Obama hosts 'beer summit' in race row

A “beer summit” to discuss racial differences is what US President Barrack Obama was hosting at the White House Thursday evening.

America’s first black president was hosting two men at the centre of a racial row to discuss their differences over three different beer brands.

The session that has come to be known as “bar-stool diplomacy” was being held at a picnic table near the president’s Oval Office in the white House.

According to the White House press secretary, Mr Robert Gibbs, President Obama had selected a beer called Bud Light. His guests Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge, police sergeant James Crowley chose to take Red Stripe and Blue Moon respectively.

Speculation has been rife since Mr Obama made the invite last week on what brands would be served at the meeting.

Prof Gates, who is black, was taken into custody by Mr Crowley, who is white, after the officer accused him of disorderly conduct for protesting over the policeman’s actions. The charges were later dropped.

President Obama convened the beer summit after calling both men last week in an attempt to defuse the political fallout from his comment at a news conference that police had “acted stupidly” in arresting Mr Gates at his home after responding to a call from a passer-by about a possible break-in.

The president was to welcome Mr Gates and Mr Crowley for the 6pm (2 am EA time) beers at the White House, hoping to turn the page on a controversy over race that erupted during a July 16 incident at the scholar’s home.

The two men earlier in the day indicated that they were looking forward to the so-called “beer summit” and both would be bringing family members along.

The president’s comments - even to his own admission - seemed to overshadow debate on his health policy. The US president later backed off the “acted stupidly” comment and called the meeting in the hope that the incident could provide a “teachable moment” on race relations.

I don’t know

“Over the last two days as we’ve discussed this issue, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but nobody has been paying much attention to health care,” President Obama lamented to reporters last Friday.

The row flared when Mr Gates – America’s foremost 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 the Boston suburb of Cambridge.

As it turned out, the “break-in” by Prof Gates was an attempt to enter his own home when the door lock jammed. The two men exchanged heated words, and the professor was ultimately arrested for disorderly conduct during a heated exchange.

But it was President Obama who added to the controversy when he said the police had “acted stupidly” by arresting his friend even after establishing that Mr 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 one such as Mr Gates - solely based on his race.