Obama, Holder Could Have Protected Ferguson

 

IBDEditorials.com

Leadership: In ways possible for no one else, a black president and a black attorney general could have quelled the latest violence in Ferguson, Mo. Instead, they invited mayhem.

Clay Risen, author of "A Nation in Flames: America in the Wake of the King Assassination," wrote in Smithsonian magazine that the 1968 Martin Luther King riots forced President Johnson to realize "he had naively hoped that a massive assault of federal spending would relieve conditions in the ghetto overnight."

"When 125 cities erupted over one weekend, he had to confront the fact that nothing he had done seemed to have had an effect."

Still, imagine if it had been a black president, once a state senator from Chicago's South Side, who had said:

"I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has struck Dr. King, who lived by nonviolence."

LBJ was soon forced to admit he was "not getting through." Regrettably, some of what President Obama said after a grand jury declined to indict the white police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown did get through.

Obama called anger "an understandable reaction" and warned police not to work "against the community." This supposed uniter said, "A deep distrust exists between law enforcement and communities of color. Some of this is the result of the legacy of racial discrimination in this country."

Calling for "much-needed criminal justice reform," Obama said, "Communities of color aren't just making these problems up," "The law too often feels as if it is being applied in discriminatory fashion" and "These are real issues, and we have to lift them up and not deny them or try to tamp them down."

According to the president, "Those who are only interested in focusing on the violence and just want the problem to go away need to recognize that we do have work to do here, and we shouldn't try to paper it over."

Using his statement to promote discredited liberal policies dilutes its accompanying admonitions against "throwing bottles" and "smashing car windows," because he just told those committing the "blind violence" LBJ condemned that their rioting is actually rational — their anger is "an understandable reaction."

America's first black attorney general, Eric Holder, meanwhile mulls federal charges against officer Darren Wilson, in spite of the multiracial grand jury's decision.

What could Obama and Holder have done as the first black president and attorney general to protect lives and livelihoods, mostly black? Travelled to Ferguson and told one and all to respect a lawful grand jury finding.

The follow-up could have been the words of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who said, "The first minute you break a window, you are put in handcuffs" — whatever your race.