Obama appeared at today's White House Press Briefing to weigh in on the Zimmerman trial, its aftermath and racism in America. Some of what he said was good, some was bad - but unfortunately, the most important of his points were simply utterly outrageous. Here are his entire remarks:
Here are the test of those remarks with comments in blue:
The reason I actually wanted to come out today is not to take questions, but to speak to an issue that obviously has gotten a lot of attention over the course of the last week, the issue of the Trayvon Martin ruling. I gave an — a preliminary statement right after the ruling on Sunday, but watching the debate over the course of the last week I thought it might be useful for me to expand on my thoughts a little bit.
First of all, you know, I — I want to make sure that, once again, I send my thoughts and prayers, as well as Michelle’s, to the family of Trayvon Martin, and to remark on the incredible grace and dignity with which they’ve dealt with the entire situation. I can only imagine what they’re going through, and it’s — it’s remarkable how they’ve handled it.
I think it horrendous that, at no point does Obama similarly mention George Zimmerman, his family or parent, nor the mountain of death threats being made against them.
The second thing I want to say is to reiterate what I said on Sunday, which is there are going to be a lot of arguments about the legal — legal issues in the case. I’ll let all the legal analysts and talking heads address those issues.
The judge conducted the trial in a professional manner. The prosecution and the defense made their arguments. The juries were properly instructed that in a — in a case such as this, reasonable doubt was relevant, and they rendered a verdict. And once the jury’s spoken, that’s how our system works.
But I did want to just talk a little bit about context and how people have responded to it and how people are feeling. You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African- American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African- American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that — that doesn’t go away.
According to the racial grievance industry, our nation is still 1950 Selma, Alabama writ large. Outrageously, many in the racial grievance industry - including the NAACP and members of the Congressional Black Congress - are comparing the Zimmerman case is to the savage racist murders and subsequent denial of justice in the cases of Emmet Till and Medger Evers. Emmet Till, a 14 years old Missippi boy, was tortured and murdered in 1955 by a group of white men for the crime of flirting with a white girl. Two men were acquitted by an all white jury at trial, after which they bragged of their act of murder. Medger Evers was a former soldier and civil rights activist assassinated in 1963, Mississippi, by a member of the KKK, Bryan de la Beckwith. Two trials held at the time resulted in hung juries. Beckwith was not successfully prosecuted for the murder until 1994.
Obama just blessed off on that viewpoint as, at least, not unreasonable. That is absolutely outrageous.
There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me.
And there are very few African-American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator. There are very few African-Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.
And you know, I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.
One, Obama is suggesting that Trayvon Martin was racially profiled by George Zimmerman. Wow. No one on either side of the trial claimed that by the conclusion of the trial. Nor is there a single bit of evidence of that. But Obama just gave it a wink and a nod.
Two, there is a reason people, including blacks such as Jessee Jackson, react that way at the approach of young black men that they don't know. It is because, statistically, blacks are exponentially more likely to commit crimes, and especially violent crime, including murder and robbery, than other racial groups. In 2011, blacks made up 13% of the population. Yet according to FBI Crime Statistics, in not a single category of crime, with the exception of DUI was the number of total criminal incidents committed by blacks equal to or below their proportionate representation in society. In 2011, blacks in the U.S. were responsible for 49.7% of all murders, 55.6% of all robberies, 32.9% of all forcible rapes, and 33.9% of all aggravated assaults. The FBI does not publish like statistics for victims, but looking at the numbers, blacks were just as likely to be the victims of crime out of all proportion to their representation in society. In 2011, 49.9% of all murder victims were black.
So if the presence of blacks, and particularly young black men, causes such an unfortunate reaction in others, it is not because of their racism, its because of the reality of rampant black criminality. That is not a fault of whites, nor for that matter, Jessee Jackson.
Three, this plays right into the claims that there should never be racial profiling. Now, after listening to many in the racial grievance industry speak about "racial profiling" this past week, it seems that what they mean is they don't want anyone not black to feel suspicious about a black person, irrespective of how they are acting. That is not merely a philosophical argument - it is as real as the crime and murder rate differentials between NYC and Chicago. New York City, under Nanny Bloomberg's aggressive 'Stop & Frisk' policies, something the same racial grievance industry claims is racism - now has less than a third of the murder rate of Chicago where, if you are black, it is statistically less safe to live than it is to be a soldier in Afghanistan.
The African-American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws, everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.
