Barack Obama was supposed to fix race relations in America. He hasn’t. Still, he think he’s the country’s “best hope” at making it happen.
Almost exactly three years ago, President Obama stood in the White House briefing room and said that he didn’t think it would be “particularly productive” for him to convene “a national conversation on race.”
But in the wake of a recent series of high-profile, racially charged shootings across the country, the president this week found himself doing exactly that.
Obama spent Monday preparing to address the nation at a Tuesday memorial service in Dallas for five slain police officers and meeting with advocates at the White House in an effort aimed at bridging the divide between law enforcement and communities of color.
The president met for nearly two hours with leaders of eight law enforcement groups Monday, informing them that he considered the killing of the five police officers in Dallas on Thursday “a hate crime” and that he would work actively to serve as an intermediary between minority activists and police.
“I’m your best hope,” Obama remarked at one point, according to the Fraternal Order of Police’s James O. Pasco, one of the meeting’s attendees.
At one point, Obama may have been right. As an African American president, he had the ability to build bridges between white middle-America and the African American community. Unfortunately, he seemed to spend his entire presidency focusing on the latter. Now it’s probably too late for Obama to regain the trust of the white Americans he spent his entire presidency ignoring.
Source: Washington Post
the best bet is to get you and move on.