Ajar

Who hasn’t lost the keys to his
own house, searched for a window
to crawl through, kicked a back door

open, to see if it was left open?
Frost did at his Ripton farm house.
I’m telling you I climb through

a window when he isn’t there so I can
look around. No one’s around to call
the police who rarely exist up there.

Frost is a bridge to Cambridge.
He lived there, too. And now
Henry Louis Gates Jr. who the police

find in his own house. Mr. Gates
isn’t broke and entering. He lives
in his own house. Frost didn’t have

to carry an ID. Berryman found
the key to his own Henry and then
water under a bridge, I’m sorry to say.

The police want us to think it’s all
water under the bridge. I have to say
I’m sorry. For them. Someone has to

pay his respects. I expect we haven’t
heard the last of this. A poem needs
its refrain. White-haired Frost doesn’t

leave a key under his mat for me
when I come home late, when I’ve
forgotten which window I’ve left unlocked.

Acadamia supports Gates

One week after the arrest of Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates caused an international firestorm, the noted African-American scholar is receiving an outpouring of support from academia.

The leaders of Harvard’s Association of Black Faculty, Administrators, and Fellows released a strongly worded letter this morning expressing outrage at Gates’s arrest by a white Cambridge police sergeant for disorderly conduct, a charge that was dropped last week.

The letter, jointly written by the co-chairmen of the association — law professor Ronald S. Sullivan, who directs the Criminal Justice Institute of Harvard Law School, and Robert Mitchell, assistant dean and communications director in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences — said they “would like to add our voices to the chorus of outraged people responding to the unjustified, illegal, and unwarranted arrest that you were forced to endure.

“As black men, we know what racial profiling and stereotyping is all about,” Sullivan and Mitchell wrote. “Moreover, we regret the serious affront to your dignity in respect of the booking process. . . Regrettably, your arrest demonstrates how vulnerable some in our community still are to police abuse of power.”

Gates was arrested after Sergeant James Crowley, responding to a call about a possible burglary at Gates’s home after Gates and his livery diver were seen pushing a broken door open, said the professor became verbally abusive during the investigation. Gates has said he did not yell at the officer and was only asking for his name and badge number to file a complaint.

In a phone interview today, Sullivan said that no matter whether outbursts actually occurred, “fits of language are not subject to criminal liability.”

“You’re essentially cleared when you’re in your own home to be rude and offensive,” Sullivan said. “The first amendment guarantees it. And most experienced police sergeants should know this. … When [Crowley] got the Harvard identification and the driver’s license, it should have been ‘Good day, Professor Gates. Sorry to have bothered you.’ ”

The Cambridge Police Department has defended Crowley’s actions but said it would form an independent panel to review the confrontation and use it as a teaching moment.

Gates has also received support from other prominent African-American scholars around the country, including Cornel West of Princeton, who formerly taught at Harvard. West told the Globe last week that Gates “has a righteous indignation at injustice, and I think that’s what you have there.”

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, chairwoman of Harvard’s African and African American studies department, sent Gates a letter on behalf of his colleagues in the department.

“I have never known you to exhibit tumultuous or disorderly conduct,” Higginbotham wrote. “I believe your accounts of the events and support you in every way… to be black in America brings painful situations such as what you are now experiencing.”

She went on to note that successful African-Americans have not been “immune from police arrest or harassment, even though innocent of any crime. Racial profiling by the police has long been a subject of discussion by academics, lawyers, and ordinary citizens, and sensitivity sessions have clearly not yielded a transformed police force.”

Perhaps the most unusual support for Gates came in the form of a poem titled “Ajar,” by Middlebury College professor Gary Margolis, who heads the Vermont college’s Mental Health Services. It begins: Who hasn’t lost the keys to his
own house, searched for a window to crawl through, kicked a back door open, to see if it was left open? To read it in full, click here.

Margolis, who is white, said he was inspired to write the poem after President Obama’ first commented on the arrest. He wrote it in just over an hour last Thursday after he arrived at work.

“Poetry can speak to a complex moment,” Margolis said. “It seemed to be a very human moment, from all sides. … It was in my head and in my heart.”

Further more, the historical record stands as a set precedent for how African Americans are treated in America. Henry Gates was arrested in his home by an officer who failed to abide by the law himself.

Non compliance with Mr. Gates request for identification and badge number was the first instance of unacceptable behavior. The officer has yet explain his deviation from protocol.

To demand an apology from the United States President is not only disrespectful to the Presidential Office; it also speaks to a special concern of defiance as the Cambridge Police Department answer their Commander and Cheif with a dismissive retort.

I do not support the Cambridge Police Department or their actions. Further investigation should be their first priority, and an apology from the arresting officer to Professor Gates is in order.

Breaking: Cambridge Police Unit Demands Apology From Obama (Video)…Update: Doctors Want An Apology Too!

