President Obama condemned the torture of a mentally disabled man that was streamed live on Facebook earlier this week.
The president said the incident that involved four black suspects and a white victim was “despicable” but it doesn’t show that racial tensions have worsened.
“What we have seen as surfacing, I think, are a lot of problems that have been there a long time,” the president told a CBS affiliate in Chicago.
Obama echoed the sentiment in another interview with Chicago’s ABC affiliate.
“It’s terrible,” he said. “Part of what technology allows us to see now is the terrible toll that racism, discrimination and hate takes on families and communities. But that’s part of how we learn and how we get better. We don’t benefit from pretending racism doesn’t exist and hate doesn’t exist.”
Chicago authorities filed hate-crime charges on Thursday against four suspects who lashed out at white people on Facebook Live.
The video showed a group of people torturing a white, disabled man while shouting “fuck Donald Trump” and “fuck white people.”
“I take these things very seriously,” Obama said.
“I think the overall trajectory of race relations in this country is actually very positive. It doesn’t mean that all racial problems have gone away. It means that we have the capacity to get better.”
