Controversy Of Henry Louis Gates

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Controversy In 2009, African-American Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. came home after a business trip in the middle of the night and found his door jammed shut. A neighbor saw that Gates and his driver were trying to open the door and called 9-1-1 to report a potential burglary to the police. Upon the police arriving, a confrontation ensued, leading to Gates being charged with disorderly conduct. After his arrest, Gates went to the media and claimed that he was a victim of racism. Even though many did not agree with Gates’ interpretation that the policeman’s actions were due to racism, the backlash came from an unexpected group: other African Americans. Although Gates went through a negative experience, many

As discussed in Malcolm (2015), the rhetoric of “selling out” functions to keep African Americans on their side of the line in society, by staying with other African Americans and not crossing the line to join Whites. Membership in a group has its expectations. Each member of a group is expected to conform to such expectations set by the group (Goffman, 1974). When racial ingroup members don 't meet these expectations, they might be stigmatized as “selling out”. As Kennedy (2008) puts it, “The sellout is a person who is trusted because of a perceived membership in a given group, trusted until they show their 'true colors '”. Calling other group members slurs or epithets denoting them a sellout is not unique to African Americans. Terms such as “sellout” or “acting white” are also used with Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans (Green, 2005; Fiske, 1988; Fontes, 2008). In summary, when an individual contradicts their racial group’s stereotypical socioeconomic status, and when he or she has a job stereotypical to an adversarial racial group, it may result in feelings of racial ingroup

In the context of the current studies, individuals that elicit racial ingroup betrayal might threaten ingroup distinctiveness, leading to a perceived threat to the group’s existence. In turn, this threat could lead to greater ingroup protectiveness for more stereotypical members of a group, but less ingroup protection for counter-stereotypical members of a group (Wohl, et