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US President Barack Obama stirred a firestorm when he accused a police officer who arrested a black scholar of acting "stupidly". Harvard University's Professor Henry Louis Gates, a well-respected scholar of African and African-American studies, was arrested on July 16 while attempting to enter his own home.

The professor was reportedly trying to force open his jammed front door when a neighbour called the police, believing the house was being robbed.

Accounts of what happened next varies but somehow Gates was arrested. He was accused of being disorderly and abusive.

Asked about the case on Wednesday, Obama acknowledged "not having been there, and not seeing all the facts."

"But, I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry. Number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home," Obama said.

If anything, as the media frenzy in America indicated, race relations remain delicate issues in the US despite having elected the country's first African-American president.

 Was Obama way off base by calling the officer's action "stupid" or did he allowed his emotion to get the better of him after discovering that his long time friend was arrested in his own home.

 Obama expressed surprise at the firestorm sparked by his remarks, saying his statement was "pretty straight forward commentary that you probably don't need to handcuff a guy, a middle-aged man who uses a cane, who's in his own home."

 But in America, with its history of institutionalised racism, an incident that highlights the fraught relations between black men and police officers will set off a storm of debate.

 In his 1994 book, "Colored People: A Memoir," Gates wrote that although being black is no disgrace, it can be inconvenient: "When I walk into a room, people still see my blackness, more than my Gates-ness, or my literary-ness." Being a perpetual suspect is tough.

In Thailand, debate about race or a race relations is not on the public radar screen partly because many of us don't think we see ourselves as racist.

The nation has succeeded in creating a national identity we called "Thai" that allowed all ethnic groups to be part of this one big happy family, regardless if we speak Lao, Khmer, Mon or whatever language at home.

We pride ourselves on not having a racist past - at least not having institutionalised it - but we overlook our racist attitudes towards a neighbouring country or people who are just different from us.

 Because we are covert about it, we don't see ourselves as being racists even when our officials practice profiling and our politicians make insensitive remarks.

In Thailand, it's common to associate a Lao facial feature with dull or outright ugly. But of course, Thai people confine this statement to the country's Northeast region for fear of inviting an unwanted reply from the government of the Lao People's Democratic Republic if we were to extend this further.

Moreover, we still categorise everybody west of Burma and east of Europe as khaeks. They are either white khaek or black khaek - everyone except the Israelis.

During the height of the Thai nationalism movement half a century ago, all ethnic groups were encouraged to become part of a monoculture, an artificially constructed identity we called "Thai".

It worked out pretty well as all ethnic groups - including the descendants of Lao, Mon, Khmer and Malay slaves, as well as the Chinese who were once highly suspected of being infiltrators and a threat to the country - founded a comfort level within the state.

We all became Thai under one roof of this big happy family. But of course we know that people with a long last name are likely to come from a Chinese family.

But this is not to say that Thailand has found a magic formula for peaceful coexistence. The ongoing violent clashes between Malay insurgents and Thai security forces in the deep South reminds us that not all have bought into this artificially constructed identity we called "Thai".

And because of the Malays' refusal to assimilate and become "Thai" as defined by the state, we have questioned their loyalty and branded them as separatists.

We become suspicious whenever they want to assert their identity, in spite of the fact many of us outside the Central region speak a different language at home.

The debate about race and race relations is much needed in Thailand if we are to move forward as a country. We are living in a globalised world and more and more of us are finding ourselves in a situation in which we have to be more sensitive.

A "Darkie" toothpaste or a "Blackman" toilet brush may not offend the average Thai. But we need to understand why it does offend people of African ancestry.