Obama's 'defund the police' comments showcase a radical cynicism

Once, Barack Obama was known for promoting hope and change. Now he is displaying a startling, even radical, cynicism about the commitment of White Americans to racial justice.On the Snapchat political program “Good Luck America,” Obama dismissed “defund the police” as a “snappy slogan.” Obama’s concern was tactical: “You lost a big audience the minute you say it, which makes it a lot less likely that you’re actually going to get the changes you want done.” That was a quintessential Obama move, endorsing comity over confrontation. But in an interview with CNN’s April Ryan, the former president went all “Fear of a Black Planet,” revealing a remarkably hard-edge assessment of White anxiety.The relationship between Black people and police is “always a hot topic,” Obama observed, because it “unearths or excavates or escalates fears within the White population that somehow the African American community is going to get out of control in some way or is not respecting authority.” Wow. This is a pretty remarkable view of “the White population” coming from the man who made his big debut on the public stage proclaiming that “there’s not a Black America and a White America.” Maybe four years of President Trump can…
Read More