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Boston GlobeAccomplished, but not insulated
Some successful blacks find Gates’s case all too familiar
By Eric Moskowitz
Globe Staff / July 24, 2009
A financial adviser at a leading wealth-management firm, Dan Rivers often identifies himself proudly but simply: “I’m a Dartmouth guy.’’ But thinking about the times he was scrutinized by security coming in and out of corporate events, about the less-than-welcoming glances he has received at a venerable men’s clothier, Rivers said he is sometimes seen by others in an entirely different way: as a black guy.
Likewise, Colette A.M. Phillips, chief executive of a Boston marketing firm, recalled the fellow business traveler in the American Airlines Admirals Club at Logan International Airport who presumed she was the help and asked for coffee.
There are legions of others who can share similar stories, affluent, accomplished, and academically distinguished African-Americans in Greater Boston who have suffered indignities that they doubt would befall their similarly successful white peers. It demonstrates, they said, that racism cannot be escaped by climbing the ladder.
Sometimes the slights are stark, other times subtle, and occasionally they fall into a gray area that leaves them wondering whether they are real or perceived. Rarely do they make local headlines, much less global news, or end with them in handcuffs on the doorstep of their homes, as was the case with the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr., the renowned Harvard scholar, in Cambridge last week. In that case, Gates denounces racial profiling by what he has described as a “rogue cop,’’ while others see a respected police officer who says he was simply answering the call of duty, a report of a burglary in progress at Gates’s house.
Ted Landsmark was a young, Yale-educated lawyer on his way to a meeting at City Hall in 1976 when he had the misfortune to cross a group of young white demonstrators who tried to spear him with an American flag, an assault that was captured in a photograph that symbolized the rage over school desegregation in Boston.
Three decades later, Landsmark is president of the Boston Architectural College. He has built a distinguished career as an academic and social activist. While the distant past is just that, a far subtler incident befell him when he took his first drive in the Mercedes wagon he bought three years ago, driving a few blocks to get an inspection sticker. An officer pulled him over, he said, just to check that he owned the car.
“We have all learned that there are sometimes stereotypic responses that police officers and others in authority have toward African-Americans,’’ Landsmark said earlier this week. “And we sometimes comment to each other about how careful we have to be when we are doing things that would bring no attention to others who are similarly situated as professionals.’’
Stephanie J. Anderson, head of public relations for a billion-dollar lighting company, said she tries to oblige when fellow shoppers at Neiman Marcus ask her for help with an item or directions to the lady’s room.
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