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The disorderly conduct case against renowned black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. lasted less than a week. The heated public debate over his arrest, and the role race played in it, promises to be much more enduring.
Gates was accused of "tumultuous" behavior toward a white police officer who had responded to Gates' home near Harvard University to investigate a report of a burglary and demanded Gates show him identification. Police say Gates at first refused, and accused the officer of racism.
In a region with a tortured racial history, two overarching arguments have emerged about what happened next. Police supporters charge that Gates - director of Harvard's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research - was responsible for his own arrest by overreacting. Those sympathetic to Gates counter that the white officer should have defused the situation and left the home as soon as he established that Gates was the resident, not a burglar.
The charge was dropped Tuesday, with a statement from the city of Cambridge calling the incident last Thursday "regrettable and unfortunate." Police offered no apology, nor did the officer accept blame.
Do you think he deserves a apology? Write The Dean's List at: thedeanslist1@gmail.com
