Obama beer break a question of black and white

US President Barack Obama was scheduled to have a beer with a white police officer and an eminent black scholar at the White House last night in a bid to quell a heated national furore over racial profiling.

Obama planned to welcome distinguished Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates and police sergeant Jim Crowley for 6pm beers on the White House South Lawn, hoping to turn the page on a race row that erupted during a July 16 incident at the scholar’s home.

The contretemps flared when Gates, arguably the foremost US 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 Cambridge, Massachusetts.