Obama appeals for ‘a new heart’ against hatred
President Barack Obama came to Dallas on Tuesday to praise the lives and sacrifices of five police officers ambushed and killed by a gunman filled with racial hatred.
He memorialized the officers, citing their individual stories and calling them professionals who, in their police work, “shared a commitment to something larger than themselves.”
But Obama also came to appeal for racial healing. He balanced praise of the five dead heroes, Dallas police and law enforcement in general with a plea for “a new heart” in America.
“With an open heart,” he said, “we can worry less about which side has been wronged, and worry more about joining sides to do right.”
Obama has focused attention on last week’s killing of two black men at the hands of police, Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La., and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn. On Tuesday, he focused on the bigger picture.
“We know that the overwhelming majority of police officers do an incredibly hard and dangerous job fairly and professionally,” he said during a service at the Meyerson Symphony Center. “When anyone, no matter how good their intentions may be, paints all police as biased, or bigoted, we undermine those officers that we depend on for our safety.”
But racial mistrust lingers as a part of that bigger picture, and Obama has immersed himself in an effort to repair it.
On Monday, he and Vice President Joe Biden met with law enforcement leaders from across the nation to hear what the White House referred to as “ideas on best practices for building trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve.”
Also on Monday, the president posted an invitation on Facebook for Americans to submit their thoughts on the same topic and announcing a “conversation at the White House” Wednesday to “honor the incredible courage and service of our police officers — and also recognize the racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.”
He jump-started that flow of ideas at the memorial service in Dallas, generating loud applause with an offering that he credited to Police Chief David O. Brown: “We ask the police to do too much and we ask too little of ourselves.”
The nation doesn’t do enough to invest in decent schools, allows poverty to fester and doesn’t properly fund drug treatment and mental health programs, he said.
We send police to work where those problems are worst, he said. “And then we feign surprise when periodically the tensions boil over.”
Obama is trying hard to further the conversation. He deserves support.
This story was originally published July 12, 2016 at 6:48 PM with the headline "Obama appeals for ‘a new heart’ against hatred."