President Barack Obama Saturday called for constructive ways to heal the nation reeling from shooting deaths of Dallas police officers and African-Americans, reminding that actions of a few individuals could not define the entire society.
The president, traveling in Europe has cut short his visit and in the next few days will visit Dallas, where a former African-American soldier Micah Johnson killed five White police officers, claiming he was angered by deaths of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana.
Obama also called Dallas Police Chief Brown and praised him for showing leadership in extremely challenging situation.
“So we cannot let the actions of a few define all of us. The demented individual who carried out those attacks in Dallas, he’s no more representative of African Americans than the shooter in Charleston was representative of white Americans, or the shooter in Orlando or San Bernardino were representative of Muslim Americans. They don’t speak for us. That’s not who we are,” Obama noted after attending a NATO summit in Poland.
Obama, the first African-American president, strongly condemned a spate of attacks on Police but also drew attention to the pain of families who lost black men.
He said the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans have reacted with empathy and understanding gives him hope.
“We’ve seen police continue to reach out to communities that they serve all across the country, and show incredible professionalism as they’re protecting protestors. We’ve seen activists and grassroots groups who have expressed concern about police shootings, but are also adamant in their support of the Dallas Police Department — which is particularly appropriate because the Dallas Police Department is a great example of a department that has taken the issue of police shootings seriously and has engaged in an approach that has not only brought down their murder rates but also drastically reduced complaints around police misconduct.
“That’s the spirit that we all need to embrace. That’s the spirit that I want to build on. It’s one of the reasons why next week, using the task force that we had set up after Ferguson, but also building on it, and inviting both police and law enforcement and community activists and civil rights leaders, bringing them together to the White House. I want to start moving on constructive actions that are actually going to make a difference, because that is what all Americans want.”
At the same time, Obama made it clear that America is not experiencing the predicament of 1960s civil rights era.
“So when we start suggesting that somehow there’s this enormous polarization, and we’re back to the situation in the ’60s — that’s just not true. You’re not seeing riots, and you’re not seeing police going after people who are protesting peacefully. You’ve seen almost uniformly peaceful protests. And you’ve seen uniformly police handling those protests with professionalism.
“And so, as tough, as hard, as depressing as the loss of life was this week, we’ve got a foundation to build on. We just have to have to confidence that we can build on those better angels of our nature. And we have to make sure that all of us step back, do some reflection, and make sure that the rhetoric that we engage in is constructive, and not destructive; that we’re not painting anybody with an overly broad brush; that we’re not constantly thinking the worst in other people rather than the best. If we do that, then I’m confident that we will continue to make progress.”
He also cautioned against assuming that a troubled individual’s action represents a broader political statement.
“So I think the danger, as I said, is that we somehow suggest that the act of a troubled individual speaks to some larger political statement across the country. It doesn’t. When some white kid walks into a church and shoots a bunch of worshippers who invite him to worship with them, we don’t assume that somehow he’s making a political statement that’s relevant to the attitudes of the rest of America. And we shouldn’t make those assumptions around a troubled Muslim individual who is acting on their own in that same way.”
On the question of gun issues, Obama said he will keep on talking about the fact that “we cannot eliminate all racial tension in our country overnight; we are not going to be able to identify ahead of time and eliminate every madman or troubled individual who might want to do harm against innocent people; but we can make it harder for them to do so.”
