Was it because he was black?

Just read this article on BBC...

I wonder if this would have happened if the Harvard professor was not black, or maybe I should say if he was white, because most likely the same thing would have happened if he was anything, but white! Imagine if, in addition to being a person of color, he also had a beard or even worse if his name said "Ahmad" or "Mohammad" in it....I found the incident epsecially intriguing because even "After providing the officer with his university ID card and driver's licence, the African-American studies scholar was handcuffed on his front porch."