Obama hopes friendly beer will defuse race controversy

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama will try to defuse the first race controversy of his term Thursday by sharing a beer at the White House with the other two main actors in the drama, officials said.

Spokesman Robert Gibbs said Tuesday that Obama would host Boston policeman James Crowley and black scholar Henry Louis Gates at 6:00 pm (2200 GMT) on Thursday evening.

"Weather permitting, they'll probably sit at the picnic table, behind the Oval Office" and close to a swingset installed for Obama's two daughters, Gibbs said.

Obama invited Crowley and Gates to the White House in an effort to move past a high-profile controversy sparked when the white Boston police sergeant arrested Gates, a prominent black Harvard University professor and personal friend of the president, during a July 16 incident at the scholar's home.

Crowley went to the home after police received a call that two men might be trying to break into the building and arrested Gates for disorderly conduct during an exchange over the incident.

Obama, the nation's first African-American president, sparked a firestorm of controversy by saying during a nationally televised press conference that police had "acted stupidly" in the affair.

On Friday, Obama telephoned Crowley to express regret for his choice of words and to invite the policeman and Gates to the White House for a beer.

Gibbs described the planned meeting as "a chance to talk and a chance to have a dialogue," adding: "I would not construe this as a formal discussion, this is about having a beer."

But the spokesman later underlined that the meeting offers a "teachable moment."

Just the act of the meeting will show that "we can still sit down and discuss issues that are important like this, that we can, I think, as the president has said many times, disagree without being disagreeable," he said.

Crowley, the spokesman said, will likely bring his family and take pictures, although the beer drinking will involve the three men exclusively.

According to the White House, Crowley has asked for Blue Moon beer, while Obama will be drinking Budweiser. No details have been given about Gates' beer of choice.

The incident threatened to torpedo Obama's carefully crafted image as the country's first post-racial president.

Gibbs has insisted that Obama was not attempting to distance himself from delicate racial issues, including the problem of police discrimination against non-whites.

"Given who he is... one never gets away from that," he said.

But he also cautioned that Obama can only do so much to address longstanding issues involving racial tensions in the United States.

"As the president says time and time again, not every problem is going to be solved by government and not every problem should be solved by government."