Topic of the Week: The Cop and the Harvard Professor
Back in July, something happened in the U.S. that really rocked the racial boat. A police officer (white) arrested a Harvard professor (black). At his house! For disturbing the peace! Sound unbelievable? It really happened. It disturbed a lot of people, including President Obama. When he criticized the police officer’s conduct, he himself became the target of criticism. For a while, the racial boat was really rocking.
The President’s Comment:
It all ended with President Obama inviting the two men, the professor and the policeman, to have a beer with him on the White House lawn. They all had a good talk and, although they didn’t agree on everything, the two guests went away feeling much better. Not just because of the beer.
Funny as it is, the incident has a serious side. The incident itself and the ensuing reaction reveal a lot about the perceptions whites have of blacks and blacks of whites in present-day America. Those who thought that racial prejudice was a thing of the past got an unpleasant surprise! The worksheet ‘Harvard Professor Arrested’ is designed to enable students to explore this issue and form an opinion on it.
Excerpt:
On the morning of July 16 Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (58), the well-known Afro-American Harvard professor and author, was arrested and taken to jail. What happened? There are two versions: That of the arresting officer and that of Dr. Gates. But let’s start with the undisputed facts, the facts that both Gates and the officer agree on: Upon returning to Cambridge from a trip to China, Professor Gates was driven to his home by car service. The driver was also a black man. For some reason, Gates’s key wouldn’t work to open the front door, so he and the driver went around the house and entered through the back door and forced the front door open from the inside. Observing this, Lucia Whalen, a neighbor, called 911, thinking she was seeing an attempted burglary. Officer James Crowley got the call and drove quickly to the house. He asked Dr. Gates, who was on the phone, to step outside and identify himself.
There are two versions of what happened after that…