This is an attack our criminal justice system without adjusting for the reality of grossly disproportionate black criminality relative to population. Further, it is a back handed slap at the Zimmerman verdict. Regardless of the facts at trial, Obama is saying that it is reasonable that blacks interpret it as a racist incident. Just horseshit.
Now, this isn’t to say that the African-American community is naive about the fact that African-American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system, that they are disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence. It’s not to make excuses for that fact, although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context.
This is a non-sequiter. There is no ":historical context" for massively disproportionate criminality in the black community. The racial grievance industry interprets the plight of all blacks through is the utter canard that all whites in the U.S. are racist. We - and in particular those on the right - are all Bull Connor Democrats. That is not a "historical context. That is an incredibly destructive fantasy,
We understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history.
No, black violence is not born out of a "very violent past." That is not merely an excuse, it is false. It is born out of a breakdown in the black family unit that has gotten worse, not better, since Daniel Patrick Moynihan's landmark report of 1965. It there is ever going to be a true "dialogue" on race that has a chance of improving the plight of blacks as a whole, that is where it has to begin. In fairness, that dialogue would, as Moynihan pointed out, have to acknowledge the role of racism in current situation of blacks. But we arrived at that point in the dialogue in 1965. Any and every attempt to continue the dialogue since then has been met with the 'race card.' .
And so the fact that sometimes that’s unacknowledged adds to the frustration. And the fact that a lot of African-American boys are painted with a broad brush and the excuse is given, well, there are these statistics out there that show that African-American boys are more violent — using that as an excuse to then see sons treated differently causes pain.
I think the African-American community is also not naive in understanding that statistically somebody like Trayvon Martin was probably statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else.
So — so folks understand the challenges that exist for African- American boys, but they get frustrated, I think, if they feel that there’s no context for it or — and that context is being denied. And — and that all contributes,
So, if I understand this argument, unless non-blacks are willing to drown themselves in guilt for past historical sins that they did not commit, then the racial grievance industry is justified to be frustrated..
I think, to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.
This is the single most outrageous statement that Obama makes - one that undergirds the whole racial grievance industry, It, to use the words of Obama, painting America with a "broad brush." He condemns our society and our legal system as irredeemably racist. It means that we are still the America of Till and Evers. And that is pure bullshit.
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Two cases come immediately to mind - O.J. Simpson and Roderick Scott. Simpson was given the same treatment that the murderers of Till and Evers were given. That case was a travesty of justice, but leave it aside. Roderick Scott is of particular note. His case, decided just days ago, was a photo negative of the Zimmerman case. Scott is a black man in Rochester, New York who came upon three 16 year old white boys whom he believed were stealing from cars in the area. Brandishing a gun, he ordered them to stay in place until the police arrived. According to Scott, one of the boys charged him, saying that he was going to "get" Scott. Before the boy so much as touched Scott, he lay dead of two gunshot wounds that Scott claimed he fired in self defense. Unlike Trayvon Martin, the person Scott shot had no history of any troubled past. Like Trayvon Martin, the boy's parents are inconsolable, believing their innocent son was murdered. Scott was acquitted of manslaughter charges within the past week following a jury trial.
Now, the question for me at least, and I think, for a lot of folks is, where do we take this? How do we learn some lessons from this and move in a positive direction? You know, I think it’s understandable that there have been demonstrations and vigils and protests, and some of that stuff is just going to have to work its way through as long as it remains nonviolent. If I see any violence, then I will remind folks that that dishonors what happened to Trayvon Martin and his family.
Again, Obama portrays Martin as an innocent victim. Trayvon's death is a tragedy, but what did he do on that night he died for which he should be honored? The only possible inference is that he is a martyr to racism.
But beyond protests or vigils, the question is, are there some concrete things that we might be able to do? I know that Eric Holder is reviewing what happened down there, but I think it’s important for people to have some clear expectations here. Traditionally, these are issues of state and local government — the criminal code. And law enforcement has traditionally done it at the state and local levels, not at the federal levels.
Obama just told the racial grievance industry that, try as they might, there will be no federal civil rights case filed against George Zimmerman. It is called burying the lead.
That doesn’t mean, though, that as a nation, we can’t do some things that I think would be productive. So let me just give a couple of specifics that I’m still bouncing around with my staff so we’re not rolling out some five-point plan, but some areas where I think all of us could potentially focus.
Number one, precisely because law enforcement is often determined at the state and local level, I think it’d be productive for the Justice Department — governors, mayors to work with law enforcement about training at the state and local levels in order to reduce the kind of mistrust in the system that sometimes currently exists.
