Your ID, please? the Henry Gates vs. James Crowley event from an anthropological perspective

Abstract

In the modern world, ID papers are those indispensable objects without which we cannot prove we are who we say we are. We need material proof to attest to our identification. The central ethnographic event of this paper took place in July 2009 with the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. by the police of the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, after a passer-by reported that someone was breaking of the entrance door of a house which, it soon transpired, was the professor's own house. From the analysis of this episode three mechanisms of classification and singularization are revealed, namely "recognition," "identification," and "profiling."

Suspended Gazes

“…Estos elementos presentes en el signo fotográfico guardan en la superficie miradas suspendidas que están ahí tratando de hacer contacto visual con quienes transitan por las calles de la ciudad. Concretar un proceso de identificación de los desaparecidos de la ciudad (Peirano, 2011). Verlos.…”

Mixed Blessings and Sorrowful Mysteries

“…My essay owes more than circumstantial inspiration to Karen Fields and Barbara Fields. 30. The case-and the political fallout it generated-are presumably still well known (but see Peirano [2011] for a sensitive analysis of the records and media reports). As Gates (2010) himself tells us, his "y-DNA haplotype is R1b1b2ala2f2, also known as 'the Ui Neil Haplotype.'…”