President Obama is calling on the nation to address the racial unrest that exploded in the streets of Baltimore this week, but the president’s vague laundry list of prescriptions highlights a stark truth of his administration: Obama’s status as the first black president in U.S. history has not helped to alleviate the nation’s racial tensions and there are no instant fixes for the problem.
Obama has offered balanced and judicious rhetoric since the eruption of disturbing but so far non-lethal rioting in Charm City. Nevertheless, he hasn’t laid the groundwork or consistently used his bully pulpit to make his case for a set of solutions to the American people, and at times Obama has seemed to want to deflect the leadership role on racial relations.
Acknowledging that there have been too many instances of police brutality and eruptions of angry and violent reactions in communities across the country, Obama said it’s time that he and the nation tackle these problems in a “serious way.”
The federal government can help, he said, but ultimately police departments around the country have to “insist on a different way of doing business” and local communities must make curbing racial tension a priority.
“There are a lot of resources available but local communities have to want it,” the president told Steve Harvey, a nationally syndicated morning radio show host, Wednesday morning.
The underlying issues of poverty, drug addiction and unemployment, Obama said, are deeply important and personal to him. He began his political career as a community organizer in inner city Chicago.
“I’ve seen this movie too many times before — we can make real progress but we’re going to have to do it together. I can’t do it alone,” he said. “The best intentioned mayor or governor or police commissioner can’t do it alone.”
The statement came near the end of the interview, after the president rattled off more than a half dozen steps the federal government and communities could take to help solve the problem.
He mentioned retraining police officers, deploying body cameras “intelligently,” and having law enforcement keep data on police brutality or shooting incidents so citizens can keep track of how often clashes between the black community and police are taking place in their cities.
From the federal government, he said there could be more investment in early childhood education, job training and tax or other incentives to attract businesses to blighted communities, as well as more infrastructure projects so “people have access to where the jobs are.”
Sentencing reform would also help, he argued, so non-violent drug offenders convicted of felonies could receive less serious charges and won’t be shut out of the job market because of them.
“I think if all we’re dong is focusing on retraining police but not dealing with these underlying issues — then these problems are going to crop up again,” he said, noting that people have short attention spans and tend to go back to focus on whatever “reality TV thing is going on” once a crisis situation subsides.
“This requires some sustained focus,” he stressed.
But it is not clear that Obama, in his presidency, has taken a bolder or more consistent approach to the issue of race relations.
As the cases of police slayings of black men have continued over the last year and a half, civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and the National Urban League have called for greater leadership from Washington — urging Congress and the president to acknowledge the racial clashes and unrest as a national crisis and make finding remedies a top priority.
As Baltimore and other cities grapple with the unrest, the National Urban League this week re-issued its recommendations for police reform and accountability.
The 10-point Justice plan calls for widespread use of body cameras and dashboard cameras by police; implementation of a new policing model that engages far more with the community it serves; the review and revision of police use of deadly force policies; and comprehensive retraining of all officers and review of police hiring standards, among other recommendations.
Cornell Brooks, the president of the NAACP, made his list of top priorities even simpler. At a press conference in Baltimore Tuesday, Brooks said the group wants three main things: Congress to pass an “end of racial profiling” act to provide for a federal means of protecting citizens from police excesses; body cameras for all police; and a change to the way police view the communities they work in to something less adversarial and more cooperative.
Presumptive 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, speaking at an annual forum at Columbia University Wednesday, also sent a clear message that made headlines on the body camera issue. She doesn’t just want to provide government matching funds for them; she wants to expand their use for all police departments across the country.
The use of body cameras, she said, is a “common sense” measure that “will improve transparency and accountability” and “help protect good people on both sides of the lens.”
Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Democrat whose district includes Baltimore, put the onus on himself to help build a national dialogue and follow through on it after spending Monday and Tuesday on the streets of Baltimore talking to people about the reasons for the violence.
“I realize I made some commitment that I got to keep,” he told CNN in an interview Wednesday. “And I realize that I’ve got to convince other people that we all have to, first of all, make the commitment to our young people and then follow through. So that’s what’s going to be on my mind today.”
The president, however, appears to have had trouble harnessing his bully pulpit to issue a similarly consistent and concise call to action on the issue.
For example, even though Obama has endorsed body cameras as one of many possible solutions and included $97 million in his budget for them, he has also continued to waffle on their effectiveness.
“The president does believe that there’s a possibility that body-worn cameras by police officers could be a useful tool, both in protecting police officers and protecting members of the public,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday, noting that the Justice department plans to announce a pilot grant program for body-worn cameras.
But he also said “there’s not a strong body of evidence at this point about what impact body-worn cameras actually have.”
The Justice Department, Earnest noted, is studying the issue to determine whether body cameras are consistently effective. He did not say when he expected the results of that research.
