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PrintJuly 23, 2009
Dear Professor Gates (updated)
Dear Professor Gates,
I know you are a tenured Harvard profesor, but I think you have a few things to learn about dealing with police. Please review the following lesson from Chris Rock, titled "How not to get your ass kicked by the police!" [Warning: harsh language alert - do not play if you are offended by the urban patois]
Update -- Rosslyn Smith writes:
Chicago Sun Times's columinst Mary Mitchell, no slouch herself at playing the race card, wrote that as a crime victim she is not all that worked up about the Gate's incident.
I wish someone had been watching when thieves broke into my house and made off with everything they could carry.
While Mitchell goes on to write about how black men have been treated far worse with less reason than Gates gave when he mouthed off to a cop, I suspect that many minorites in urban America are more offended by the differing expectations of protection. In upscale Cambridge where people don't seem to know their neighbors, the police responded in minutes to a report of a property crime in progress. In many inner cities those witnessing such crimes don't even bother to call the police because they know the response, if any, will never be in time and that they might face retaliation from the perpetrators.
