The beer summit was the side show.
The President making a judgement call without knowing the facts was the divisive part.
If it were not a white cop and a black man he would likely have ignoired the situation.
Saying you believe otherwise is being naive or being politically correct.
you know, we all have our baggage. we all have our issues that make the hair on the back of our necks stand up. we've all been subjected to bias of some type, whether its sexism, classism, racism, anti-semitism or whatever... so we react because of what we've experienced. me? i've had more attorneys call me sweetheart than i care to think about....secretaries who, if a male attorney called and said this is george jones, would say, 'please hold, mr. jones', whereas if i call, and say 'hi, this is mary jones', i can tell you that 7 times out of ten they're going to say, ok... 'hold on, mary.' or 'hold for a minute, honey. now, these things are no big deal, but they are small annoyances. a larger deal was my finding my resume in my first boss' office after he hired me with a single word written on it.... 'pert'. nothing about my bona fides; nothing about my qualifications; nothing about my being top 11% of my law school class or five years younger at graduation than the class average at the start of law school. so you can see where, over time, we might be sensitized.
now, imagine being bi-racial and getting it from both sides... not being white enough OR black enough... i can see where he became a bit race-sensitive. i actually think he's done a pretty good job of dealing with it. but he is clearly uncomfortable when he has to face the issue head on. i don't really fault him for that.
and fwiw, notwithstanding the result of the investigation, i still don't think the cop had any business making an arrest once he found out the professor was in his own home.
to me, the test is: what do you do when you jump to an erroneous conclusion.