If you remember back to late 2008 during the presidential campaign and Barack Obama’s constant mentioning of his goal of racial equality, “Our goal is to have a country that’s not divided by race”. He constantly commented on how our county seems to be quite racist and that he believes its time for change. One of his aims during his time in office is to down play and even remove race as an issue, in American society.

Now jump forward to after his election, one of the first things he did as president of the United States was take trips to several different Muslim countries and apologize for our involvement. Hoping to better relations with these foreign countries. However not long after his trip, Somali pirates take a U.S. citizen hostage out side of Alabama, not even in Somali waters. It is Obama’s idea that once the Muslim world sees the change through his policies the hostilities would be greatly reduced through out these countries and the world.

On July 16, 2009 Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested in front of his Cambridge home at 12:44 P.M. He was arrested for disorderly conduct because he was “exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior”. Professor Gates was returning home and had lost his keys to his house. While he was attempting to gain entry to his home some neighbors called the police reporting a suspected robbery. When police arrived they requested to see his I.D. card proving he lived there. Professor Gates then became belligerent and refused to show them his I.D. The police then arrested him under charges of disorderly conduct.

President Obama soon responded to this saying that the officer had “acted stupidly” during a national press conference. However prior to this comment he admitted to the fact that he “didn’t know all the facts” and that the professor was a friend of his so he might be “bias” in his thinking. He believed that this arrest was made on the bases of racism. Not long after he received requests from the Massachusetts police unions asking for an apology. So our ingenious president hosted the infamous “Beer Summit” where he invited both Professor Gates and the officer that arrested him to make a formal apology to them.

Jump a head once again to November when Major Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly committed the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas. One thing Obama mentioned was that this was not a terrorist attack; it was just a single person committing a single act. He said that we should not come to a quick conclusion that this was caused by the fact that he was Muslim. Major Nidal Malik Hasan however was known to go into religious rants during his counseling sessions while still serving at Fort Hood. He was said to have very strong religious views and felt as though he and other Muslims in the army were discriminated against in the army.