{"id":41509,"date":"2015-06-21T03:17:27","date_gmt":"2015-06-21T03:17:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41509"},"modified":"2015-06-21T20:28:15","modified_gmt":"2015-06-21T20:28:15","slug":"an-open-letter-to-president-obama-this-is-a-moral-emergency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41509","title":{"rendered":"An open letter to President Obama: This is a moral emergency"},"content":{"rendered":"

An open letter to President Obama: This is a moral emergency<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Jewish Journal<\/a>
\n2015-06-19<\/p>\n

Todd Samuel Presner<\/a><\/strong>, Professor and Director, Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies
\nUniversity of California, Los Angeles<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear President Barack Obama<\/a>,<\/p>\n

I appreciate your comments<\/a> on the \u201cheartache and the sadness and the anger\u201d that many Americans are feeling after the shooting of nine African-American congregants at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church<\/a>. You pointed out that \u201cthis type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries,\u201d and you argued, as you have before, for stricter gun control laws. I agree. After the torture and death of Freddie Gray<\/a>, you said that we \u2013 as a nation \u2013 \u201chave some soul-searching to do<\/a>\u201d and that race-based police violence was not something new. Indeed, it is not.<\/em> After the shooting death of Trayvon Martin<\/a>, you said that Trayvon could have been you \u201c35 years ago<\/a>,\u201d and you pointed out the ways our criminal justice system disproportionately targets and imprisons African American men. You wondered: \u201cBut beyond protests or vigils, the question is, are there some concrete things that we might be able to do?\u201d\u00a0 After the strangulation of Eric Garner<\/a>, you said that \u201cthis is not just a black problem or a brown problem. This is an American problem.<\/a>\u201d You are absolutely right. And after the death of Michael Brown<\/a>, you said \u201cwe should comfort each other and talk with one another in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.<\/a>\u201d You called for prayers, peace, and soul-searching. But with all due respect President Obama, none of this is enough. We \u2013 all Americans \u2013 have to call this violence out for what it really is: It is racism.<\/strong> And racism perpetuated and legitimized by the persistent failure of Americans to confront this most urgent, most pernicious, and most vile moral and existential catastrophe at the core of our nation…<\/p>\n

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

An open letter to President Obama: This is a moral emergency Jewish Journal 2015-06-19 Todd Samuel Presner, Professor and Director, Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies University of California, Los Angeles Dear President Barack Obama, I appreciate your comments on the \u201cheartache and the sadness and the anger\u201d that many Americans are feeling after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,1467,8,26,20],"tags":[20291,20290,20289,20288],"class_list":["post-41509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-law","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-jewish-journal","tag-todd-presner","tag-todd-s-presner","tag-todd-samuel-presner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41509","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=41509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}