In July, a black employee of Harvard University was arrested in Cambridge. What evidence was sufficient to justify the arrest? Henry Louis Gates was tired, frustrated, and apparently not very hospitable. More: Wikipedia.
This month, a white employee of Yale University was suspected of murdering Annie Le. Raymond Clark was, according to badge swipe records, the only person in the same parts of the building as the victim at the same time. He had deep scratches on his chest, arms, and back. Did this motivate the police to arrest him? Take some DNA samples, yes, but arrest, no. (He was finally arrested after the DNA test results came back.)
As the old housekeeper said in the movie “Being There”, upon seeing her old simpleminded charge (Peter Sellers) on television being put forward as a potential Presidential candidate, and noting that he had never learned to read or write, “All you have to be in this world is white.”
You’re assuming that the reason Clark was released has something to do with his being white. However, as it turns out, they had him under continuous surveillance. Is it possible they released him to see whether he’d lead them to additional evidence or do something to indicate consciousness of guilt? I guess if you’re particularly cynical, you might wonder whether they let him stew in a hotel room to give him an opportunity to kill himself.
Whatever the Gates story has to say about race in America, I don’t think it’s a meaningful comparison to how a different police department in another state handled a murder suspect. To infer some racial double standard from just those two cases is kind of a stretch.
Sigh. I wish this weren’t true.
As much as I agree with you, Phil, regarding the Cambridge incident, you are missing a big confounding variable in contrasting the current Yale case with that.
The events of the Annie Le case are clouded by the fact that Yale, the Yale PD, and the NHPD are bending over BACKWARDS so as to not make any of the mistakes of the Jovin case from 10 years ago. That one left them with an unsolved murder and an accused white prof with a ruined career.
Not to mention that Crowley arresting Gates was great for Gates’ career, and probably ultimately for Crowley’s as well. You might find out in 20 years that Gates slipped Crowley 20 bucks and said, “dude, thanks for driving over here. I’m going to start yelling things about your mama, and you go ahead and arrest me. In a week we’ll be sipping beer with the President! You’ll be a national hero to one section of the country, and I’ll be a national hero to another section, and the rest of the country will just be bored to tears over the media coverage of this tortured non incident.”
David: I was not attempting to give a complete comparison of the cases, only showing how someone who interpreted current events through a racial lens might see things.