“When incidents like these occur, there’s a big chunk of our fellow citizens that feels as if because of the color of their skin, they are not being treated the same—and that hurts,” Obama said, at roughly 12:30 a.m. local time. “And that should trouble all of us. This is not just a black issue. It’s not just a Hispanic issue. This is an American issue that we should all care about.”
The public was still grappling with
reports out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana—where police shot and killed 37-year-old Alton Sterling early Tuesday morning—when news broke that another, similar shooting
had occurred elsewhere Wednesday night. Philando Castile
was shot and killed after being pulled over in a traffic stop near St. Paul, Minnesota. He was 32.
Obama noted that he and the first lady share the “anger, frustration, and grief that so many Americans are feeling.”
Obama cannot comment on the particulars of each case. But he hasn’t hesitated to characterize the shootings as emblematic of a systemic problem. “These fatal shootings are not isolated incidents,” the president wrote in his statement. Rather:
They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal-justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve.
To admit we’ve got a serious problem in no way contradicts our respect and appreciation for the vast majority of police officers who put their lives on the line to protect us every single day. It is to say that, as a nation, we can and must do better to institute the best practices that reduce the appearance or reality of racial bias in law enforcement.