Charles Ogletree's Presumption of Guilt

Presumption of guilt

Presumption of guilt

Gates' case has resonated very widely among African Americans and all who have a sense of what it means to be black in this country. It has also unleashed a racist backlash among those who were angry because the teacher Gates refused to bow slavishly to the racist cop who harassed him at home and the fact that Barack Obama described the arrest as "stupid." All this has raised, once again, the issue of the subjugation of blacks in America. Charles Ogletree a Harvard law professor wrote the book primarily on this incident. Henry Louis Gates is the most important black intellectual on the planet. He has trained hundreds of intellectuals from all hemispheres. He has worked hard to include African literature, African American and afrohispanoamericana in the canon of world literature. He has written the most enlightening essays on the formation of racial discourses that have impressed many around the world. The arrest of Henry Louis Gates serves as a barometer to measure how they race relations and respect for civil rights in the United States of America. It may be that Obama has become the U.S. President and Gates is one of the most distinguished professors at Harvard University. But that does not change the ways in which blacks are received day to day in the United States of America and elsewhere (Ogletree, 2010).

On the day of the incident, Gates returned home from China, where he was filming a documentary for PBS. He struggled to open the door into the street, so we walked through the back door, using his key. Upon entering his home, he turned off the alarm system and, with the help of his driver, managed to open the front door (Ogletree, 2010).

Shortly thereafter, Gates was confronted by a policeman who had entered the house and demanded a proof that the house was indeed hiss. Police received the evidence of ownership, but accusing him of "disturbing public order" took him in handcuffs to jail, where he was detained for several hours. (Jan, 2009)

Gates' arrest and the subsequent comments of Barack Obama that racial profiling is "just a fact" provoked a furious attacks discharge the power structure in any attempt to call the detention of Gates as exactly what it was: a message for all that no matter how much success you achieve in the United States, according to the rules of the system, black people still have to "know their place." (CHILMARK, 2009)This is not an incident that can be seen within a geographic locality. We must also look at the laws of this country which promote racial discrimination (Brooks, 2009).

Arizona law SB 1070 gives the police force the authority to request documents to verify the immigration status of anyone suspected of which are in the country illegally. The problem is that there is no way that suspicion is not based on the appearance of the person, specifically, certain physical traits that determine ...