My cousin sums it up well in Crowley vs Gates....

OK I am gonna get up on the soap box………………………..
In the altercation between Officer James Crowley and Henry Gates.

I am for the officer, James Crowley---------I am glad to see him not back down in the face of media ‘s hysterical reporting and jumping to conclusions when he had done nothing wrong and also has a history of exemplary performance. I agree it is the media’s duty to report news, but there is a difference in reporting what happened (who, what , when & where) and going over the line just to excite the public with yellow journalism. It is the media’s place to report the news in an unbiased way. If they want to voice their opinion, or take sides, an editorial is the place for that.
But then that does not get the press and attention of the tv news cast.
If this country has a problem with racism it is my opinion that the media has to shoulder a good bit of the blame. Making a mountain out of a mole hill is just as detrimental as turning a deaf ear and making too little of an incident.
If anyone needs to make an apology it is Henry Gates with the chip on his shoulder.
The officer was doing his job in response to a call from a neighbor of the professor.
There was no way for officer Crowley to magically know who Gates was.
Just because Gates knew who he himself was is no reason to expect the officer to know this. If the officer had not asked for ID and “Gates” had in reality not been authorized to be in the house then officer Crowley would have been accused of being incompetent. Which is pretty much what he is being accused of anyway. Kind of a no win situation.

I am well aware that this country has a history of some depicabl behavior toward other races. I have seen documentaries of such and read about such. The fact that these incidents happened is of course wrong; but no matter how wrong they were going over board the other way does not make for good race relations either. It is too bad in this we just can’t be fair. I know how ideal in an a world that isn’t. But that is all it would take.