The famous Henry Louis Gates-Obama-Cops Beer Summit (July 2009) occurred long before Trayvon Martin (Feb. 2012). Obama had made a total mess of it instantaneously by accusing the Cambridge cops of "acting stupidly" and speaking of a long history of black-cops encounters, etc. He realized his mistake and did try to make up for it with the Beer Summit. This incident shows two things. Obama's lost chance to deal honestly with the race issue took place a few months into his presidency and long before any social media pressure could have made any difference at all. Secondly, his partial effort then to right the wrong he had committed makes clear that he well understood that what he did was wrong. It was his choice to unlearn what he knew and revert to race hustling when the later incidents occurred. I am with Glenn totally on this. Obama was the biggest disappointment in the history of the modern civil rights movement.
The famous Henry Louis Gates-Obama-Cops Beer Summit (July 2009) occurred long before Trayvon Martin (Feb. 2012). Obama had made a total mess of it instantaneously by accusing the Cambridge cops of "acting stupidly" and speaking of a long history of black-cops encounters, etc. He realized his mistake and did try to make up for it with the Beer Summit. This incident shows two things. Obama's lost chance to deal honestly with the race issue took place a few months into his presidency and long before any social media pressure could have made any difference at all. Secondly, his partial effort then to right the wrong he had committed makes clear that he well understood that what he did was wrong. It was his choice to unlearn what he knew and revert to race hustling when the later incidents occurred. I am with Glenn totally on this. Obama was the biggest disappointment in the history of the modern civil rights movement.