at the facts as we've read them, read the police report & really get objective, we should be able to discern the true racist cases from the ones that are not racist. I don't believe this cop is a racist. In fact, I think he is so much *not* a racist that he let this old man piss him off for calling him one & then used one from the books to put the old fart in his place. I also bet one of the reasons the charges were dropped is because this cop, upon cooling down, realized he stepped in it & probably even agreed to drop the charges. There are some good cops still out there & profiling them all as bad is just as bad as racial profiling.
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Doctor_Zaius
Jul 24, 09 8:31 AM CDT
Who wouldn't be pissed being arrested for breaking into their own home AFTER proving it to the police. Reply
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+1

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