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Are Police Killings Of Black Folks, Obama’s Greatest Challenge?

By Askia Muhammad -Senior Editor- | Last updated: Jul 19, 2016 - 2:10:18 PM

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WASHINGTON—The nation’s collective tears had barely dried from the senseless killings by a police officer of Philando Castile, a Black man in Falcon Heights, Minn. on July 6; when Alton Sterling, a Black man was brutally killed by White police officers in Baton Rouge, La. on July 8; then five White and Latino Dallas police officers were killed on July 11 in what authorities allege was a revenge killing by Black Army veteran Micah Johnson. Then the streets ran red with blood again in Baton Rouge on July 17 when decorated Marine Corps veteran Gavin Long, dressed in all-black clothing allegedly ambushed and killed two police officers and a sheriff’s deputy.

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President Barack Obama talks with Mick McHale, President of the National Association of Police Organizations, after meeting with activists, civil rights, faith, law enforcement and elected leaders on building community trust, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building of the White House, July 13. In the background, Black Lives Matter activist Mica Grimm hugs Col. Michael D. Edmonson, Superintendent of Police, Louisiana State Police. Photo: Official White House Photo/Pete Souza

The blood mingled with tears, the grief dissolved into phone calls from President Barack Obama to the relatives of the dead, both Black and blue; and to the mayors and police chiefs grappling with what is becoming the greatest challenge to the legacy of this first Black president—bridging what appears to be an insurmountable racial divide.

“We have our divisions, and they are not new,” the President said after the cop killings in Baton Rouge. “Around-the-clock news cycles and social media sometimes amplify these divisions.” The President had just spoken with Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards and Baton Rouge Mayor Kip Holden to hear the latest on their investigation there. His words and the pain, shock, and fear many people were feeling, all but eclipsed an emotional, televised town hall meeting Mr. Obama held with family members of victims and police authorities from around the nation less than a week before.

But the words of slain Baton Rouge police officer Montrell Jackson, a 32-year-old father of an infant son, posted to his Facebook page after the Dallas shootings, described the complex challenges facing Black people—those who wear the uniform of law enforcement, and those who are subject to the authority of those in uniform. “These last three days have tested me to the core,” an emotional Officer Jackson wrote.

“I love this city, but I wonder if this city loves me. In uniform, I get nasty hateful looks, and out of uniform some consider me a threat,” said Mr. Jackson, who had served on the Baton Rouge police force for 10 years. Just days before he was struck down in the line of duty, Officer Jackson described himself as “tired physically and emotionally.” Then he pleaded: “These are trying times. Please don’t let hate infect your heart.”

Black police officers around the county echoed the sentiments: often scorned by residents they are sworn to protect while on the job, they are often fearful for their own safety when not in uniform. Indeed, a White Prince George’s County, Maryland police officer who shot Black undercover detective Jacai Colson to death when Officer Colson responded to defend his fellow officers who’d been ambushed at a police station on March 13; that cop will not face charges. A grand jury failed to indict him, declaring the so-called “friendly fire” shooting an accident.

For the President, caught between the hopes and expectations of Blacks who want him to champion their cause, and the law enforcement community which he leads along with Attorney General Loretta Lynch—who is also Black—which expects him to speak forcefully in defense of their role maintaining “law and order,” Mr. Obama’s challenges grow more complex with each passing day.

It’s as if Mr. Obama’s presidency can literally be measured through similar statements, and memorial speeches he has delivered in the wake of tragic massacres—from Fort Hood (in 2009) to the Tucson, Ariz. theater shooting (in 2011), to the Newtown, Conn. school massacre (in 2012), to the Charleston, S.C. church massacre (in 2015).

When the President accepted his electoral victory in November 2008 in Chicago, he told Americans—echoing Dr. Martin Luther King’s words on the last night of his life—“We may not get there in one year or even in one term,” but “I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight” and “I promise you, we, as a people, will get there.” In light of the rapid-fire tragedies of the last few weeks, those words seem like they come from the Jurassic age.

In the wake of Mr. Obama’s now antiquated town hall that aired July 14, Republican politicians and some police chiefs have castigated the President and blamed the Black Lives Matter movement—which the President has never co-signed—for the revenge attacks against police, as if the Constitutional right of Black victims to peacefully seek redress for the illegal and immoral behavior visited on them by out-of-control police was wrong; as though the criminal acts committed “under color of law” by those who wear badges is permissible.

“President Obama just had a news conference,” GOP Presidential nominee Donald Trump Tweeted after the latest tragedy, “but he doesn’t have a clue. Our country is a divided crime scene, and it will only get worse.”

Mr. Obama maintained a stoic demeanor. “It is so important that everyone—regardless of race or political party or profession, regardless of what organizations you are a part of—everyone right now focus on words and actions that can unite this country rather than divide it further. We don’t need inflammatory rhetoric. We don’t need careless accusations thrown around to score political points or to advance an agenda. We need to temper our words and open our hearts—all of us,” he said.

“We need the kind of efforts we saw this week in meetings between community leaders and police—some of which I participated in—where I saw people of good will pledge to work together to reduce violence throughout all of our communities.”

But the root of the conflict between police and the Black community literally date back to the days when this republic was founded, according to many historians who point out that police forces literally evolved out of the Para-legal posses which formed to capture, punish and return runaway slaves to their masters, and to intimidate other enslaved persons to not seek freedom.

“Well, we should not see these events as terribly surprising,” Dr. Gerald Horne, Professor of history and African American studies told “Democracy Now!”

“First of all, you have a society that, as President Obama (has) noted, is awash in weapons. Second of all, we have unresolved issues of racism and inadequate discussions about the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow that helps to contribute to a situation where Black people are perceived as criminals by the police authorities, which inevitably leads to their slaughter, as you saw in Louisiana and in Minnesota most recently.

“You need to understand that the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which is the calling card for the gun lobby and Washington, D.C., has everything to do with slavery,” Dr. Horne continued. “When the Second Amendment speaks of militias and speaks also of guns, they’re expressing a fear of slave revolts. The Second Amendment did not apply to enslaved Africans. The Second Amendment did not apply to the indigenous population. In fact, it could be considered a capital offense to sell weapons to the Native American population since the European settlers were seeking to take their land.

“Likewise, with regard to the Reconstruction era, post 1865, one of the single reasons that the Ku Klux Klan was organized was precisely to disarm newly freed enslaved Africans. That is to say that the Second Amendment did not necessarily apply to Black people in the post-Civil War era. And in fact, their Second Amendment rights were basically eliminated.

“Similarly, if you fast-forward to the 1960’s, even the NRA and the gun lobby sought to push for gun reform after the specter of the Black Panther Party marching to the California legislature with arms in hand helped to outrage and inflame political sentiment, including the political sentiment of then Governor Ronald Wilson Reagan of the state of California. So, you cannot disconnect the history of the Second Amendment from the history of racism and white supremacy,” Dr. Horne explained.

Ever optimistic, President Obama sought vainly to offer words of hope and encouragement, after the ambush of the Baton Rouge police officers. “My fellow Americans, only we can prove, through words and through deeds, that we will not be divided. And we’re going to have to keep on doing it ‘again and again and again.’

“That’s how this country gets united.  That’s how we bring people of good will together. Only we can prove that we have the grace and the character and the common humanity to end this kind of senseless violence, to reduce fear and mistrust within the American family, to set an example for our children.”