Maynard Institute archives

“No Room for Error” in Face Time With Obama

by richard0770

5 Question President En Route to Selma Anniversary

A “Deep-Dive” Inside Look at NBC News Drama

Randy Archibold Named N.Y. Times Deputy Sports Editor

“Floored” Pam Oliver Signs Multi-Year Contract With Fox

Ferrer Heads Project on Misinformation About Hispanics

St. Louis Paper: Disband Area’s Municipal Courts

Ethiopia Using Spying Tools Against Journalists in U.S.

Short Takes

Transcript of President’s Conversation With Black Journalists

5 Question President En Route to Selma Anniversary

“I couldn’t sleep for s–t,” Rembert Browne wrote Monday for grantland.com.

“Friday night had turned into Saturday morning, and I was staring at the ceiling in a hotel room in Washington, D.C., only blocks from the White House, recovering from my third hot shower of the night. The fever that had developed from an 11-hour Amtrak trip down the East Coast a day earlier hadn’t left my body, and the only way I knew how to deal with the chills was to take hot showers and hope for the best.

“But that wasn’t the real reason for my insomnia and this body-zapping panic: I would be speaking to the president of the United States of America in 10 hours. On Air Force One. Before his speech in Selma, Alabama, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the march that took place on what became known as Bloody Sunday.

“On Monday, I had received an email from the White House offering ‘a potential opportunity with President Obama in the very near future.’ The opportunity was to be a part of a roundtable of five journalists who would have 30 minutes to talk with the president.

“As the week progressed, however, the stakes grew. With the date inching closer, the details became clearer. On Friday, the final email:

“Following brief remarks at the top of the roundtable, the President will take a question from each participant.

“As in one question. Zero room for error. My editor’s response was as blunt as it was true: ‘Better make it count.’ . . . “

Browne asked his question, as did the other black journalists on Air Force One: April D. Ryan of American Urban Radio Networks; Zerlina Maxwell, a freelancer for such publications as Essence magazine; Charles M. Blow of the New York Times; and DeWayne Wickham of USA Today and Morgan State University’s School of Global Journalism and Communication, where he is dean.

Browne asked, “Mr. President, so since you were — since I was in college, which is when you were elected, I’ve watched everything you’ve had to go through — jumping through hoops, going over hurdles, everything. And there’s been a common notion amongst my peers — peers who were very interested in getting into politics, being politicians, even that — this idea of if Barack Obama can’t say or do what we think he wants to say or do as president, then could any of us ever do that if we get into politics, be it about Ferguson, about gay rights — any of these things where we feel we know what he wants to say, but he can’t really do it at that moment.

“Is that a sentiment that you are commonly aware of? And does it at all inform kind of how you want to wrap up your presidency? And I guess if you were trying to advise someone in this climate that wanted to make some change or have an immediate impact, would you advise them into getting into politics?”

Obama’s answer appears in the transcript, below.

The journalists included the atmospherics of the experience in writing about their weekend.

Ryan wrote on her blog, “Each of the five black journalists got one question with long answers. After the interview, all the reporters aboard Air Force One helicoptered out of Montgomery, Alabama and then traveled by motorcade to Selma. One of the most moving moments on the ride over was seeing the spontaneous crowds gathering on the sides of the street waving at the motorcade and then later, driving over the Edmund Pettus Bridge and seeing the crowds before us who were waiting to hear from President Obama. . . .”

Ryan also wrote, “I asked the first question about his presidential legacy possibly becoming a marker as a new era in civil rights being called Post-Obama. . . .”

Maxwell wondered about tensions between communities of color and law enforcement.

She wrote for essence.com: “Fifty years ago my late grandfather Reverend Elmer Williams marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and this weekend I went to Selma with America’s President . . .”

Browne wrote, “In our part of the cabin sat five black journalists, preparing to talk to a black president — five black journalists that were greeted by the black senior adviser to the president, Valerie Jarrett, and black national security adviser, Susan Rice, all headed to the very black Selma, Alabama. This wasn’t normal.

