President Obama Addresses Ferguson, Protests And Law Enforcement In BET Special
Power concedes nothing without a fight.
That’s one of the many strong statements President Barack Obama made in support of the numerous peaceful protests across America during a candid conversation with BET News’ Jeff Johnson Monday (December 8) night.
“A country’s conscience sometimes has to be triggered by some inconvenience,” President Obama said, referencing the protests in the BET special, “BET News Presents: A Conversation with President Barack Obama." “As long as they’re [protests] peaceful, they’re necessary. When they turn violent, then they’re counterproductive.”
The Commander-in-Chief’s appearance on the network that targets African-American audiences was his first television interview since a Staten Island grand jury decided not to indict the New York City police officer that killed Eric Garner.
While mentioning that he’d just visited with protest organizers from across the country in the Oval Office, the former Chicago community organizer expressed his beliefs about the value of activism.
“The value of peaceful protests, activism, organization... it reminds the society this is not yet done,” President Obama said. “A lot of people who saw the Eric Garner video are troubled. Even if they haven’t had that same experience themselves, even if they’re not African-American or Latino. I think there are a lot of good, well-meaning people, I think there are probably a lot of police officers who might have looked at that and said, that is a tragedy what happened and we’ve got to figure out how to bring an end to these kinds of tragedies.”
The POTUS also cited his own “particular experiences that I bring to this office” in dealing with law enforcement.
“I had a group of young people…most of them were somewhere between 18-25, a couple of them were from Ferguson,” President Obama said. “When they described their own personal experiences of having been stopped for no reason or having generated suspicion because they were in a community supposedly they didn’t belong, my mind went back to what it was like for me when I was 17, 18, 20. And as I told them, not only do I hear the pain and frustration of being subjected to that kind of constant suspicion, but part of the reason I got into politics was to figure out how can I bridge some of those gaps and understandings so that the larger country understands this is not just a black problem or a brown problem. This is an American problem.”
In the wake of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner tragedies--both black men killed by white police officers, one of the main problems underscored was the minority community's mistrust of law enforcement.
“The vast majority of law enforcement officers are doing a really tough job and most of them are doing it well and are trying to do the right thing,” President Obama added. “But a combination of bad training, in some cases, a combination in some cases of departments that really are not trying to root out biases or tolerate sloppy police work; a combination in some cases of folks just not knowing any better and in a lot of cases, subconscious fear of folks who look different... all of this contributes to a national problem that’s going to require a national solution.”
While recognizing that many African-Americans wanted him to verbalize what should have happened, the POTUS revealed that he can’t put “his thumb on the scale of justice” by offering his opinion on legal matters and emphasized the idea that “Communities of color need good law enforcement.”
“This country is at its best when everybody is being treated fairly,” he said. “We have a history and a legacy of people not being treated fairly in all kinds of walks of life. It is particularly important for people to feel like they’re being treated fairly by law enforcement and police because the consequences when they’re not treated fairly can be deadly.”
Additionally, despite the recent troubling events in Ferguson, Missouri, Staten Island and Cleveland, the POTUS made it clear that progress has been made.
“Things are better,” he said. “Not good, in some cases, but better. And the reason it’s important for us to understand progress has been made is that then gives us hope that we can make even more progress.”
To learn more about racial bias and how you can you can help, check out MTV's Look Different campaign.
