President Obama used his Tuesday address at a Dallas memorial for five slain police officers to warn that racism persists across the country, and said “none of us is entirely innocent” or immune, “including our police departments.”
Study after study, Obama told mourners in his 40-minute speech, show that “white people and people of color experience the criminal justice system differently.” He said blacks are more likely to become incarcerated and more likely to get the death penalty for the same crime.
There’s a serious problem, he said, when black fathers and mothers are worried that something terrible might happen when their children walk out the door.
“When all this takes place more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we can’t simply dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid,” he said. “We can’t simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism.”
“To have your experience denied like that or dismissed by people in authority… again and again and again, it hurts,” he said. “Surely, we can see that – all of us.”
But Obama also spoke out forcefully in defense of police, and said that too often, critics of police brutality don’t recognize the danger the officers face every day in cities and towns across the country.
Quoting Dallas Police Chief Brown, Obama said too often, “we ask the police to do too much, and we ask too little of ourselves.” The line earned him a standing ovation from the police officers at the service.
Obama blamed a lack of funding for some of the problems police have to face. He said there is less and less funding to invest in “decent schools,” and drug treatment and mental health programs.
And as expected, he argued in favor of gun control programs as well. Obama said “we flood communities with so many guns” that it’s harder for a teenager to buy a “glock” than to get “a hand on a book.”
“We know these things are true,” he said. “They’ve been true for a long time. We know it – police, you know it. Protesters know it – you know [about] some of the angers of these communities where police serve… and you pretend there is no context.”
“If we can’t talk honestly and openly, then we will never break this dangerous cycle,” he said, lamenting that he has witnessed too many mass shootings during his time in office.
Obama’s remarks came after last week’s death of five Dallas officers, and two police shootings that left two black men dead: one in Louisiana, and another in Minnesota.
Obama started his speech by reciting verses from the Bible.
“Scripture tells us that in our sufferings there is glory,” he said at the beginning of his remarks at he memorial service for the five police officers who lost their lives. “Because we know that suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance [produces] character, and character, hope.”
“Sometimes the truths of those words are hard to see — right now those words test us because the people of Dallas and people across the country are suffering,” he added.
Obama said he understands the confusion and heartache that Americans are feeling right now.
“But Dallas, I’m here to say we must reject such despair, and we’re not as divided as we seem,” he said. “I know that because I know America and I know how far we’ve come against impossible odds.”
“I know we’ll make it because of what I’ve experienced in my own life… and what we’ve seen here in Dallas from all of you – out of great suffering has shown us the meaning of perseverance and great character and hope,” he said.
The president held up the teamwork displayed over the last few days by Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and its Police Chief David Brown, “a white man and a black man with different backgrounds.”
The pair have worked together to “restore order” with “strength, and grace and wisdom,” Obama said, reminding the country that Dallas has been at the forefront of implementing community policing reforms in the wake of racial unrest over the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. and the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody last year in Baltimore, among others.
Obama said his faith “tells me” the five officers didn’t die in vain.
“Weeping may endure at night but I’m convinced that joy comes in the morning,” he said. “We cannot match the sacrifices that they made…but surely we can try to match their sense of service and strive to match their devotion.”
Among the police officers and community leaders on the stage behind Obama, there were five seats left vacant to honor of the officers slain in last week’s attack.
