Pres. Obama Steps Into Racial Profiling Debate...Racial Profiling Needs To Stop!

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(Pres. Obama ignites Racial Profiling Debate.)

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(Angry Cambridge Police respond to Pres. Obama's "Stupid Cops" remarks.)

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(Pres. Obama stands by his critique of Gates' arrest.)

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President Barack Obama has strained through his career in national politics to embrace nuance in all things, and never more than when the subject is race. But an off-the-cuff remark at the end of a news conference designed to further his health care agenda put him at the center of a familiar public melodrama of white cop and black victim in which big-city mayors — never mind presidents — tread with the greatest of caution.

The White House spent Thursday trying to both defend Obama’s words and to soften his position from the night before, when the president departed from his talking points, aides said, to express authentic disgust at the arrest of a black Harvard professor in his own home.

Press secretary Robert Gibbs stood by Obama’s statement that a Cambridge police officer, James Crowley, had acted “stupidly” in arresting Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. but added some implicit criticism of Gates’s conduct, suggesting “both sides” bear blame for the incident. Obama, who said that he was “surprised by the controversy,” said he wished that “cooler heads” had prevailed and described Crowley as an “outstanding” officer.

Police organizations attacked the president’s willingness to criticize a police officer without knowing all the facts, Republicans dusted off law-and-order attacks largely absent from the presidential campaign and everyone from comedian Bill Cosby to the Irish-American media piled on. Meanwhile, critics of police brutality praised Obama, and the Rev. Al Sharpton went so far as to tell POLITICO the words showed that the president is not really “post-racial.”

The strident accusations left little space for the nuances that this president would more typically explore: that the black man, Gates, was a distinguished professor with little appetite for public confrontation; and that the police officer was a police academy instructor in race relations best known for giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dying black NBA star.

Many observers — even those who agreed with the substance of Obama’s remarks — thought he’d committed a political error in departing from a carefully crafted image. “He can’t break character now,” said Michael Fauntroy, a public policy professor at George Mason University. “The character that America bought was a race-neutral guy who wasn’t going to mention race in any meaningful way.”

Others objected to his decision to comment without knowing all the details. “I’ve heard about five different reports,” Cosby said in a Boston radio interview. “If I’m the president of the United States, I don’t care how much pressure people want to put on it about race, I’m keeping my mouth shut.”

“I was shocked to hear the president making this kind of statement,” Cosby said.

Obama has always balanced caution and authenticity — on all issues, but on race most of all — and some observers praised his honesty.

“According to Washington conventions, it will be seen as a dumb move — he took an unnecessary risk for no obvious gain,” said Dan Gerstein, a Democratic political consultant. “But one of the reasons Obama is so widely admired, and why he came out of nowhere to become president, is precisely because he is not afraid to flout those norms and speak his mind on matters of right and wrong.”

And other observers said that in a changed country, the story of a police officer arresting a middle-aged professor in his own home was all the detail needed.

“The president was absolutely right on target in his comments last night,” said former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, no stranger to the complexities of police-community relations. “You couldn’t have a clearer situation when you have a guy who is well-known in a small community standing in his own home.”

The debate continued Thursday on just how clear the situation had been. Gates said, in an interview with his daughter on the Daily Beast, that the police report was full of “lies” and that the officer had refused to give his name.

But Crowley — who mentioned that “I support the president of the United States 110 percent” — refused to apologize or give ground, and Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas said his department was “deeply pained” by Obama’s criticism, rejecting any suggestion that Crowley was a racist.

Other police organizations were more critical of the president.

“Statements like that made without the facts don’t do much to assuage any mistrust between the community and the men and women that protect it,” said Jim Pasco, executive director of the right-leaning National Fraternal Order of Police. A spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations, which endorsed Obama, also criticized the comments. “We’re a little disappointed,” said spokesman Rich Roberts.

But civil rights leaders and African-American intellectuals defended Obama — if not, perhaps, always in the terms the president would have chosen.

“What he said was right, and many of us have been saying all along that we are not in a post-racial society yet,” said Sharpton, adding that the press “mesmerized themselves” into believing that Obama had somehow moved past race.

“The press has unfairly labeled him as not having dealt with these issues,” Sharpton said. “He met with Newt Gingrich and I about inequality and race in the schools, he issued statements about Jena,” he said, referring to the racially charged arrests in a Louisiana town that Obama condemned during the campaign.

“Obama rarely uses such language around issues that are potentially divisive. He is very measured and careful so as not to alienate people, and this was a rare moment of bravery and honesty on the racial front. He thought he could say it without penalty, but he went a little too far,” said Marc Lamont Hill, an African-American studies professor at Columbia University. “He is not in a moment where he can do that sort of thing. He is in a dogfight over health care, and you don’t want a pile-on effect with these tangential issues sort of pulling away support.”

“It was a bold move for him,” said Andra Gillespie, a political science professor at Emory University. “It was a pleasant surprise for him to take sides. He presented the other side and said I am going to side with my friend Skip, and that was refreshing to see. For him to defend blacks and to acknowledge that there is structural racism is a departure.”


Sources: Politico, MSNBC