Obama comments on professor's arrest spark controversy

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WASHINGTON, July 24 (AFP): President Barack Obama has stirred a firestorm by abandoning his usual avoidance of controversial racial issues to say police who arrested a black scholar acted "stupidly."
On television news shows and blogs Thursday, people asked whether Obama erred Wednesday when he responded to a reporter's question about the arrest of a black professor, a longtime friend, without knowing the details of the case.
Henry Louis Gates, a preeminent scholar of African and African-American studies at the prestigious Harvard University, was arrested on July 16 by Cambridge police while attempting to enter his own home.
The professor was reportedly trying to force open his jammed front door when a neighbour called the police, believing the house was being robbed.
Accounts of what happened next vary. Gates says he was the victim of a racist arrest, but police sergeant James Crowley, who is white, says he only arrested the scholar after he became disorderly and abusive.
Asked about the case Wednesday, Obama acknowledged "not having been there, and not seeing all the facts."
"But, I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry. Number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home," Obama said.
The arrest, and the media frenzy over the story and Obama's comments, illustrate how race relations remain a delicate issue in the United States, despite Obama's historic election as the country's first African-American president.