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Earlier this week, President Obama sat down for an interview on Black Entertainment Television. The primary focus of the interview was the issue broadly defined as Black Lives Matter, the protests and the social movement inspired by, among other related events, the decision by the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, not to indict the police officer who killed Michael Brown, and a similar decision by the grand jury in Staten Island, New York, not to indict the officer who killed Eric Garner.
BET News’ Jeff Johnson essentially gave the president the opportunity to explain his thinking and his response, as well as his broader view on the struggle for racial equality and equal justice, of which the Black Lives Matter movement is certainly a part. I want to focus here on how Barack Obama spoke about that struggle, one that stretches back not only decades but centuries:
This isn’t going to be solved overnight. This is something that is deeply rooted in our society, it’s deeply rooted in our history. But the two things that are going to allow us to solve it: Number one is the understanding that we have made progress. And so, it’s important to recognize that, as painful as these incidents are, we can’t equate what’s happening now to what was happening fifty years ago. And if you talk to your parents, grandparents, uncles, they’ll tell you that things are better. Not good, in some cases, but better.
