President Barack Obama will have a beer with a white police officer and an eminent black scholar at the White House on Thursday, in a bid to quell a heated national furor over racial profiling.
Obama planned to welcome distinguished Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates and police sergeant Jim Crowley for 6:00 pm (2200 GMT) beers on the White House South Lawn, hoping to turn the page on a race row that erupted during a July 16 incident at the scholar's home.
The president downplayed the significance of the meeting, which has been dubbed a "beer summit" by the press, saying he was "fascinated with the fascination about this evening."
"I noticed this has been called the beer summit. It's a clever term, but this is not a summit, guys. This is three folks having a drink at the end of the day and hopefully giving people an opportunity to listen to each other. And that's really all it is," Obama told reporters in the Oval Office.
The contretemps occurred when Gates -- arguably the foremost US scholar on African-American affairs -- was arrested after police received a call that two men might be attempting a break-in at a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, home to Harvard.
As it turned out, the "break-in" was Gates's attempt to enter his own home when the door jammed.
Gates and Crowley exchanged heated words, and the professor was ultimately arrested for disorderly conduct.
Obama, the nation's first African-American president, added to the controversy when he said police had "acted stupidly" by arresting his friend after establishing that Gates had been in his own home.
The incident sparked an intense national discussion as to whether police rushed to stereotype a black man as a potential criminal -- even a bookish and middle-aged one such as Gates -- solely based on his race.
But public outrage also swelled over Obama's choice of words, and his hasty characterization of what had happened.
It provided an opening for right-wing commentators to criticize the president as well, including one who accused Obama of being racist against whites.
Some critics say the president maligned Crowley, a well-regarded officer in Cambridge who trained others in his department on the perils of racial profiling.
Last week, Obama called Crowley to express regret over his statement, and to invite the police officer and Gates to the White House for a reconciliatory beer.
Obama later said that blame in the standoff was likely shared, suggesting that Gates "probably overreacted" -- as did police, by booking a professor for being hot-headed.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has described the make-up session as "a chance to talk and a chance to have a dialogue," adding that it offered a "teachable moment" for all involved -- and the country at large.
Just bringing the players together will show "we can still sit down and discuss issues that are important like this, that we can, I think, as the president has said many times, disagree without being disagreeable," he said.
The controversy ends the first six months of Obama's presidency in which he managed not to be defined by his race, but Obama said he hoped the chat would offer a chance for reconciliation.
"This is not a university seminar. It is not a summit. It's an attempt to have some personal interaction when an issue has become so hyped and so symbolic that you lose sight of just the fact that these are people involved, including myself, all of whom are imperfect," Obama said.
"Everybody can just spend a little bit of time with some self-reflection and recognizing that other people had different points of view."
One issue about which the trio was likely to disagree was on the brand of beer to be imbibed when they hold their meeting at a picnic table outside the Oval Office, the very same setting for a meeting between Obama and his former rival for the presidency -- now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Gibbs said the president would drink Bud Light, while Gates has said he likes Red Stripe and Crowley prefers Blue Moon.
"So we'll have the gamut covered," the spokesman concluded.
Source: AFP American Edition
