President Obama has addressed the issue of police-involved shootings repeatedly over his two terms, and has done so consistently with one clear premise: the justice system is plagued by “systemic racism,” both “conscious and unconscious.” Hours before the orchestrated attack on police officers at a Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas that left five officers dead and six others wounded, Obama delivered a lengthy speech on racism in the police force and justice system, which, given its proximity to the attack, deserves to be looked at in its entirety.
Obama’s speech came in response to the police-involved shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, which are still under investigation, with many facts still coming to light and the motivations behind the attack, racial or otherwise, still unclear. Despite all the unknowns surrounding the cases, Obama framed both in terms of racism, saying “Americans should be troubled by the shootings,” which he suggested were connected to other racially motivated ones and thus “symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities” in our criminal justice system.
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