“Yes, we each had our jobs to do when that moment finally presented itself with the president. But until then, there was time to just enjoy the occasion. We learned about each other, cracking jokes and telling stories. Some of us ran off the plane to take pictures of the First Family’s arrival. Others complained about Air Force One not having a Selma bootleg. Collectively, we shook our heads as we settled on the James Brown biopic Get on Up as our in-flight film. . . .”

Wickham wrote Sunday for USA Today, “I made a surprising discovery: the real Barack Obama.

“Six years into his presidency, after many attempts to dissect — and diagnose — him, I finally found him. And, ironically, he’s actually the leader he told me he’d be the first time we met on the presidential campaign trail.

“. . . . His job, Obama said, as Air Force One was about to touch down in Alabama, has been ‘to build (an interracial) coalition of like-minded people who care about the same issues’ he cares about.

“That, frankly, is the same world view Barack Obama revealed to me eight years ago — and shared with the thousands of people who showed up in Selma for his historic address. . . .”

Blow asked, “So in 2007 you spoke in Selma. You talked about the Moses generation, which is the civil rights generation, and the Joshua generation . . . Eight years on, how do you register the change, if any, in the Joshua generation and how they are progressing or not? And what do you view your role in that is or is not? And what do you think your legacy will be for that?”

Rather than write about his interview in his column Sunday for the Times, Blow cited Obama’s Saturday speech, which drew praise even from hard-boiled journalists. “The president had to bend the past around so it pointed toward the future. To a large degree, he accomplished that goal. The speech was emotional and evocative. People cheered. Some cried.

“And yet there seemed to me something else in the air: a lingering — or gathering — sense of sadness, a frustration born out of perpetual incompletion, an anger engendered by the threat of regression, a pessimism about a present and future riven by worsening racial understanding and interplay. . . . “

A “Deep-Dive” Inside Look at NBC News Drama

“In case you missed it over the weekend, New York Magazine ran a truly fascinating deep-dive by Gabriel Sherman looking at NBC News’ extensive woes,” Andrew Kirell wrote Monday for Mediaite.

“It’s well worth your read, especially for the stunning amount of detail. . . . “

Past and current journalists of color at NBC News play minor roles in the saga. They are Natalie Morales and Tamron Hall of “Today”; Antoine Sanfuentes, then senior vice president; and Lester Holt, weekend anchor who is substituting for the suspended Brian Williams, anchor and managing editor of “NBC Nightly News.” Matt Lauer, host of “Today,” is portrayed as having “never fully recovered his reputation” after Ann Curry was dumped from the “Today” show in 2013.

Sherman writes about Deborah Turness, imported from Britain to become president of NBC News in 2013. “Fixing Today was by far the most complicated of Turness’s projects. Senior producers openly wondered whether the current anchors — Lauer, Savannah Guthrie, Natalie Morales, and Al Roker — could ever develop enough on-set chemistry to catch GMA [ABC’s “Good Morning America”].”

Sherman also wrote, “Multiple sources told me that former NBC investigative reporters Michael Isikoff and Lisa Myers battled with Williams over stories” that were hard-hitting and put the Obama administration in an unfavorable light. Williams termed those stories “divisive,” according to Sherman’s piece.

“According to a source, Myers wrote a series of scathing memos to then-NBC senior vice-president Antoine Sanfuentes documenting how Williams suppressed her stories. — Myers and Isikoff eventually left the network (and both declined to comment).” The story does not say what action Sanfuentes took; he declined a request from Journal-isms to comment.

Sherman also wrote, “Last March, NBC poached Josh Elliott from GMA, which many producers interpreted as an effort to groom a successor to Lauer. A logical introduction would be to have Elliott join the cast as a newsreader — Natalie Morales’s position. Turness reportedly had her doubts about Morales in that role anyway. (Morales was furious when, months earlier, Turness told her she needed more personality on the air. ‘I want more Natalie,’ she said.) But Lauer didn’t want Elliott to replace Morales. . . .”