Updated | 2:48 p.m. E. Lynn Harris, the best-selling author of novels that addressed the subject of gay black culture has died, his publicist told The Associated Press. He was 54.

According to his official biography at his Web site, Mr. Harris was born in Flint, Mich. and raised in Little Rock, Ark. At the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, he was the school’s first black male Razorbacks cheerleader and was a lifelong fan of the team. He sold computers for a living until he self-published his first novel, “Invisible Life,” in 1991; it was picked up by Anchor Books in 1994, spawning a prolific writing career spanning ten more novels, from “Just As I Am” in 1994, to “Basketball Jones,” published in January, as well as a 2004 memoir, “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted.”

In a review of Mr. Harris’s 2006 novel “I Say a Little Prayer” in The New York Times Book Review, Troy Patterson wrote that Mr. Harris “has helped bring taboo topics — like closeted black men indulging their sexuality ‘on the down low’ — into mainstream conversation.” From his debut with “Invisible Life”, Mr. Patterson wrote that Mr. Harris offered a writing style that “was smoothly paced, and the prose occasionally opened up on Fitzgerald-lite moments of sparkling sentiment.”

In a statement, Alison Rich, the executive director of publicity for Doubleday, which published Mr. Harris’s novels, said: “We at Doubleday are deeply shocked and saddened to learn of E. Lynn Harris’ death at too young an age. His pioneering novels and powerful memoir about the black gay experience touched and inspired millions of lives, and he was a gifted storyteller whose books brought delight and encouragement to readers everywhere. Lynn was a warm and generous person, beloved by friends, fans, and booksellers alike, and we mourn his passing.”

A full obituary will follow at nytimes.com.

The media coverage of news agencies such as CNN and Fox News have become clearly biased as they parade the record of the arresting officer.

It is always the assumption in this nation that the African American is wrong and the other party deserves the benefit of the doubt.

This is the textbook example of African Americans being second class citizens in regard to the law.

The continued injustices are always downplayed by the media and government to be a simple misunderstanding; it is not.

The President of the country should never have to retract his opinion when asked a question and further more should not be subject to scrutiny by the media and the Cambridge Police Department.

This also shows the class divides in America still exist in an unspoken matter as President Obama called the officer to speak with him before attempting to contact the victim. President Obama has yet to call his “friend” Prof. Henry Gates; however the officer has been contacted.

Fox News and CNN have taken liberty to portray this as an apology to the officer. The officer has blatantly refused to apologize to Prof. Henry Gates. Prof. Gates’ side of the story is incomplete at best, receiving little to no attention at all.

Whether the President of the United States or a professor of Harvard University; a black man does not retain equal rights in this nation.

Henry Gates was arrested in his home for disorderly conduct. The media’s assumption was that he was deserving of the arrest. I assume he was not.

If the officer is telling the truth and Gates was belligerent as he attempted to leave, he should have given Gates his name and badge number and left.

Under Massachusetts law an officer is required to provide name and badge number to a civilian who asks; the officer refused to do so.

But what do I know, white is right… 

The coverage of the recent arrest of a prominent Harvard Professor in his own home has sparked national debate.

The media coverage of news agencies such as CNN and Fox News have become clearly biased as they parade the record of the arresting officer.

It is always the assumption in this nation that the African American is wrong and the other party deserves the benefit of the doubt.

This is the textbook example of African Americans being second class citizens in regard to the law.

The continued injustices are always downplayed by the media and government to be a simple misunderstanding; it is not.

The President of the country should never have to retract his opinion when asked a question and further more should not be subject to scrutiny by the media and the Cambridge Police Department.

This also shows the class divides in America still exist in an unspoken matter as President Obama called the officer to speak with him before attempting to contact the victim. President Obama has yet to call his “friend” Prof. Henry Gates; however the officer has been contacted.

Fox News and CNN have taken liberty to portray this as an apology to the officer. The officer has blatantly refused to apologize to Prof. Henry Gates. Prof. Gates’ side of the story is incomplete at best, receiving little to no attention at all.

Whether the President of the United States or a professor of Harvard University; a black man does not retain equal rights in this nation.

Henry Gates was arrested in his home for disorderly conduct. The media’s assumption was that he was deserving of the arrest. I assume he was not.

If the officer is telling the truth and Gates was belligerent as he attempted to leave, he should have given Gates his name and badge number and left.

Under Massachusetts law an officer is required to provide name and badge number to a civilian who asks; the officer refused to do so.

But what do I know, white is right…

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) –Boris Kodjoe owns a mansion in Atlanta. But when he goes to answer his door, the black actor knows what it’s like to be an outcast.

“When I’m opening the door of my own house, someone will ask me where the man of the house is, implying that I’m staff,” said Kodjoe, best known for starring in Showtime’s “Soul Food.”

It’s a feeling some African-Americans say is all too common, even to this day in America: No matter your status or prominence in society, you’re still typecast. That’s why the recent arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation’s most prominent African-American scholars, has stirred outrage and debate.

