I have been a victim of profiling in the early seventies. I grew up around Mobile AL and was pulled over a couple of hundred times just because I looked like a hippie. I was always polite even to the point of allowing numerous searches of my vehicle and person. Never once did I yell at the cop and never was I arrested or even threatened with arrest. If professor Gates had kept his cool this would have been a non incident. I am white but several times I was pulled over for having a black friend in the car with me, profiling at the time was that a white and black in the same car it had to be drugs involved. My friends nor I engaged the officers with anything other than good manners and it worked to our advantage. MORAL — Gates was his own worst enemy in all this.
