US President Barack Obama has sought to defuse the first race row of his presidency, saying he regretted having said a white policeman acted “stupidly” in arresting a black Harvard professor.
Obama, the country’s first African American president, spoke on Friday during a surprise appearance before reporters in the White House barely two hours after angry police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, demanded he say he was sorry for linking the professor’s arrest to racial tensions.
Obama said he had phoned the arresting officer, Sergeant James Crowley, and expressed regret for “an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge police department or Sergeant Crowley specifically.”
PHOTO: EPA
“I could have calibrated those words differently and I told this to Sergeant Crowley,” he said.
The row, which has the potential to torpedo Obama’s carefully crafted image as the country’s first post-racial president, started last week when police briefly detained Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates.
Gates was arrested after a neighbor saw him breaking into his house and mistakenly reported a burglary. An altercation followed in which Gates accused police of racist treatment and was charged with disorderly conduct.
Obama, who is a friend of Gates, made a rare foray into the political minefield of race relations, saying police acted “stupidly.”
He also raised the painful issue of police discrimination against non-whites.
It appeared that Obama’s conciliatory words did much to defuse the situation.
In a statement late on Friday, Cambridge police commissioner Robert Haas said Crowley was “so pleased to have had the opportunity to speak with the president.”
City officials and the police department were “optimistic that we are moving forward toward a resolution. We continue to reflect and learn from this incident. I wish to share our sincere appreciation to President Obama for his graciousness,” Haas said.
Gates, who is editor in chief of the Root newspaper, said he would accept Obama’s invitation to meet him and the police officer for beer at the White House.
“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,” Gates said in statement.
Nevertheless, the White House refused to characterize Friday’s statement as a formal apology and Obama stuck by the substance of his original comments made at a press conference on Wednesday.
“The fact that this has become such a big issue I think is indicative of the fact that race is still a troubling aspect of our society,” Obama said.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
A documentary whose main subject, 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza weeks before it premiered at Cannes stunned viewers into silence at the festival on Thursday. As the cinema lights came back on, filmmaker Sepideh Farsi held up an image of the young Palestinian woman killed with younger siblings on April 16, and encouraged the audience to stand up and clap to pay tribute. “To kill a child, to kill a photographer is unacceptable,” Farsi said. “There are still children to save. It must be done fast,” the exiled Iranian filmmaker added. With Israel
Africa has established the continent’s first space agency to boost Earth observation and data sharing at a time when a more hostile global context is limiting the availability of climate and weather information. The African Space Agency opened its doors last month under the umbrella of the African Union and is headquartered in Cairo. The new organization, which is still being set up and hiring people in key positions, is to coordinate existing national space programs. It aims to improve the continent’s space infrastructure by launching satellites, setting up weather stations and making sure data can be shared across
RSS