US PRESIDENT Barack Obama's uncharacteristically clumsy foray into a heated racial debate last week seemingly annulled the notion of the "post-racial" society his election supposedly ushered in.
Mr Obama's words — that a white cop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, "acted stupidly" when he arrested a famous black scholar for disorderly conduct in his own home — have been repeated and dissected ad nauseam by now.
If cooler heads had prevailed, as the president suggested later, the incident would have been a non-issue. But the subject of racial profiling and stereotyping rarely lends itself to the cooling of heads.
At this point in the push towards post-racialism, any progressively-minded person reflexively recoils when faced with the theoretical situation of racial profiling. To racially profile someone, we tell ourselves, is to commit a grievous act invalidating decades of social struggle.
There's no question that harbouring stereotypes can evolve into twisted ideologies. And a general uneasiness about racial profiling is by no means unhealthy. But there's a disconcerting grey area in which a quick bit of racial profiling could prove useful, even life-saving.
I ventured into that grey area late one night last autumn. I was at the train station in Hartford, Connecticut, a city no one would mistake for paradise, or even Cambridge. I was meeting my father in the next town over at a hotel, which promised to send a shuttle to pick me up.
The shuttle never ended up coming, but I spent an hour and a half waiting outside the station before I realised it would not be arriving.
During that time, a scruffy-looking Hispanic man sidled up to me. He tried to strike up a conversation, and though I really just wanted to read my newspaper, I politely responded to his attempts at small talk. We were occupying the same space, after all, and I didn't want to be rude.
He had just been released from prison that day, he said, and was trying to collect train fare to see his sister in Massachusetts. I gave him the excess change I had in my pocket. He seemed satisfied enough.
Not long afterwards, two young black men appeared. They were wearing bulky jackets and baggy jeans. "Telltale thugs!" the stereotype screams, a message effectively drowned out by my years of nurturing an earnest sensitivity towards exactly that kind of rash judgement.
In retrospect, I probably could have just slipped inside where there was an armed security guard, but the shuttle was due to be there any minute. Besides, I told myself, what do I have to be afraid of? Aren't we all just people waiting for a ride?
My fears were further allayed when one of the newcomers started talking to me. He seemed friendly and we talked about basketball and the weather in Philadelphia, where I had been earlier in the day.
Finally, my cell phone rang. It was my dad, telling me the hotel would not be sending the shuttle and I should take a cab. I hung up and prepared to leave when one of the black guys asked if he could borrow my phone to make a quick call.
I agreed. Not the wisest choice, I realise now, but I figured if I could help this fellow citizen in a time of need then, well, maybe we really do live in a post-racial society.
He made his call, or pretended to, flipped the phone down and began walking away with his friend.
When I protested, he demanded $10 before he'd give it back. OK, I handed him the $10. But he didn't give me the phone.
I continued my protest, and as they were luring me away from my bags and into the shadows, promising to give the phone back, I noticed the Hispanic man grab my laptop bag and run off. This was getting serious.
I chased him down and grabbed the bag and a brief tug-of-war ensued. The next sequence happened very fast: the black guys came over, and as I yanked on my bag strap one of them shoved something shiny and metallic into my stomach. It was a gun.
Just then, a police car rolled by and I tried to wave it down.
"Don't do anything stupid or you'll get shot," I was told plainly. Then they scattered, and my phone and $10 vanished with them up the street and into the night.
But I was alive, physically uninjured and somehow still holding my computer bag. A small price to pay.
Would racial profiling have saved me from being mugged? Probably.
But it's a slippery slope. The fact is that other factors beyond the race of my perpetrators should have tipped me off — a train station in Hartford is not a good place to be at any time, especially in the dead of night.
We don't know what role stereotyping played in the case in Cambridge.
It's easy to assume, as Mr Obama did, that the arresting officer, Sergeant James Crowley, made an unfair judgement about Mr Henry Louis Gates, the man he arrested, based on the colour of Mr Gates's skin.
But it's more likely that the stereotype of an ignorant white cop, particularly flawed in this case, caused Mr Gates to react abusively, setting in motion the ensuing controversy.
We condemn racial profiling because it is unfair and unproductive to make blanket assumptions about individuals based on the actions of others; it feels right to assume the goodness in people. But there's a fine line between being trusting and being naive.
I was naive in Hartford, but I don't regret being trustful of my neighbours. Next time I'll just wait inside.