Cambridge, Mass. ? The woman who dialed 911 to report a possible break-in at the home of black Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. said Wednesday she was wrongly labeled a racist based on assumptions about her and words she never said and hoped the recently released recording of the call would put the controversy to rest.

With a trembling voice, Lucia Whalen, 40, said she was out walking to lunch in Gates’ Cambridge neighborhood near Harvard University when an elderly woman without a cell phone stopped her because she was concerned there was a possible burglary in progress.

Whalen says she was vilified on blogs as a racist after a police report said she described the possible burglars as “two black males with backpacks.” Her lawyer has said mainstream media outlets and bloggers had concluded she was a privileged white neighbor.

Tapes of the call released earlier this week revealed that Whalen, a first-generation Portuguese-American who doesn’t live in the area, did not mention race. When pressed by a dispatcher on whether the men were white, black or Hispanic, she said one of them might have been Hispanic.

“Now that the tapes are out, I hope people can see that I tried to be careful and honest with my words,” Whalen said. “It never occurred to me that the way I reported what I saw be analyzed by an entire nation.”

Gates’ arrest for disorderly conduct in his own home by a white police officer sparked a national debate over racial profiling and police conduct. The controversy intensified when President Barack Obama said police “acted stupidly” when they arrested his friend.

Obama, the nation’s first black president, has said he chose his words badly when he reacted to his friend’s arrest, and he has invited Crowley and Gates to meet with him at the White House for a beer this evening.