Why can't Gawker get its facts straight?
Gawker doesn't let the facts get in the way of a good story as it pounces all over those racially profiling cops in hugely white Boston going after black Harvard professors. Or something.
Gawker, give Adam Reilly a call, 'kay?
Comments
Harvard is in Boston, too
The business school, med school, dental school, school of public health, and all the athletic facilities are in Boston. And as we all know, Harvard plans to expand further into Boston. So a fair number of Harvard police are also in Boston.
I'd give Gawker a pass on this one.
You are, of course, correct
However, it seems like the incidents referred to by Gawker happened in or near Harvard Yard, as opposed to in the "hugely white" Boston.
I don't get the bike thing
"Earlier this month...officers confronted a person using tools to remove a lock from a locked bicycle. The person, whom others familiar with the case have identified as a black Boston high school student working on the Harvard campus this summer, owned the bicycle, and was trying to cut the lock because the key had broken off in the lock."
Isn't this standard procedure? I helped a similarly pale-skinned friend saw a broken lock off her bicycle in college, and we were 'confronted' by campus security (no campus police in Hanover) as well. Shouldn't authority figures consider anyone sawing through a lock worth a closer look?
-Cosmo
http://boston.redfin.com/blog/author/cosmo.catalano
Notify Security First
I did this when my key broke off in my lock when I was visiting the National Academy of Sciences for a Conference. Security not only noted that it would need to be removed mechanically, they called facilities to bring their tools and they helped me free it!
Let them know, show them the messed up key or whatever, and sometimes you get further than you would alone.
yeah, no kidding
...and apparently, campus police are not permitted to stop people of color who match descriptions of burglary suspects?
If someone broke into a place nearby and I matched their description, I wouldn't be surprised if I got stopped. Yet, apparently, if you're a black professor, it's license to claim that you were racially profiled. It'd be one thing if the description consisted of "black male", but since none of the stories have covered what the description was that HUPD were using, we'll never know.
And apparently, HUPD are not permitted to ask students if they have a permit for their event if they're black? They see a gathering, they ask who's in charge, ask if they got permission, and if everything checks out, they move on. Has anyone thought to ask how many white or asian groups were asked by HUPD about their outdoor, permit-requiring events?
No. We're expected to take these single-sided, single data-point samples as evidence of endemic racism. And the best they can do is to reach back over FOUR YEARS for these examples.
We also apparently don't know how many crimes are committed at Harvard where the perp is on the loose, and described as black. If 50% of them are, and the black student population is 10%- then it's no shocking surprise that each individual black student is more likely to be stopped, even if the same percentage of both races are mistaken to be one of the suspects.
The Dee Brown Rejoinder
Dee Brown was a Boston Celtics player who found himself face down and cuffed in a parking lot in Wellesley because he "looked like that guy who robbed the bank".
The official description of the guy who robbed the bank was "light skinned black, 5'10" tall ...". Dee Brown was very dark skinned, younger than the robber, and (needless to say) far taller.
One data point? Yep. Racial profiling? Oh yeah. He was a black man, and the robber was too, so he must be the perpetrator despite the huge differences in appearance.
If you had to live with this bullcrap on a regular basis, I think you'd have quite a lot to say about it and a high index of suspicion yourself.
Yes, this is still 1974
Is the Boston area perfect? No.
Is it so much more worse than New York City *cough*Amadou*Diallo*cough*Abner*Louima*cough or so completely unchanged from 1974 that snarky New York elitists can feel morally superior to us? No.
" Awestruck at 12:16
" Awestruck at 12:16 PM
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@TedSez: Welcome to Boston!
To be fair, Boston is creepy and racist but to be fair Harvard is in Cambridge--which is a totally different city! I like Cambridge, and last time I was there it wasn't as evil as Boston...yet... "
That's what you get on the Gawker connection. The sister-site Deadspin has a running "racist Boston" meme that comes out about, oh... once a day. I dont' suppose any of them have been to segregated Hyde Park or segregated Roslindale or segregated Jamaica Plain. They're still living in South Boston of the '70s.
try reading lessons
Here, I BOLDED it for you.
It'd be one thing if the description consisted of "black male", but since none of the stories have covered what the description was that HUPD were using, we'll never know.
