Glenn Loury, a professor at Brown, has a comment in the New York Times, "Obama, Gates, and the American Black Man," that extends the discussion of the conflict between Henry Louis Gates Jr. and James Crowley. Loury calls the event a"made-for-cable-TV tempest in a teapot" when compared to the"plight of the millions of black men on society’s margins who bear the brunt of police scrutiny and government-sanctioned coercion."

Loury criticizes Gates for having neglected their condition while a prominent scholar of African-American studies for the past 30 years and chastises President Obama for not taking a stand against the incarceration of so many black men when he had a chance to do so in his campaign.

Stressing the tragedy of these millions of incarcerated men, Loury doesn't simplify the causes, but he does come out against"three-strikes" laws and in favor of decriminalizing drugs.