Gates Arrested at Home

Each time I hear or read about Professor Gates' arrest in Cambridge, my internal visual screen sends signals of how it may have occurred and how often racial profiling occurs.

A neighbour calls. The police arrive. Gates is indigent. Indigent? Yes, after all he is entering his own home. Who is challenging that right. Angry! Yes, angry to learn that not only did a neighbour call the police, the police were challenging him and his bona fides.

Apparently he has been cleared of charges ... read here.

"But what charges," I am certain the Professor is wondering. Overwrought, embarrassed perhaps (some reports say he was with someone), masculine pride attacked, another black man is pulled up short by the realities of prejudice.

And not prejudice in Alabama, but in Cambridge, near Harvard, in Boston, in New England, in America.

My visual memory continues to operate on overdrive, but I will spare myself and you of all those unpleasant details.

And hope against hope we'll improve not only racial relations, but all relations.

NB: An then as I thought I was finished with the subject, the Globe ensnared me with this piece today.