Monday, July 27, 2009

A Lot Said, and Unsaid About Race

This past week, there was a lot of report on the “racial duel” between a white police officer Sgt. James Crowley and black Harvard professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr. The “duel” began after Gates started yelling at Crowley, accusing him of racially profiling him, thus leaving the officer feeling vulnerable and Gates feeling victimized and insulted. When the story of what happened that night at Gates home is heard from both Gates and Crowley’s point of view, one would only become confused as to whose side of the story should be believed. In this Op-Ed article written by Judith Warner, one should learn that though racism is still prevalent in America, it is driven mostly on circumstances, and if Crowley and Gates had both been white, the scenario would not have gone as far as it did.

Warner’s straightforward and to the point writing style made her article very easy to read, and her fact based research was also interesting at the same time. I liked how Warner showed how Gates and Crowley’s testimonies contradicted one another by the way that she used direct quotes from their accounts of that night. Warner used the example of Crowley and Gates to show that the way we act is driven by many things including who we are as people, and who we are as people is in fact conditioned by our race.

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