Marijuana Policy Project

The arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates by Cambridge police outside his house has set off a national debate about racial profiling and the treatment of African-Americans and people of color by our law enforcement.

While it may be hard for some to accept it, there is clearly racial profiling in our society. If you need just one example, look at who the police stop and who ends up being arrested for drug use in our society. In "blue state" New York, between 1998 and 2007, New York City police arrested 374,900 people for low-level, misdemeanor marijuana offenses. The report put out by the New York Civil Liberties Union found that 83 percent of those charged in these cases were black or Latino, despite equal marijuana use between whites and nonwhites.

The discrepancy, the researchers asserted, is because New York Police Department officers stopped and frisked blacks and Latinos at a dramatically higher rate. While we would hope that the police and law enforcement are colorblind and are just enforcing the law, the numbers don't lie.

Let's hope that the unfortunate arrest of Professor Gates leads to self-reflection and dialogue about the role race plays in our society and our criminal justice system.