Two very different President Barack Obamas spoke at the “national conversation” on police and crime event that was choreographed by ABC News.
The first President Barack Obama was all race-and discrimination, while pushing his plan to federalize the nation’s 18,000 state and local police forces as a noble cause against the racism that has scarred the country from birth.
“I think if we’re honest with ourselves, that because of the history of our country, and because of images we receive as we’re growing up, etc., oftentimes, there’s a presumption that black men are dangerous … that has to be worked through, and police officers who are getting that training end up being able to engage and de-escalate encounters more effectively,” he claimed during the TV show, which was grandly titled “The President and The People: A National Conversation.”
But the second President Barack Obama was sheepish, admitting that maybe, yes, when you look at it, yes, it is obvious that young African-American men are far more criminally dangerous than are young white, Latino or Asian men.
It is absolutely true that the murder rate in the African-American community is way out of whack compared to the general population, and both the victims and perpetrators are black, young black men.
The — the single greatest cause of death for young black men between the ages of 18 and 35 is homicide. And that’s crazy, that is crazy. And so we have to acknowledge that and that means that we can’t put the burden on the police alone.
… Now this is tough. I have presided over more memorials of mass shootings than I would like. And it’s heartbreaking. But that doesn’t even count the hundreds of [African-American] kids, just in the South Side of Chicago, who’ve been shot.
The first Obama dominated the TV show, and the second Obama only appeared when Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn shoved a few facts into Obama’s feelings-and-emotions “national conversation.”
Those facts are very tough for Flynn — African-Americans comprise 40 percent of the population in his city, which has a crime rate five times higher than the average of mostly white Wisconsin, making it the seventh most dangerous city in the country.
The Irish-American cop began with flattery, and then switched to the hard-edged facts;
I’m basically going to ask you to figure out a way to cross parallel conversations. And I think it’s going to transcend the duration of your presidency, which imposes a special burden on you because of your unique place in history.
The parallel conversations you’ve, in fact, implicitly alluded to in the course of our conversation today, for the urban police chiefs in America, we are primarily judged by our ability to lower levels of violence in disadvantaged communities of color.
In those communities, crime has not significantly gone down; it’s gone down in some place called America, but in those neighborhoods there’s easy access to firearms, to which you’ve alluded, and there are extraordinary rates of violence.
Nationally, African-Americans represent 51 percent of our homicide victims, with about 13 percent of the population. In our cities, it’s more like 80 percent. And like most homicides, defendants look like the people that they victimize.
It’s an urban tragedy, but the heart of the police dilemma is those neighborhoods that demand our services — need us the most, request us the most, depend upon us the most for social and historical reasons — [also] distrust us… And so the challenge, the easy challenge that I offer you, in the next six months, but also I would hope, I would also hope beyond that is to use your authority, your influence, and your prestige as a convener to continue this discussion.
Put on the spot, during prime-time TV, by a plainspoken cop, the first race-and-discrimination Obama retreated into the background, and the second sheepish Obama emerged to admit the obvious;
OBAMA: Well, I appreciate what you said, Chief. Let me just pick up on a couple of themes that you said.
Number one, it is absolutely true that the murder rate in the African-American community is way out of whack compared to the general population, and both the victims and perpetrators are black, young black men.
The — the single greatest cause of death for young black men between the ages of 18 and 35 is homicide. And that’s crazy, that is crazy. And so we have to acknowledge that and that means that we can’t put the burden on the police alone.
It is going to acquire investments in those communities. It is going to require making sure the schools work. It’s going to require having after school programs. And then it is going to require us to look at things like guns.
Now this is tough. I have presided over more memorials of mass shootings than I would like. And it’s heartbreaking. But that doesn’t even count the hundreds of kids, just in the South Side of Chicago, who’ve been shot.
Obama has admitted the race and crime statistics at prior events. For example, he recognized the numbers when talking at the White House after George Zimmerman was acquitted for his part in the 2012 death of an African-American youth, Trayvon Martin.
“Now, this isn’t to say that the African-American community is naive about the fact that African-American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system, that they are disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence,” the second Barack Obama said in 2013.
Unsurprisingly, the first Barack Obama was also at the same 2013 press conference, where he tried to re-bury the statistics under claims of racism and discrimination. “The fact that a lot of African-American boys are painted with a broad brush and the excuse is given, well, there are these statistics out there that show that African-American boys are more violent — using that as an excuse to then see sons treated differently causes pain,” he said.
The statistical reality is visible in a November 2011 report by the Justice Department, which shows that young African-American men comprise only 1 percent of the nation’s population, but are responsible for 27 percent of the nation’s murders.
However, the first race-and-discrimination Obama has proved a roaring political success this election year because he has enormously increased African-Americans’ focus on the pending 2016 election.
The second, sheepish, data-accepting Obama will rarely appear in public before the election is decided.
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