Obama to visit grieving Dallas
President shuns notion that U.S. is divided nation
WARSAW, Poland — President Barack Obama on Saturday rejected any notion that the past week’s stunning violence signals a return to racial brutality of a dark past, saying that as painful as the killings of police and black men were, “America is not as divided as some have suggested.”
With five Dallas police officers dead at the hands of a sniper and two black men dead at the hands of police, Obama appealed to Americans not to be overwhelmed by fear of a return to 1960s-style chaos and to understand the progress that has been made in racial relations since that time.
“You’re not seeing riots and you’re not seeing police going after people who are protesting peacefully,” he said. “You’ve seen almost uniformly peaceful protests and you’ve seen, uniformly, police handling those protests with professionalism.”
Obama spoke at the conclusion of a NATO summit in Warsaw before leaving for Spain.
Obama said the Dallas shooter, a black Army veteran who was later killed by police, was a “demented individual” who does not represent black Americans any more than a white man accused of killing blacks at a church in Charleston, S.C., represents whites.
The president said he would visit Dallas in a few days to pay respects and mourn with the stricken Texas city.
The shootings, and the ensuing protests in some U.S. cities, led to an uncharacteristic response from the president: He cut his five-day, two-country European trip to four days. On his flight to Spain, he called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to offer his condolences on behalf of the American people, the White House said.
The president said he planned to convene a White House meeting in coming days with police officers, community and civil rights activists and others to talk about next steps.
He said the “empathy and understanding” that Americans have shown had given him hope.
“That’s the spirit that we all need to embrace,” Obama said. “That’s the spirit that I want to build on.”
“You’re not seeing riots and you’re not seeing police going after people who are protesting peacefully. You’ve seen almost uniformly peaceful protests and you’ve seen, uniformly, police handling those protests with professionalism.” President Barack Obama