WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is delivering a pointed message to young blacks that the nation has made progress on race relations, urging patience and resolve in the wake of protests in New York and elsewhere.
In an interview to air Monday, Obama acknowledged that the distrust between minority communities and law enforcement is “deeply rooted in our history” and cautioned that it “will not be solved overnight.”
In his first extended remarks on the subject since a New York grand jury decided last week not to indict a white police officer in the death of an unarmed black man in July, the president also sought to remind his audience that life has improved for black Americans over recent generations.
“It’s important to recognize that, as painful as these incidents are, we can’t equate what is happening now to what happened 50 years ago,” Obama said in an excerpt of the interview released by BET Networks. “If you talk to your parents, your grandparents, they’ll tell you things are better. Not good, in some cases, but better. The reason it’s important to understand that progress has been made is that it then gives us hope we can make even more progress.”
That message is one Obama has delivered in previous meetings with black youths, including a conference at the White House Dec. 1, convened a week after a grand jury cleared a white officer in the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Mo. He told the young activists that “better is good” when it comes to race relations.
Meanwhile, the ruling in New York last week has spawned a new round of protests across the country. On Saturday night, police in Berkeley, Calif., used rubber bullets and tear gas to break up several hundred protesters after demonstrations turned violent. At least two officers were injured in the melee.
Obama’s bid to calm tensions amid scenes of massive street protests has been marked by a tempered tone and notable lack of raw personal emotion from the nation’s first black president, who had so directly addressed his own racial heritage in an autobiography and the nation’s painful legacy during a much-heralded “race speech” during his 2008 campaign.
The deaths of Eric Garner, 43, in New York and Michael Brown, 18, in Ferguson have frayed civic bonds in those communities and presented a challenge for the Obama administration.
The Justice Department announced civil rights investigations in both cases, and Obama has called for new resources, including body cameras for police officers.
But if Obama’s presidency seemed to carry a unique burden in terms of race relations, rarely since assuming office has he offered a personal or emotional response to match the moment. Last week, in the wake of the New York grand jury’s verdict, it was New York Mayor Bill de Blasio who offered the more poignant reaction.
De Blasio referred to a “profound and lasting” history of racism and confided that he and his wife, Chirlane McCray, who is black, have spoken to their 17-year-old biracial son, Dante, “about the dangers he may face” in potential encounters with police.
“We are dealing with centuries of racism that have brought us to this day,” de Blasio said. “That is how profound the crisis is. And that is how fundamental the task at hand is, to turn from that history and to make a change that is profound and lasting.”
The next day, Obama went before an audience of minority college students at a White House college affordability summit in Washington and offered praise for de Blasio.
“I commended him for his words,” Obama said.
“We have to be persistent,” Obama said in the BET interview. “Typically, progress is in steps. It’s in increments. When you’re dealing with something as deeply rooted as racism or bias in any society, you’ve got to have vigilance, but you have to recognize it will take some time, and you have to be steady so you don’t give up when we don’t get all the way there.”
Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, director of the African American Policy Forum, said de Blasio was channeling “the old Obama,” who tried to talk about race in personal terms but has been stung by the backlash.
Benjamin Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from 2008 to 2013, said he first heard of Obama when the president was an Illinois state senator championing a bill in the legislature to curb racial profiling in the early 2000s. Now, Jealous said, “I suspect the president wants to do more than he has done.”
White House aides dispute such an assessment, noting that Obama has spoken several times about the situation in Ferguson, including making a rare late-night appearance in the White House briefing room on Nov. 24 to urge protesters there to remain peaceful after the grand jury decision.
De Blasio has faced backlash from the New York Police Department, with a union official blasting the mayor for throwing rank and file officers “under the bus.” The mayor responded to that criticism Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
“I have immense respect for the men and women who protect us,” de Blasio said. “What we have to do is change the fundamental relationship between police and the communities. Our police keep us safe, and yet there’s been a history of centuries of racism that undergird this reality. We can transcend that.”
