{"id":38849,"date":"2014-12-14T17:43:56","date_gmt":"2014-12-14T17:43:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=38849"},"modified":"2014-12-14T17:43:56","modified_gmt":"2014-12-14T17:43:56","slug":"mr-obama-considers-the-nationwide-protests-from-three-points-of-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=38849","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Obama Considers the Nationwide Protests From Three Points of View"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mr. Obama Considers the Nationwide Protests From Three Points of View<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>
\n2014-12-12<\/p>\n

Brent Staples<\/strong><\/a>, Editorial Writer<\/p>\n

Barack Obama<\/a> understood when he sought the presidency that a black candidate who spoke candidly about racism would never attract enough white support to win. He avoided using race as a platform for grievance, kept his distance from people who did and presented his life and career as an example of racial progress.<\/p>\n

His optimism appealed to white voters; it asked nothing of them and implied a hopeful end to the racial hostilities that have dogged the country since its founding. But the easy-listening approach to racism was received skeptically by young African-Americans who live in communities that bear the brunt of unemployment, economic segregation and police harassment.<\/p>\n

Anger over the police problem coalesced into a national movement after a grand jury in St. Louis County, Mo., declined to indict the white police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown<\/a>, an unarmed black teenager, and a grand jury in New York took the same stance on the white officer who applied the chokehold that killed Eric Garner<\/a>, who was also black and also unarmed.<\/p>\n

As the demonstrations spread, Mr. Obama must have recognized that it would be wise to make contact with the young leaders of this movement.<\/p>\n

When he met with them last week at the White House, he had three roles to play: as the president of the United States, who must refrain from putting his thumb on the scales of justice in cases like the ones that have sparked the recent demonstrations; as an African-American man who knows the experience of being presumed a criminal by police officers who once harassed him because of his skin color; and as a former community organizer who recognizes that the demonstrations could focus the country\u2019s attention on abusive police practices that have long been a national problem…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mr. Obama Considers the Nationwide Protests From Three Points of View The New York Times 2014-12-12 Brent Staples, Editorial Writer Barack Obama understood when he sought the presidency that a black candidate who spoke candidly about racism would never attract enough white support to win. He avoided using race as a platform for grievance, kept […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,1467,8,20],"tags":[1804,17765,773,2711,596,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-38849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-law","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-brent-staples","tag-ferguson","tag-missouri","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}