Cop Suspended for Gates Slur Sues Over Civil Rights

Calls him 'jungle monkey' in email

(NEWSER) - The fallout from the Henry Louis Gates arrest continues: A Boston cop has been suspended for referring to Gates as a "jungle monkey" in an email, the Globe reports. Officer Justin Barrett, 36, faces a disciplinary hearing next week and could be fired. He used the phrase while describing media coverage of the arrest to members of the National Guard. The flap comes a day before Gates and arresting officer James Crowley have beers at the White House. More»

(NEWSER) - Money, power, and status count for little in the face of persistent racial profiling by police, African-American men tell the Los Angeles Times. Many say they know all too well how Henry Louis Gates Jr. must have felt in his home last week. The consensus generally seems to be that it's futile to put up a fight after, say, yet another traffic stop. "It's more important for me to make it home than to fight for a cause I'm not going to win," says one public school administrator who estimates he's been stopped 20 times in 10 years. More»

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

(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!" More»

'This is what happens to black men in America': Gates to cop

(NEWSER) - A prominent Harvard scholar was arrested last week outside his Cambridge, Mass., home and charged with disorderly conduct after “exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior,” the Harvard Crimson reports. Henry Louis Gates, a renowned professor of African-American studies, was trying to get into the locked house when a neighbor called the police. The officers who made the arrest said Gates did not respond when they demanded he identify himself. More»