Gates accepts invite for beer with Obama, Crowley

Harvard University Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is working on a PBS documentary about racial profiling. (Senne/AP)

Henry Louis Gates Jr. has accepted an informal invitation to have a beer with his arresting officer Sgt. James Crowley and President Obama.

And, if you ask me, they all could use a few cold ones...

"I am pleased that [Obama] is eager to use my experience as a teaching moment, and if meeting Sgt. Crowley for a beer with the President will further that end, then I would be happy to oblige," the Harvard professor said in a statement posted on the website TheRoot.com, of which he's the editor in chief.

At a daily press briefing yesterday, Obama said Crowley suggested beers at the White House during a telephone conversation that took place soon after the Cambridge Police Department and police unions held a press conference to announce they supported Crowley's actions on the day of the arrest.

Sgt. James Crowley (left) was surrounded by fellow officers offering support at a press conference Friday. (Spencer/Getty Images)

Gates said Obama phoned him on Friday, reportedly after the press briefing, to discuss his July 16 arrest outside his Cambridge, Mass., home after a neighbor reported a possible break-in. The intruder turned out to be Gates trying to open a jammed door, but a (totally unnecessary and stupid, if you ask me) confrontation between him and Crowley ensued, and the cop arrested Gates for disorderly conduct.

Though the charges were later dropped, the bust ignited a fierce debate about racial profiling. Fueling the controversy was Obama's remark that the Cambridge police "acted stupidly" by arresting Gates in his own house after he had produced and ID showing he lived there.

Right: This photo, taken by a neighbor July 16, shows when Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested at his home in Cambridge, Mass.

The issue has competed with healthcare reform to dominate the news cycle for the past week. Gates said he apologized to the President for the arrest becoming a distraction from more important matters.

"I told the President that my principal regret was that all of the attention paid to his deeply supportive remarks during his press conference had distracted attention from his health care initiative," Gates wrote.

In the same statement, Gates said he looks forward to studying the history of racial profiling for a PBS documentary.

"If my experience leads to the lessening of the occurrence of racial profiling, then I would find that enormously gratifying," he said. "Because, in the end, this is not about me at all; it is about the creation of a society in which 'equal justice before law' is a lived reality."

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For background and additional information, check out the following post:

Cop to Obama: 'Let's have a beer with Gates' - posted July 24

Sources: TheRoot.com, NY Daily News
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