Obama: Black Lives Matter Is Not 'Reverse Racism'

​President Barack Obama defended Black Lives Matter on Thursday afternoon, at a moment when various conservative and right-wing politicians and police officers are openly attacking the grassroots social movement

“I think the reason that the organizers used the phrase “Black Lives Matter” was not because they were suggesting nobody else’s lives matter,” he said. “What they were suggesting was, there is a specific problem that is happening in the African-American community that’s not happening in other communities. And that is a legitimate issue that we’ve got to address.”

He referred to the controversy raised by various groups that claimed the movement fighting police brutality was just “reverse racism.”

White politicians who say "all lives matter" is similar to the founding fathers saying "all men were created equal" while they had slaves.

— Brotha B (@BlakeDontCrack) September 17, 2015

“(The controversy) started being lifted up as ‘these folks are opposed to police, and they’re opposed to cops, and all lives matter.’ So the notion was somehow saying Black Lives Matter was reverse racism, or suggesting other people’s lives didn’t matter or police officers’ lives didn’t matter,” he said.

“I think everybody understands all lives matter. Everybody wants strong, effective law enforcement. Everybody wants their kids to be safe when they’re walking to school. Nobody wants to see police officers, who are doing their jobs fairly, hurt,” he continued. However, he also highlighted the importance of going beyond police brutality, urging the nation to properly address the issues of social and economic inequalities, like poverty and unemployment in the U.S. society.

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"We can't put the entire onus of the problem on law enforcement," he said. "I think there's been a healthy debate about police-community relations, and some of the episodes we've seen across the country. But we as a society, if we're not investing in opportunities for poorer kids, and then we expect police and and prosecutors to keep them out of sight and out of mind, that's a failed strategy."

Many reports and studies have demonstrated how policy brutality disproportionately impacts the USA’s historically marginalized Black communities than others in the country. The United States government, as well as the society at large, has a long track record of criminalizing and targeting Black communities for openly white supremacist discrimination and violence.

According to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, for instance, the rate of police killings “for younger African Americans remain 4.5 times higher, and for older African Americans 1.7 times higher, than for other races and ages.” Black people, who represent only 13 percent of the total U.S. population, are represented at double the rates of others when it comes to extrajudicial police killings.

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