Bill O'Reilly Does Exactly The Thing President Obama Warned Against
In President Obama's speech Tuesday, he urged people to set aside their pre-programmed talking points, their cynicism, and their tendency to slip right back into divisive ways, but to instead listen to people. It was a speech full of sorrow, but also hope infused with his unshakeable belief in people.
The president directly confronted systemic racism, too. From his speech:
And so when African-Americans from all walks of life, from different communities across the country, voice a growing despair over what they perceive to be unequal treatment, when study after study shows that whites and people of color experience the criminal justice system differently. So that if you’re black, you’re more likely to be pulled over or searched or arrested; more likely to get longer sentences; more likely to get the death penalty for the same crime. When mothers and fathers raised their kids right, and have the talk about how to respond if stopped by a police officer — yes, sir; no, sir — but still fear that something terrible may happen when their child walks out the door; still fear that kids being stupid and not quite doing things right might end in tragedy.
When all this takes place, more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid.