The recent wave of nationwide protests notwithstanding, President Barack Obama believes America is “less racially divided” now than it was six years ago when he took office six years ago as the first-ever African-American President.
In an interview to NPR News, a short excerpt of which was released on Saturday, Obama expressed the view that low morale around race relations was something exaggerated by the national conversation around recent violence and not an accurate reflection of the state of affairs around the country.
When asked pointedly if America is more racially divided now than it was in 2008, Obama commented: “No, I actually think that it’s probably in its day-to-day interactions less racially divided.”
Obama’s interview, which is to air on Monday, comes at a time when his comments on the highly-sensitive subject of race are being closely watched and dissected on political and community lines.
In an earlier interview to Black Entertainment Television, Obama sought to make a similar point, commenting: “It’s important to recognise that as painful as these incidents are, we can’t equate what is happening now to what happened 50 years ago. If you talk to your parents, your grandparents, they’ll tell you things are better. Not good, in some cases, but better.”
If the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of white police officers triggered the first major wave of racial protests of the Obama presidency, the gunning down of two New York officers by a black man a week ago appears to have queered the pitch.
On Saturday, almost the entire New York Police force turned up for the funeral of one of the two slain officers. “This time, the solemn memorial turned into a kind of counterprotest,” The Washington Post wrote.
Several hundred officers watching the services from outside a city church turned their backs when Mayor Bill de Blasio spoke. A Democrat, de Blasio, has had an uneasy relationship with the police for allegedly contributing to the mood of mistrust against the police.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll, released on Sunday, found wide divergence in perceptions about the treatment of blacks and other minorities under the US criminal justice system as compared to the whites. Only 10 per cent of the blacks — as against 52 per cent of the whites — believed that the system is delivering equal treatment.