Obama hosts ‘beer summit’

WASHINGTON – A national furor over race relations paused Thursday as President Barack Obama, in a shady spot on the White House lawn near the Rose Garden, sat down for beers with a black Harvard professor and the white police officer who arrested him two weeks ago.

For the two men who raised mugs of beer with the president, both dressed in suits and sitting stiffly in what was meant to be a casual moment, the discussion of race and policing will go on.

The arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge, Mass., police, said afterward that he and the professor, African-American studies scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., had set plans to talk further in a more private setting.

But for Obama, the most anticipated happy hour in recent memory threatened to be little more than a timeout in an ongoing debate over racial profiling and other racially charged issues. Obama had uncharacteristically helped to escalate the national debate by wading into the issue from the White House, saying that the Cambridge police had “acted stupidly” in arresting the black professor on disorderly conduct charges at his own home.

It was the most overt involvement yet by the country’s first black president in a racially charged matter, and Obama has tried gradually over the past week to ease the controversy – most notably by saying he regretted his choice of words and setting up what came to be known as a “beer summit.”

A small group of cameras and reporters was permitted to witness the meeting only for about 30 seconds and from about 50 feet away. If there was a lesson being taught, there was no way for the nation to hear it.

Gates and Crowley appeared to talk seriously, and at one point Obama gave a hearty laugh. Joining the three was Vice President Joe Biden, in shirtsleeves and drinking a non-alcoholic beer.