The Black Harvard scholar and the white police sergeant who arrested him got together at President Obama’s beers summit, the Daily Mail reports.
While the President desperately in an attempt to walk away from the heated race row involving the black Harvard scholar and white policeman, he has suffered poll damage recently, says the Indian Times.
Obama got into trouble over the debate on whether Crowley was justified in arresting Gates at his Cambridge home when the President said that the police officer had “acted stupidly”.
The president then quickly condemned by the police through their complaints and acknowledged he should have used different language to express his concerns, and invited the two men to join him for a beer.
“I have always believed that what brings us together is stronger than what pulls up apart” Obama said after the highly anticipated 40-min conversation, according to the Daily Mail.
“I am confident that has happened here tonight, and I am hopeful that all of us are able to draw this positive lesion from this episode.”
Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Harvard scholar said he hoped the entire experience would prove to be an “occasion for education, not recrimination”.
He adds now the burden rests on him and Crowley to use the opportunity to foster wider awareness of the dangers facing police officers and the fears that some blacks have about racial profiling, says Daily Mail.
Crowley responded later that he and the professor agreed to move forward.
“I think what you had today was two gentlemen agreeing to disagree on a particular issue. I do not think that we spent too much time dwelling on the past. We spent a lot of time discussing the future,” the Daily Mail reports.
According to the Indian Times, Obama significantly damaged his standing with voters, especially with those white voters when he handling the incident “impulsively” by saying the white policeman “acted stupidly”.
The newly released polling figures found 41 per cent of all voters disapproved of Obama’s handing of the affair while just 29 per cent approved the incident.
The survey was released by the Washington-based-Pew Research Centre, the Indian Times has learnt.
The data was released just hours before the President as well as the Vice-President Joe Biden had a glass of beer with the Professor Henry Gates and police sergeant James Crowley, who had arrested the Harvard scholar for “disorderly conduct”.
According to the Daily Mail, during their beer summit, neither the two men nor the President offered apologies for their roles in the affairs.
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