WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama hosted a white police officer and an eminent black scholar at the White House yesterday, hoping to quell a heated furore over racial profiling.

WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama hosted a white police officer and an eminent black scholar at the White House yesterday, hoping to quell a heated furore over racial profiling.

Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates and police sergeant Jim Crowley met for 6pm beers at the White House, hoping to turn the page on a controversy over race that erupted during a July 16 incident at the scholar's home.

The contretemps flared when Gates - America's foremost scholar on African American affairs - was arrested after police received a call that two men might be attempting a break-in at a house in the Boston suburb of Cambridge.

The "break-in" by Gates was in fact an attempt to enter his own home when the lock jammed. Obama said the police acted stupidly. - Sapa-AFP