Iron Chef Olorinus wrote:
varusword75 wrote:
Does Obama have a responsibility to address race riots in major metropolitan areas? And if so what should he say?
Do you even watch TV news? I am not sure what it is like on America, but the Prime minister... I can't ever once remember talking about any specific crime, unless maybe it was a bill inspired by a particular case, but even thinking on it I can only remember provicial politians doing things like that.
Obama has injected himself into local issues dealing with race before. It's not unreasonable to argue that if this were crowds of dozens of white people attacking black people, that this would be a much bigger story and that he would likely have stepped up to a podium to make some statement about it. There is quite a bit of double standard, not just in our politics, but also in our media, when it comes to race issues.
I'm not placing the same weight on this that Varus does. However, it is pretty definite that were the skin colors of the people involved reversed, large numbers of very vocal and high profile people would be speaking out about it. I don't agree that we should make huge deals about this in any direction, but lots of people do already. Varus' reaction is no different and no worse than Jackson or Sharpton when/if conditions are reversed.