I agree with the 7 out of 10 Americans, according to a recent Rasmussen poll, that believe that President Obama has handled the Prof. Gates arrest saga in a poor manner.

However, the reason I believe he handled it poorly is that I believe Obama should have taken the high road and never entered the fray in this distraction of a news story.

When he was asked to comment on the story, all he needed to say was, “Look, I don’t have all the details and I am not going to comment on a local police matter.”

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the poll was the revelation that 75% of the respondents said they were following the story at least somewhat closely. I would be curious to see what the response would be to a similar question about the war in Afghanistan.

The fact that this story has in some way shape or form been a headline in the daily news cycle for almost two weeks now is disturbing. Just when I think the story is going to die and fade away, the media finds a new angle to plaster it back on the front page. The most recent development is that Prof. Gates sent the 911 caller flowers.

And the continuing justification for the story is that it gives the country an opportunity to talk about racial profiling and race relations on a broad scale.

However, from my perspective, it is a soap opera that is creating a greater racial divide in this country. My opinion is backed up in the aforementioned Rassmussen poll that showed that 78% of African-Americans think Obama has handled the situation well, while only 23% of white Americans agree. People in this country have to a large extent retreated to their corners based on their own personal experience on the issue. There is no real discussion taking place, and no solutions being presented.

The bottom line is that if America really wants to have a discussion about racial profiling or race in general the media has chosen the absolute wrong story as the focal point. In order to have a real discussion the conversation starter would have to be a run of the mill racial profiling case.

But I am not naïve enough to think that this will happen anytime soon.

The episode with Prof. Gates was extraordinary and nuanced in a way that makes it an isolated incident with no universal application to the problem of racial profiling. It’s a circus sideshow. A distraction.

What this case has shown me, as much as it pains me to say it, is that the United States is not yet ready for a serious discussion on racial profiling. At least not with the current mainstream media serving as mediator.

That is not to say that there can not be steps taken to ease the problem, but the heart of the problem runs much deeper than police pulling over black men in suburban neighborhood for driving while black.
The problem is rooted in the economic and geographical divide that still exists to a large extent in this country between whites and people of color. And the cause of these existing problems can be placed largely on the shoulders of big government.

Has the race relations situation improved over the course of the last 40 years? There is no question. Does having a African-American President bode well for race relations in the future of the United States? Of course.

But to take the Prof. Gates arrest episode, splash it all over the news and headlines for weeks and simply say, “alright America let’s talk about race and racial profiling,” is simply ignorant, condescending and underestimating the seriousness of the problem. It is impossible to talk about something on a nationwide scale, when white people have never experienced the issue at hand, with such a minute point of reference. Because then all that has to happen is to demonize Prof. Gates or officer Crowley and the discussion becomes personal and skewed beyond recognition.

To have a serious discussion there would need to be statistics, but that is not sexy enough and I get that. Thousands of faceless black men sitting in jail for driving without a license is not something a majority of Americans devote dinner time conversation too. And I get that, and that is why we as a nation are not yet ready. I pray that we will be someday, just not yet.