03 July, 2016

The Obama Years: Views On A Presidency, Across America : NPR

The Obama Years: Views On A Presidency, Across America : NPR:

"We have concerns with the way that the president's been dividing the country," says Czarzasty, who's white. "In any profession you're going to have good and bad. ... It's made our job harder for the president with his lack of support."
Kwame Rose had virtually the opposite assessment. He didn't find Obama to be supportive of protesters. Rose was a prominent African-American protester in Baltimore in 2015, amid the unrest after the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who died after being placed in a police van. President Obama said most protesters were peaceful, but also criticized "criminals and thugs" who looted a number of stores.
"You don't know the story behind each one of those individuals," Rose says, insisting that demonstrators were simply trying to survive. "I don't think President Obama at that moment looked inside the mirror and saw that there were people who looked like him who weren't as fortunate as he was. And he chastised them."


'via Blog this'