XPost: austin.general, ba.politics, alt.business
XPost: alt.activism

WASHINGTON — Defending the Black Lives Matter movement,
President Barack Obama said Thursday the protests are giving
voice to a problem happening only in African-American
communities, adding, “We, as a society, particularly given our
history, have to take this seriously.”

Obama said the movement, which sprung up after the deaths of
unarmed black men in Florida, Missouri and elsewhere, quickly
came to be viewed as being opposed to police and suggesting that
other people’s lives don’t matter. Opponents have countered that
“all lives matter.”

At the conclusion of a White House forum on criminal justice,
Obama said he wanted to make a final point about the nexus of
race and the criminal justice system before launching into his
defense of the movement.

“I think everybody understands all lives matter,” Obama said. “I
think the reason that the organizers used the phrase ‘Black
Lives Matter’ was not because they were suggesting nobody else’s
lives matter. Rather, what they were suggesting was there is a
specific problem that’s happening in the African-American
community that’s not happening in other communities.

“And that is a legitimate issue that we’ve got to address.”

Police relations with minority communities and the deaths of
unarmed black men have been topics of great interest since the
shootings of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012 in Florida and
18-year-old Michael Brown in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri. Those
deaths, and others of black women, have inspired protests around
the country under the “Black Lives Matter” moniker.

Obama paired his defense of the Black Lives Matter movement with
praise for police and other law enforcement officials. Some
police groups have been unhappy with Obama’s response to the
deaths of the unarmed black men. The president lately seems to
be making the extra effort to publicly praise police officers
for willingly taking on a dangerous assignment.

He did so while participating in a forum on drug abuse Wednesday
in Charleston, West Virginia, and next week he’s scheduled to
address the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

At the White House, Obama said there are specific concerns about
whether blacks in certain areas are treated unfairly or are more
frequently subjected to excessive force by police.

But the president said people should also “understand the
overwhelming majority of law enforcement’s doing the right thing
and wants to do the right thing” and “recognize that police
officers have a really tough job and we’re sending them into
really tough neighborhoods that sometimes are really dangerous
and they’ve got to make split-second decisions.”

He said people shouldn’t be “too sanctimonious” about situations
that can sometimes be ambiguous.

“But having said all that, we as a society, particularly given
our history, have to take this seriously,” Obama said. “And one
of the ways of avoiding the politics of this and losing the
moment is everybody just stepping back for a second and
understanding that the African-American community is not just
making this up.”

“It’s not just something being politicized. It’s real and
there’s a history behind it and we have to take it seriously,”
he said.

In a separate development, the Black Lives Matter organization
on Thursday rejected a town hall-style forum it had been offered
by the Democratic National Committee, in lieu of a sanctioned
debate it had requested. The group said a town hall wouldn’t
“sufficiently respond to the concerns raised by our members.”
The DNC said it has approved only six debates, and all have been
scheduled.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/obama-defends-black-lives-
matter-movement/

Don't want to be treated like niggers? Act like human beings.
 

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)