So. You're bringing up a case where the false-arrestee didn't match the description was arrested by municipal police in white-bread Wellesley eighteen years ago, in a case involving campus police, where we have no idea what the description was or whether the professor matched it.
How relevant!
Also, the Globe, Gawker, and everyone else seem to have rather selective memory about his history on campus.
Try Empathy
Like many people who don't have to live with the reality that others live, you sure seem to know a whole bunch about how they should feel and process their experiences, now don't you.
A number of people I lived with in college couldn't seem to go a single fucking week without being detained while walking home from classes because the BU cops that patrolled the area where MIT and BU housing is intermixed couldn't fathom that the black males and the arab male and even a swarthy Israeli male could actually live in a Kenmore square brownstone! We even had problems with the well-dressed male friend of one house member being hassled while waiting on the front steps because he rang the doorbell to pick her up to take her to church on Sunday morning.
Things may have improved since then, but you have to consider that this was once ROUTINE practice within the span of memory of a 30 or 40 year old. Regular exposure to such questioning of your presence in your own neighborhood leads to suspicion of any and all detentions and questions, even when apparently justified - and particularly when the person stopping you refuses to explain why you are being stopped! For those community minded persons who came of age when these things were more routine, one would think that such lived experiences might make them more inclined to speak out in support of younger people with less agency when they reported similar treatment.
Of course, this doesn't seem to ever happen to Brett so it really doesn't matter, never happened, doesn't count, shouldn't bias one toward suspicion. The only true lived reality of the narcissist is that of the narcissist.
Try skepticism.
You're still doing it; none of your anecdotes have anything to do with the specific case at hand. It wasn't a case where cops stopped him simply because he was black and he looked like he didn't belong. This is not your "college years", and it's not BU or MIT. It's an entirely separate police force, more than a decade later, and the reason for the stop was specific.
How funny that you're crucifying me, using such vaporous logic, for being skeptical about both the news stories and the claims of racism themselves.
Maybe the claim is true. It wouldn't surprise me if the professor (who claimed HUPD were using 'apartheid' tactics when they asked those students for ID and if they had the necessary permit) truly believed he was a victim of "racism". But there are numerous other possibilities that cannot be ignored- a simple case of having a hammer and seeing nothing but nails, or that he's been fighting so bitterly, simply for personal fame and notoriety.
I'm done here.
Sure they do
They do. It is called "high index of suspicion". If you spent your young adult life being treated rudely for the radical act of walking home from school or work, I think you would be a bit sensitive to being stopped by the authorities when walking home from school or work.
Of course Harvard professors and administrators have never gone to other schools, especially BU or MIT, having sprung fully formed from John Harvard's head without memory of years of scholarship in a past era. They couldn't possibly be 40 years old or older, or remember anything similar to the lived reality of my housemates.
In any case, many professors and people with some authority of administration, age and profession would also be inclined to question those authorities when they stopped younger people walking home from school or work, regardless of how justified that questioning may have been (post hoc). Things are different now, but the lived reality of that past era is very much alive in memory. Gilpin-Faust gets it because she has seen this and understands that past. This is particularly suspicious and should be investigated if the police in question were abrupt, rude, and evasive about their noble purpose of fighting crime. Even if they are equal opportunity assholes about detaining people and not answering for themselves in the brave new world of the brave new Harvard Yard, you might not know that if you have never been white.
You're Stretching It
I've got to side with Brett on this one. It's pretty lame of you to accuse Brett of narcissism when every one of your arguments entails very personal anecdotes from many years ago that you are broadly applying to a recent incident nowhere near your own anecdotes in space or time.
No, you are avoiding reality
Social context matters. Historical context matters. Without these, there would be no complaint or reason to suspect race issues in this specific instance.
You'd have made a good little Simi Valley juror, falling for all this lovely frame-by-frame reductionism. Fortunately, Gilpin-Faust ain't blindered to these contextural realities like you two are.
Not quite
But again, you're referring to your personal social context and your personal historical context. You can't throw out broad personal anecdotes and then wildly claim it as social and historical context for an entire region and group of people past and present.
Also, is comparing people to the instigators of the LA riots the new Godwin's Law?
one more vote for Brett
Self-absorption at Harvard? Ya think?