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Responding to the steady drumbeat of criticism for calling the Cambridge Police Department “stupid” for arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates for “coming home while black”, President Obama and his PR team rigged an event designed to position him as a mediator for a debate on racial differences (read racial profiling). The intimate encounter was sort of a summit — over beers — yesterday afternoon in the White House’s Rose Garden. Check out the above video.

ABC News has a good rundown of the content of that encounter, but a standout for me is this poignant statement by Gates:

Sergeant Crowley and I, through an accident of time and place, have been cast together, inextricably, as characters – as metaphors, really – in a thousand narratives about race over which he and I have absolutely no control.“

It isn’t about Crowley and Gates. It’s about how American society continues to deny that racial profiling even exists.

But back to this specific incident, Crowley doesn’t seem to have seen how profoundly wrong his actions were, that is, if we are to be guided by his statements at the Beer Summit:

Crowley was asked if the controversy was a “teachable moment” for the sergeant, as President Obama said he’d hoped this would become?

He said it was.

And the lesson?

“The media can find you, no matter where you live,” he said.

Wow, glad you learned something there Sergeant Crowley!

Via / ABC News Political Punch Blog