Things that only Happen to Black People...

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. says he'd gladly accept President Obama's invitation to have a beer with his arresting officer at the White House.

"I am pleased that [Obama] is eager to use my experience as a teaching moment," the Harvard professor wrote on the Web site TheRoot.com.

"And if meeting Sgt. Crowley for a beer with the President will further that end, then I would be happy to oblige."

Gates said Obama phoned him on Friday to discuss his July 16 arrest outside his Cambridge, Mass., home after a neighbor reported a break-in.

The supposed intruder was actually Gates trying to open a jammed door.

A confrontation between him and cops ensued, and Sgt. James Crowley arrested him.




Though the charges were later dropped, the bust ignited a fierce debate about racial profiling.

Obama was drawn in when he told reporters the cops had acted "stupidly."

Angry police union officials went on the offensive, and Obama on Friday said he regretted how he phrased his opinion.

In addition to calling Gates, Obama phoned Crowley and suggested both men come to the White House for a friendly beer.

Gates said when he spoke to Obama, he apologized to the President for the arrest becoming a distraction from pressing issues.

"I told the President that my principal regret was that all of the attention paid to his deeply supportive remarks during his press conference had distracted attention from his health care initiative," he wrote.

Gates said he's working on a documentary for PBS on the history of racial profiling and hopes the country has learned something from his arrest.

"If my experience leads to the lessening of the occurrence of racial profiling, then I would find that enormously gratifying," Gates wrote.

"Because, in the end, this is not about me at all; it is about the creation of a society in which 'equal justice before law' is a lived reality."


Gettnice take: Only a Black man will get arrested for going into his own house in America. The Cops want an apology, they were offended LOL... Im happy that the pres will teach the world something.


taken from http://www.nydailynews.com/