I haven't written yet about Barack Obama's comments on the Gates arrest because I haven't quite been able to put how I feel about it into words. But thankfully, journalist Greg Palast (who I saw speak at my school a little while back) did it for me. From his piece in The Huffington Post:

He's in hot water now. For a moment, on national television, the President of the United States turned black!

Last week, when his buddy "Skip" Gates got busted for being Black in Boston, Barack Obama forgot his official role: to soothe America's conscience with the happy fairy tale that his election marked the end of racism in the USA.

Instead, Obama, the excruciatingly middle-of-the-road President, was seized by Barack the militant State Senator from the South Side of Chicago, who reminded us that cops bust Black guys for no goddamn good reason all the goddamn time.

Truth. Obama shouldn't have had to apologize for his comments; the police did act stupidly, and there is a history of people of color being persecuted by cops more often than white people. President Obama said what we were all thinking, and all the other people who want to pretend that racism doesn't exist need to get the hell over it.