Bush, who awkwardly swayed from side to side while standing next to First Lady Michelle Obama, appeared completely detached from the solemn nature of the service – held for the five police officers killed in the Dallas shootings last week.
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White House spokesman Josh Earnest said there would be law enforcement officers in the room who are deeply troubled by Black Lives Matter activists.
“We turn on the TV or surf the internet, and we can watch positions harden and lines drawn and people retreat to their respective corners”, the first black USA president said. But Dallas, I’m here to say we must reject such despair. At times, it seems like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together.
I understand. I understand how Americans are feeling. “And we’ll have to see each other as equal parts of the American family”.
Photos of the five police officers killed in Dallas last Thursday are highlighted during a service that include a memorial to the officers as well as a town hall meeting to discuss other recent shootings, at the The Potter’s House, Sunday, July 10, 2016, in Dallas.
“Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, but judge ourselves by our best intentions”, he said.
This summer is fraught with opportunities to strain those bonds, with the national political conventions beginning next week, followed by what promises to be a rancorous presidential campaign.
For many viewing his speech, Obama came across as indicting the police he had praised only moments before. “It’s really inspiring to see what a large family law enforcement is when tragedy strikes”. It’s a posture neither side has completely accepted. Law enforcement officials have sharply criticized Obama and some of his policies, including a decision to stem the flow of military-grade equipment to local departments. But Obama also said that data shows disparities in how African-Americans are treated by police.
Obama described the killings of the police officers in Dallas last week as “an act not just of demented demented violence but of racial hatred”. We owe that Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael Smith, Brent Thompson, and Patrick Zamarripa.
Obama has devoted his attention this week to the gun violence directed at police officers as well as shootings by police. Bush, a native Texan, also spoke.
After years of delivering emotional pleas for peace at similar memorials, Obama acknowledged his fatigue and the limits of his words. “I’m not naive”, he said Tuesday. “I’ve seen how inadequate my own words have been”. “Law enforcement has an incredibly hard job”, Obama said at the time.
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“In communities where there are no fathers who can provide guidance to young men; communities where there’s no investment and manufacturing has been stripped away; and drugs have flooded the community and the drug industry ends up being the primary employer for a whole lot of folks – in those environments, if we think we’re just going to send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there without as a nation and as a society saying what can we do to change those communities, to help lift up those communities and give those kids opportunity, then we’re not going to solve this problem”, he said.
