‘Not as divided as we seem’
President Obama navigates multiple audiences at slain officers’ memorial
DALLAS — President Barack Obama urged activists and police to set aside their differences and acknowledge each other’s humanity as he presided over a memorial Tuesday for the officers slain last week in Dallas and tried to navigate an America deeply divided and in mourning after a week of violence.
Obama called on police to acknowledge institutional racial bias but also condemned the killing of the white officers by a black gunman as an act of “racial hatred.”
“I’m here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem,” Obama told the crowd of law enforcement and family members grieving the five officers killed Thursday during a protest of police killings of black men elsewhere. “And I know that because I know America. I know how far we’ve come against impossible odds.”
He pointed to the officers on duty, who rushed to shield demonstrators protesting their very careers.
“Despite the fact that police conduct was the subject of the protest, despite the fact there must’ve been signs or slogans or chants with which they profoundly disagreed, these men and this department did their jobs like the professionals that they were,” he said.
Though it wasn’t the first time he has asked the public to honor the sacrifices of law enforcement and join calls from activists for police fairness, never has Obama faced such a pressing need to do both at the same time.
Even as he appeared in Dallas, activists complained that he hasn’t visited Baton Rouge, La., or Falcon Heights, Minn., the sites of the shooting deaths of black men by white officers that prompted Thursday’s march in Dallas.
At the same time, some police blamed Obama’s empathy for the Black Lives Matter movement for creating an environment where the Dallas attack occurred.
Obama sought to find common ground, lauding police as he has several times in recent days.
“So much of the tensions President Obama speaks Tuesday during a memorial service for Dallas police officers. between police departments and minority communities that they serve is because we ask the police to do too much and we ask too little of ourselves,” he said, quoting Dallas Police Chief David Brown, who spoke earlier at the service.
The crowd’s response to Obama alternated between sitting stony-faced and at times standing and applauding
Against that complicated backdrop, Obama was joined by a coalition of black and white officials, including prominent Republicans and Democrats.
Former President George W. Bush, wife Laura and Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, all Republicans, sat interspersed with the Obamas and Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill. The black chief of the Dallas police, Brown, sat with the city’s white mayor, Mike Rawlings.
Bush challenged the idea that the forces pulling Americans apart are stronger than the forces pulling them together.
“At our best, we practice empathy,” he said. “This is the bridge across our nation’s deepest divisions.”
Obama’s visit to Dallas suggests that Obama sees an “equivalency” between what black and white America are experiencing after last week, said Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr.
“He sounds like he’s trying to convince white people of the fact that black people are mourning and grieving, as opposed to speaking directly to black people,” Glaude, chairman of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton, said on MSNBC before Obama spoke.
Obama also had met a day earlier with law enforcement officials strongly critical of his rhetoric in moments of racially charged conflicts between police and young black men.
James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, said he told the president that it often appeared to him that Obama would give one speech to minority communities and another to law enforcement.
“I said we wanted to see him give one, more-unifying speech which addressed, to the satisfaction of all, the grievances and the grief of all parties,” he said.
Obama publicly indicated Tuesday how he has grappled with the limits of his ability to change perceptions: “I’ve seen how inadequate my own words have been.”
Nonetheless, he tried to reach several audiences at once.
“Even those who dislike the phrase ‘black lives matter,’ surely, we should be able to hear the pain of Alton Sterling’s family,” Obama said, addressing the law enforcement community at large.
“Protesters, you know it, you know how dangerous some of the communities where these police officers serve are,” he added, admonishing activists. “And you pretend as if there’s no context.”
“America, we know that bias remains,” he said to his larger audience. “… We’ve heard it at times in our own homes. If we’re honest, perhaps we’ve heard prejudice in our own heads and felt it in our own hearts.”