Former NBA star and now TNT commentator Charles Barkley weighed in on the recent Alton Sterling and Philando Castile shootings by law enforcement and the Dallas attack on police officers on ESPN Radio’s “Dan Le Batard Show,” saying that black people need the police and should do better when it comes to crime.
“We need the cops, especially in the black community. We as black people, we’ve got to do better. We never get mad when black people kill each other, which that always has bothered me,” Barkley said.
Barkley admitted that the officers may have “panicked” and that there can be racism from both sides, but he maintained that there is not the same outrage when there is black on black violence as when there is an African-American killed by a white police officer.
“We don’t have near the outrage we do when a white cop kills somebody,” he continued. “Dan, I’ve been black my whole life. Most black people I know killed are killed by other black people, and I’ve never understood why there’s not this moral outrage the way we treat each other as black people.”
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