Healing black and blue
Reflecting on the murders of five Dallas police officers — slain not only because they were cops but because they were white cops — President Obama on Tuesday delivered a powerful appeal to America’s better racial angels. Appropriately, the President paid tribute to the fathers, husbands, brothers and sons who were cut down in a spasm of blind hatred as they safeguarded a protest against police shootings of African-Americans.
His voice fluttering with emotion, Obama spoke eloquently about Officers Lorne Ahrens, Patrick Zamarripa, Michael Krol, Michael Smith and Brent Thompson. He also celebrated the work of the Dallas PD, which has reduced crime in the city along with complaints of abusive policing.
“Like police officers across the country, these men and their families shared a commitment to something larger than themselves,” the President said, adding, “The reward comes in knowing that our entire way of life in America depends on the rule of law, that the maintenance of that law is a hard and daily labor.”
Speaking of how the Dallas cops responded to the sniper attack, Obama declared, “We mourn fewer people today because of your brave actions.”
Although the presidential salute was complete in itself — and some no doubt wish he would have stopped there — Obama then delved at length into racially fraught tensions between many in black America and many in blue.
Bluntly and helpfully, the President pointed out that racial fairness in the United States has dramatically improved over the last half century.
Saying, “When anyone, no matter how good their intentions may be, paints all police as biased, or bigoted, we undermine those officers that we depend on for our safety,” Obama fittingly lectured police critics about destructively damning all cops and, in the worst case, using rhetoric that incites violence.
At the same time, speaking at some risk given the solemn setting, Obama brought to the fore “a growing despair” among African-Americans “over what they perceive to be unequal treatment” in the criminal justice system, backed up by “study after study.”
Reaching for understanding, the President said, “When mothers and fathers raised their kids right, and have the talk about how to respond if stopped by a police officer — yes, sir; no, sir — but still fear that something terrible may happen when their child walks out the door; still fear that kids being stupid and not quite doing things right might end in tragedy . . . We can’t simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism.”
In a difficult setting, Obama accomplished the mission of asking Americans to accept the truth of seemingly conflicting ideas: that almost all police officers are brave professionals, and that many blacks and Latinos have legitimate frustrations about the criminal justice system.
Ultimately, the President looked forward with hope that cops and those who critique them — even those who march and loudly chant that black lives matter — can stand together on common moral ground.
That’s precisely what they did in the case of Shetamia Taylor, a Black Lives Matter protester wounded by the sniper’s bullets who saw cops protect her and her four children. Taylor calls herself “forever indebted” to police. “Today her 12-year-old son wants to be a cop when he grows up,” said Obama. “That’s the America I know.”
May it be so.