Jelani Cobb, an author and professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, says it’s troubling on many levels when “one of the most recognizable African-Americans in the country can be arrested in his own home and have to justify being in his own home.”

“It’s really kind of unfathomable,” Cobb said. “If it can happen to him, yeah, it can happen to any of us.”

That’s a sentiment echoed by Jimi Izrael. “If a mild-mannered, bespectacled Ivy League professor who walks with a cane can be pulled from his own home and arrested on a minor charge, the rest of us don’t stand a chance,” Izrael wrote Tuesday on The Root, an online magazine with commentary from a variety of black perspectives that’s co-founded by Gates.

“We all fit a description. We are all suspects.”

Full Story: http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/22/gates.arrest.reaction/index.html

(CNN) — Last Thursday, President Obama, in his fiery speech before the NAACP Convention, admitted that “an African-American child is roughly five times as likely as a white child to see the inside of a prison.”

But he surely couldn’t have imagined that only a couple of hours before his oration, one of America’s most prominent scholars — and a distinguished professor at Obama’s alma mater, Harvard University — would breathe cruel and ironic life into that sad statistic.

Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. is simply the most powerful and influential black scholar in our nation’s history.

He received a doctorate at Cambridge University long before the culture wars became au courant; he was among the first group of figures to receive a MacArthur “Genius Award” Fellowship; he wrote the finest work of literary criticism in a generation with “Signifying Monkey”; he was named by Time magazine as one of the “25 Most Influential Americans”; he has a boatload of honorary degrees; and he has been a ubiquitous media presence and thoughtful interpreter of race and culture for a quarter-century.

But none of that made a bit of difference when Gates returned from a research trip to China to find the front door to his Harvard-owned house jammed and enlisted the assistance of his driver to muscle the door loose. By the time Gates was on the phone with his leasing company, a white policeman had arrived, summoned by a neighbor who spotted two black men looking as if they were unlawfully breaking into the house.

Their stories diverge from here; the policeman says he asked Gates to step outside, Gates refused, the officer entered the home and requested Gates’ ID, which he didn’t initially produce, and finally had Gates arrested when he followed the officer outside, as Gates was “exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior.”

Gates allegedly shouted, “Is this how you treat a black man in America?” and “You don’t know who you’re messing with.” Gates says he showed the officer his ID, demanded that the officer identify himself, which he didn’t, and then the professor followed the officer outside to get the policeman’s name and badge number when he was arrested by the gaggle of police who had gathered.

Several features of the story scream the presence of lingering bias and racism. A black man in a tony neighborhood simply seems out of place, even to his neighbors.

Had Gates been a white professor trying to get inside his home, and called on his driver to help him jar his door open, he probably wouldn’t have as readily aroused the suspicion of neighbors. And when police arrived to check out the premises, they probably wouldn’t have been nearly as ready to believe the worst about the occupant of a home who clearly wasn’t engaged in a criminal act.

Whatever one believes about what happened, Gates clearly wasn’t the beneficiary of the benefit of the doubt, a reasonable expectation since he posed no visible threat.

It is also striking that Gates seems to be the victim of a police mentality that chafes at a challenge of its implicit authority. While that may be true for folk of all races, it seems especially galling to cops to be questioned by a person of color.

How dare black folk believe that, regardless of their station or privilege, they have permission to speak back — or speak black — to state-enforced authority, one that, not a decade ago, routinely ravaged black communities in blatant displays of wanton aggression.

It is for good reason that police brutality is a constant concern for black folk; the stakes are often high and harmful. The link between black vulnerability and racial profiling — of setting in one’s collective imagination an image of black men as bad people who are liable to commit mayhem at any moment, and who must therefore always be suspected of wrong and subject to arbitrary forms of control and surveillance — is evident in the pileup of black bodies, from Amadou Diallo to Sean Bell, that testify to the force of police to impose lethal limits on black survival. Gates rubbed up against the unspoken code that enforces black silence and often violently compels black compliance.

In the end, Gates’ unjust treatment speaks volumes about the cynical assertion that we now live in a post-racial paradise.

Gates’ crime appears to be a new one in the litany of crimes that black folk commit by virtue of their very existence — in this case, HWB, or housing while black. If a famous and affluent black man in his own home can be accosted, arrested and humiliated, then all black folk can reasonably expect the same treatment.

To Gates’ credit, he realizes that racial profiling happens regularly to poor black folk, and he has pledged to do something about it. But another famous black figure associated with Harvard must renew his pledge to get rid of racial profiling and spare the nation the illusion that his success represents a post-racial America. While it’s not likely he’ll be unjustly arrested in his House, he’s got to make sure that the same privilege extends to millions of other black folk who don’t live on Pennsylvania Avenue.

- Dr. Micheal Eric Dyson