Sure thing Sneaky-perhaps this excerpt from an USA Today article on July 20, 2016 will do the trick:
"The truth is, the president helped set the tone long ago for dealing with difficult discussions around race. It was in 2009, when he held the so-called “beer summit” with Harvard University Prof. Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge, Mass. police Sgt. James Crowley – the officer who responded to a call about a possible break-in at Gates’ house, and arrested Gates himself.
Obama got it right the first time he spoke about the incident, saying Cambridge police “acted stupidly” in arresting Gates after he had proved he was in his own home. Obama was slammed by law enforcement for his comments, and ultimately, the arrest was proven avoidable.
To quell the controversy, Obama embarked upon an adventure in respectability politics where he, Vice President Biden, Gates and Crowley yucked it up over drinks. They cleared the air and Crowley never apologized or admitted to overreacting. Crowley took no responsibility for understanding the race and class undertones that contributed to Gates’ angry response in his own home, supposedly a safe space. He was unmoved by any context other than his own discomfort in that moment.
That’s where things went wrong. The president surely knows what the problems are and can clearly articulate them. But in terms of optics, that “summit” told the nation that’s how to treat African Americans and their concerns: Dismissively, with no need for accountability, and a smile thrown in for show.
And that’s just what people like former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani are doing. Giuliani proved he could be a leader of all people, not just some, during the 9/11 aftermath. It boggles the mind that he would use his prodigious social capital to denigrate the Black Lives Matter movement as racist.
Crowley got a pass the same way we keep giving police departments a pass by not holding officers accountable or implementing reforms posthaste, as if lives — the blue ones, the black ones, all of them — depend on it."
The reporter here was Deborah Douglas is a Chicago-based journalist who teaches at The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.