This incident with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. reminds me of one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies:
He was wearing my Harvard tie. Can you believe it? My Harvard tie. Like oh, sure he went to Harvard.
Dan Aykroyd as Louis Winthrope III in Trading Places (1983)
Carol Rose, Director of ACLU of Massachusetts wrote an Op-Ed for the Boston Globe on what the Gates incident says about the prevalence of racial profiling in 2009:
Boston Globe - Op-Ed: Racial Profiling is alive and well - By Carol Rose