Holder confronts racial issues in address as White House puts discrimination at the fore

[applegrove]

Holder confronts racial issues in address as White House puts discrimination at the fore

By Scott Wilson and Sari Horwitz at the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/holder-confronting-issue-of-race-once-more-says-subtle-threats-to-equality-cut-deeper/2014/05/17/66e63482-dd57-11e3-b745-87d39690c5c0_story.html?hpid=z1

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Obama has rarely — and reluctantly — involved himself directly in national moments of racial debate. His first foray as president turned into a politically awkward one when, in response to a reporter’s question, Obama said Cambridge, Mass., police “acted stupidly” in arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., head of the university’s W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research, at his home.

He later brought Gates and the arresting officer together at the White House for beer and conversation. But his support among white males, which dipped sharply at the time, has never fully recovered.

Last year, Obama directly addressed the raw feelings of African Americans after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a member of a Florida neighborhood watch group, in the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012.

He urged the country to “do some soul-searching” after the verdict, adding that “it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.”



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