Ah, the "Beer Summit." Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., Sergeant Joe Crowley, President Barack Obama, and even Vice President Joe Biden got together yesterday for a beer and, presumably, a discussion of Crowley's decision to arrest Gates last week. While critics have been happy to call the event a substance-free photo op -- Time's Michael Scherer has a good take -- I'm not sure that I care. Despite the wildly high expectations of some that the president, by dint of his election, would solve America's racial conflicts, the issues underlying Gates' arrest last week aren't going to be solved in one day by anyone, nor are the tensions in this conflict limited to race -- class and police power also play a role. The idea that Obama would somehow provide some kind of substantial resolution to these problems, especially as the appropriate local authorities are already addressing them, is a bit much. Obama wasn't acting as chief executive in these pictures, his most common role; he was acting as the head of state, the job we tend to elide when talking about the president's duties.In his statement after the meeting, Gates wrote a very academic but also accurate description of what his tussle with Crowley means on a national scale: "Sergeant Crowley and I, through an accident of time and place, have been cast together, inextricably, as characters – as metaphors, really – in a thousand narratives about race over which he and I have absolutely no control." And by his comments last week, Obama became another character in this symbolic narrative. But as president and owner of the bully pulpit, he does have some power to control the narratve he, Gates, and Crowley found themselves in. Hence the beer photo op, moving the defining image of this conflict from a photo of Gates in handcuffs on his porch to a few guys talking over their problems, making Gates and Crowley symbols of attempted reconcilliation -- or at least gracious behavior -- rather than divisive characters. It was one of those "only in America moments." Where else would the top two elected officials in the country sit down in the nation's capital with a local police officer and a prominent academic at the center of a racial drama, just to talk?So no, it didn't "solve" anything -- I'm not even sure in what form a "solution" would come. But just as Gates' arrest last week rudely reminded us all that issues of race and police power we'd rather sweep under the rug are still quite real, so yesterday's photo op should remind us that these are just regular people, at the end of the day, who can come together as well as pull apart. That's the first lesson to understand if we want to address the underlying causes of this very American conflict.-- Tim Fernholz
