At the same time, racial justice activists, including those involved in Black Lives Matter, have expressed frustration with Obama for his expressions of sympathy with the police serving in African-American communities ravaged by poverty and violence.
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He did not offer detail about the complaints, but said Mr Obama stressed how he had repeatedly voiced support for law enforcement and offered to send critics a list of when he had done so.
“At times, it seems like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together”. It’s as if the deepest fault lines of our democracy have suddenly been exposed, perhaps even widened.
But, he added, prejudice does exist in American institutions, including police departments.
“We know it whether you are black or white or Hispanic or Asian or native American or of Middle Eastern descent we have all seen this bigotry in our own lives at some point”, he said. But ultimately, after one of the most searching discourses on race of his presidency, he concluded that the country’s divides were not as acute as they often seemed. “I think the first thing that the president will acknowledge is that there is no cookie-cutter solution that can be applied”. “That’s the America I know”. “We can’t just leave this to the police”, Obama said.
“No matter how they cast their ballots, all Americans can be proud of the history that was made yesterday”, said Bush on November 5, 2008, calling Obama’s election “a triumph of the American story”.
“We know bias remains”, Obama said. “And this has strained our bonds of understanding and common objective”.
Funerals for the five officers killed by a sniper during a protest in downtown Dallas are set to begin.
Other participants included mayors, law enforcement officials, activists and spiritual leaders according to the White House.
It’s a posture neither side has completely accepted. One prominent voice, William Johnson, executive director the National Association of Police Organizations, accused Obama of waging a “war on cops”.
The distrust has only deepened with each police shooting of a black man as they see the president or one of his representatives attend services for the victims.
The memorial is one of several that have occurred in the wake of the police shootings in Dallas, as well as the high-profile killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
Bush’s message of reconciliation and tolerance reinforced Obama’s. Bush’s speech was concise and clear, focusing on faith, unity, and America’s path forward – in contrast with President Obama’s long, political monologue, in which he mentioned himself 45 times.
Obama made the same case more than a year ago, when asked about the protests that greeted Freddie Gray’s death in Baltimore.
“I’m not naive”, he said Tuesday. Change your words into truth and then change that truth into love. But the White House was hard pressed to say what Obama hoped might come out of the effort.
He said he wanted Americans to have an open heart so that they can learn to look at the world through each other’s eyes, and Wednesday’s meeting followed that theme.
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And when violence erupted in Baltimore in the spring of 2015, following the death of Freddie Gray, who died after suffering a spine injury while in police custody, Obama paused to acknowledge the police officers who were injured in the rioting.