You know, when I was in Illinois I passed racial profiling legislation. And it actually did just two simple things. One, it collected data on traffic stops and the race of the person who was stopped. But the other thing was it resourced us training police departments across the state on how to think about potential racial bias and ways to further professionalize what they were doing.
And initially, the police departments across the state were resistant, but actually they came to recognize that if it was done in a fair, straightforward way, that it would allow them to do their jobs better and communities would have more confidence in them and in turn be more helpful in applying the law. And obviously law enforcement’s got a very tough job.
So that’s one area where I think there are a lot of resources and best practices that could be brought bear if state and local governments are receptive. And I think a lot of them would be. And — and let’s figure out other ways for us to push out that kind of training.
Along the same lines, I think it would be useful for us to examine some state and local laws to see if it — if they are designed in such a way that they may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case, rather than diffuse potential altercations.
I know that there’s been commentary about the fact that the stand your ground laws in Florida were not used as a defense in the case.
On the other hand, if we’re sending a message as a society in our communities that someone who is armed potentially has the right to use those firearms even if there’s a way for them to exit from a situation, is that really going to be contributing to the kind of peace and security and order that we’d like to see?
And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these “stand your ground” laws, I just ask people to consider if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman, who had followed him in a car, because he felt threatened?
And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.
Given that neither racial profiling nor Stand Your Ground laws were implicated in the Zimmerman case, this is Obama's way hoodwinking blacks into believing that he and the rest of the racial grievance industry are standing up for them. And therein lies the true irony of the racial grievance industry. The demands of Obama will, if pushed forward, have their most clear and negative impact on one identifiable racial group - blacks. The racial profiling laws would make another Chicago of New York City. Taking away Stand Your Ground laws would most hurt the black population, those most subject to violence and those most likely to rely on Stand Your Ground in defense. That pales in comparison, though, to the fact that while more black teens will murdered and more blacks put in jail for defending themselves, at least more money will flow into the coffers of the NAACP and the members of the Congressional Black Caucus will have a better chance of reelection. It's obscene
Number three — and this is a long-term project: We need to spend some time in thinking about how do we bolster and reinforce our African-American boys? And this is something that Michelle and I talk a lot about. There are a lot of kids out there who need help who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement. And is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares about them and values them and is willing to invest in them?
This is the only redeeming part of Obama's remarks. It is the thousand dollar question. It is unfortunate that Obama only gets to it after reinforcing all of the canards of the racial grievance industry. And because of that, it is why nothing will happen under Obama's watch to change the dynamic in the black community. That is the real tragedy of what will be President Obama's legacy.
You know, I’m not naive about the prospects of some brand-new federal program. I’m not sure that that’s what we’re talking about here. But I do recognize that as president, I’ve got some convening power.
And there are a lot of good programs that are being done across the country on this front. And for us to be able to gather together business leaders and local elected officials and clergy and celebrities and athletes and figure out how are we doing a better job helping young African-American men feel that they’re a full part of this society and that — and that they’ve got pathways and avenues to succeed — you know, I think that would be a pretty good outcome from what was obviously a tragic situation. And we’re going to spend some time working on that and thinking about that.
And then finally, I think it’s going to be important for all of us to do some soul-searching. You know, there have been talk about should we convene a conversation on race. I haven’t seen that be particularly productive when politicians try to organize conversations. They end up being stilted and politicized, and folks are locked into the positions they already have.
On the other hand, in families and churches and workplaces, there’s a possibility that people are a little bit more honest, and at least you ask yourself your own questions about, am I wringing as much bias out of myself as I can; am I judging people, as much as I can, based on not the color of their skin but the content of their character? That would, I think, be an appropriate exercise in the wake of this tragedy.
And let me just leave you with — with a final thought, that as difficult and challenging as this whole episode has been for a lot of people, I don’t want us to lose sight that things are getting better. Each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes when it comes to race. I doesn’t mean that we’re in a postracial society. It doesn’t mean that racism is eliminated. But you know, when I talk to Malia and Sasha and I listen to their friends and I see them interact, they’re better than we are. They’re better than we were on these issues. And that’s true in every community that I’ve visited all across the country.
And so, you know, we have to be vigilant and we have to work on these issues, and those of us in authority should be doing everything we can to encourage the better angels of our nature as opposed to using these episodes to heighten divisions. But we should also have confidence that kids these days I think have more sense than we did back then, and certainly more than our parents did or our grandparents did, and that along this long, difficult journey, you know, we’re becoming a more perfect union — not a perfect union, but a more perfect union.
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