WORLD: Cold beers soothe Obama race row

Philip Delves Broughton
31 Jul 2009

It came with all kinds of headlines: the coalition of the swilling; the brew-ha-ha; beer and loathing at the White House; even the audacity of hops, a pun on President Obama's book The Audacity of Hope.

But when it came it was just four men, the President and Vice-President of the United States, a slightly-built black professor and a steely-eyed Massachusetts cop, sitting around in the shadow of the White House on a warm summer evening drinking beer.

Four men who but for a minor police incident, blown up by taunts of racism and some clumsy politicking, into something closer to the OJ Simpson trial, might never otherwise have gathered around a table.

The beer, for the record, was Bud Light for Barack Obama; Buckler, a non-alcoholic beer for Joe Biden; Sam Adams for Professor Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University; and Blue Moon, a Belgian-style wheat beer served with a slice of orange, for Sergeant James Crowley of the Cambridge police department.

The New York Times called the president's choice of a calorie counter's lager "a little too fussy, dare we say a little too girly-man". Gates went for a safe beer from his adopted state of Massachusetts, instead of his earlier reported choice, Jamaican Red Stripe. As for Sergeant Crowley picking a white beer, after all that's happened, was a little unfortunate.

Obama himself set the mood of the White House's response to the affair with his advice that there be "no sudden moves". He knew every tiny detail would be parsed to death. And he was right.

The White House had billed the beer summit as a "teachable moment" in American life. An opportunity to show that in America, even the most acrimonious differences can be settled over a beer. If only the Israelis and Palestinians, the North and South Koreans, the Sunnis and the Shias could be so amenable.

The reason for the most anticipated beer in American history was an incident on 16 July, when a neighbour of Gates called police to say she could see two men trying to barge into his house. She did not say if they were black or white, just that it seemed a burglary was under way. It was lunchtime.

Sergeant Crowley happened to be close by and was dispatched to the scene where he found Gates in the hall of his own home. Gates may have looked like an unlikely thief, with his spectacles, grey beard and cane, but Crowley felt he could take no chances.

Gates had returned from a trip to China to find his door jammed shut. He had asked his taxi driver to help him push the door open, and together they had succeeded.

Several other police cars, however, arrived on the scene, creating the air of a major incident.

According to Gates, Sergeant Crowley asked him to step out on to his porch. Gates refused. According to the police report, Gates said several times "you don't know who you're messing with". Gates claims he asked Crowley to identify himself, but Crowley refused. Crowley says he provided his name several times but Gates was shouting so much he didn't hear it. Gates then snapped "are you not answering me because I'm a black man and you're a white police officer?" So a major racial incident was born.

Crowley says he told Gates to "calm down, lower your voice" and again requested he come outside. Crowley said Gates then descended to the level of "yer mum" language, telling the officer "I'll speak with your mama outside."

Gates has denied the remark, saying "you could get killed talking about someone's mother in the barbershop, let alone with a police officer".

At that point, Crowley handcuffed him and took him into custody for disorderly conduct. For Gates, who has written extensively about racial profiling by police in America, this was damning evidence, gleaned first-hand.

President Obama seemed to agree, accusing the Cambridge police department of "acting stupidly".

For the past two weeks, the two sides have gone at it, sometimes seriously, but mostly in the carnival atmosphere which seems to envelop summer news stories. Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk show host, said that Obama's remarks were evidence of a "chip on his shoulder" about being black.

For Limbaugh's audience, Obama had finally flashed the cloven hoof of the angry black man, which he had concealed so well through his campaign for the presidency. Here at last was the man who had sat and listened to racist sermons at his church in Chicago and never said a word. The man whose wife Michelle had said Obama's campaign was the first time she had felt proud of her country. The fringe who believe the Obamas are Black Panthers in disguise had their moment.

On the other side, the Rev Al Sharpton, a black civil activist, said: "I've heard of driving while black, but I've never heard of living in a home while black. If this can happen at Harvard, what does it say about the rest of the country?"

The rest of the country was split between those wanting to wade in on either side, defending the police or Gates, and those who thought the whole thing was over-politicised nonsense.

At Harvard, friends and colleagues of Gates praised his level-headedness, his record over decades of taking on America's most contentious racial issues in a generous, liberal-minded spirit.

Crowley's fellow officers spoke of a serious-minded, widely admired police officer, who loved his wife and three daughters and playing baseball in the blue-collar community where he lived. He has three brothers who are cops and has even taught his fellow officers about racial profiling.

It was not only race which was at issue here, but class.

On one side, people asked how could a black president, who will soon be spending his summer holiday on a vast estate on the fancy resort island of Martha's Vineyard, get together with a black Harvard professor and whine about the injustice of a lowly paid white policeman simply doing his job? The black aristocracy was laying claim to the moral outrage of the ghetto poor. So much for Obama's post-racial presidency.

On the other, black commentators echoed the remarks of Gates and Sharpton that no matter how high blacks climb in American society, they continue to be victims of racism.

Then, just as tempers were cooling before the symbolic beer, a Boston police officer was found to have written an email to a local newspaper calling Gates a "banana-eating jungle monkey". The officer was promptly suspended.

As a first test of President Obama's ability to manage a fraught racial situation, this one was relatively easy. He made clear his feelings as a black man while managing the conciliation required of a president. And yet the incident showed how volatile the issue remains, how many people want to light a fuse.

After the beer, Crowley said he had had a "productive discussion" and planned to talk to Gates on the telephone in the future. Gates said of meeting Crowley: "We hit it off right from the beginning. When he's not arresting you, Sergeant Crowley is a really likeable guy."

Obama issued a statement in which he sounded more like a father who had just dealt with a wayward teen: "I have always believed that what brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart... I am hopeful that all of us are able to draw this positive lesson from this episode."

Never has one beer received quite so much credit.

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