If a famous, learned, respected black professor becomes upset and asserts racism as the cause of his upset, whether it's true or not, we have a major incident. 'Racism' is an attitude residing within a person, and not something that one usually determines from a couple minutes conversation.
Mr. Gates could have accused the officer of 'just being silly', or 'overdoing' the questioning...or he could have sighed and said,"Ok...here's all my ID...I really do live here. I need to get to bed now."
Instead, for whatever reason, he assumed that any white police officer that went further than he, Gates, thought was 'reasonable', was a stereotypical 'racist'. That officer seems to have quite an exemplary record in NOT behaving that way.
It may well be that the officer 'could' have handled it better, but we do NOT know the exact words, their order and the tone in which they were spoken by either man.

I just saw a TV interview with a black pundit who wrote:"Skip...you mouthed off, man." I suspect he did....for whatever reason....and cops tend to react when someone mouths off, even if the guy IS tired & upset. One other pundit's remark was "you have to respect the badge, if not the man".....that is what *I* referred to in my story about Mississippi.

   *I* think the officer & Gates owe each other an apology for not dealing with the situation as well as they could have.