Obama calls for patience in struggle against racism
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama, responding to the wave of protests and racial tensions across the country in recent weeks, appealed for patience and persistence in solving what he described as an issue “that is deeply rooted in our society … our history.”
“When you’re dealing with something as deeply rooted as racism or bias in any society, you got to have vigilance, but you have to recognize that it’s going to take some time,” Obama said in an interview to be aired this evening on BET Networks. “You just have to be steady so you don’t give up when we don’t get all the way there,” he said in a short video clip of the interview released Sunday.
Obama has come under increasing pressure to speak out after a grand jury declined last week to indict New York police Officer Daniel Pantoleo in the death of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who was being arrested on suspicion of illegally selling loose cigarettes. The Staten Island grand jury’s decision came little more than a week after a St. Louis County grand jury failed to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police Officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old whose death prompted unrest.
The debate took on added intensity Sunday as Garner’s widow, Esaw Garner, said on national television that her husband was “murdered unjustly.”
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Garner said she and her husband faced repeated harassment from police before that July day when he died on a street in Staten Island, moments after Pantoleo put him in an apparent chokehold, a scene captured on video.
“The police knew him by name,” Garner said of her husband, a large man who had asthma. “They harassed us, they said things to us. … I would just say, ‘Eric, just keep walking, don’t respond. Don’t give them a reason to do anything to you.’ ”
She added that she feared for the safety of her two sons. “I’m so afraid of what could happen to them in the street by the police.”
Garner’s death is being investigated by the New York Police Department and separately by federal authorities for possible civil rights violations. New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said Sunday that the investigation will take three to four months.