EBM Publishing

From the beginning it appeared as if there were inconsistencies in the stories of both parties regarding Dr. Henry Gates situation.  And although Mr. Gates accomplishments are well documented and the enormous respect we have for him is well deserved the question remains, did he wrongly play the race card?

            Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was born on September 16, 1950, he is an American literary critic, educator, scholar; writer, editor, and public intellectual with many distinctions, but on July 16, 2009 he was arrested by the Cambridge Police Department on what he considered to be an act of Racial Profiling, though as more information came forward it appeared as if the Harvard Scholar may have misplayed the race card.

            Police arrived at Gates’s Ware Street home near Harvard Square at 12:44 p.m. to question him after he had trouble unlocking his door after it became jammed.  He was booked for disorderly conduct after exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior,” according to a police report.  Gates accused the investigating officer of being a racist and told him he had ‘no idea who he was messing with,’ the report said.

            Gates told the officer he was being targeted because “I’m a black man in America.”  But it appears that Gates is too old to fit the profile of a break-in suspect and more so his national popularity makes it seem unlikely that he would be racially profiled.