Sherman continues at another point, “The situation came to a head in September [2014]. Today’s ratings had stalled over the summer. In something of a last-ditch effort, [News chair Patricia] Fili-Krushel and Turness tapped a brash, 38-year-old ESPN producer named Jamie Horowitz to devise a turnaround plan. But Horowitz had a cocky style and a big mouth, and he immediately set the staff on edge. According to one senior Today staffer, he would play a game of Survivor with producers. ‘If you’re on an island and you could keep three senior producers, whom would you keep?’

“According to another source, Horowitz was stoking unrest among the cast. ‘He told Tamron Hall she had to watch her back because Natalie was trashing her. But then he told Natalie that Tamron was trashing her.’ (Horowitz declined to comment.) . . .”

“Horowitz developed a plan to replace Morales and Hall with ESPN sportscaster Samantha Ponder and Entertainment Tonight correspondent Brooke Anderson. But after NBC’s PR shop got a call from a reporter at Us Weekly, who claimed Horowitz had just fired Morales and [Willie] Geist, Turness called Horowitz to her office and fired him after just 10 weeks.

“NBC Universal reached into its past to chart a new path forward on Friday, hiring Andrew Lack to lead its news division after a series of missteps that culminated with the suspension of Brian Williams last month,” as Emily Steel reported for the New York Times.

In discussing that development, Sherman referred to Steve Burke, CEO of NBC Universal. “Many people at NBC see Lack’s return as a sign that Burke is trying to rehabilitate Williams. But NBC’s internal investigation continues, and the network faces some hard choices in the weeks ahead.

“Does it make the results of the inquiry public? How damaging do the findings have to be to end Williams’s career? And what message will it send if the network removes Holt, a well-liked, hardworking journalist who so far has held on to Williams’s ratings? ‘We’re playing with fire,’ a senior staffer said. ‘Lester’s more than paid his dues.’ . . . “

Randy Archibold Named N.Y. Times Deputy Sports Editor

Randal C. Archibold

Randy Archibold, whose most recent assignments at the New York Times have been Mexico City bureau chief and national correspondent in Los Angeles, on Monday was named deputy sports editor, adding diversity to a section that lost its only black reporter last August, columnist William C. Rhoden notwithstanding.

Nate Taylor left the Times for the South Florida SunSentinel. The section once had as many as six black reporters.

“You know Randy’s byline,” Sports Editor Jason Stallman wrote in an internal memo. “He’s done it all, with much success, in his 17 years as a reporter at The Times: New York City schools, Hillary Clinton in a Senate race, 9/11, national correspondent in L.A. and, currently, Mexico City bureau chief. He’s ready to come home and switch to the side of the righteous — editing.

“Randy will run a team of reporters to help us produce major enterprise in the most imaginative way. He’ll also help Sam Manchester and me figure out what The New York Times sports report should look like in 2015. . . .”

In a brief Q-and-A, Stallman added, “What does he remember about the sports scene when he was at Rutgers?

” ‘The major sports scene was mostly laughable when I was there. The basketball team avoided any hints of glory (that was before and after I was there, such as it is) and the football team — let’s remember, New Brunswick was the birthplace of collegiate football — had a series of ‘rebuilding years’ that I guess paid off now that they have been in several bowls. I mostly remember the tailgating.’

” ‘So, maybe now I should mention I struck out in Little League t-ball as a 7-year-old, you know where the ball is sitting on a little pole and any 7-year-old can smack a home run? Except this one. I am proof it is possible to miss — 3 times. It was clear team sports was probably not my thing. I gravitated to swimming and it has stuck all the way into adulthood, mostly as a way to keep fit but I have done occasional open water races. I did a Half Ironman in Panama a couple of years ago with my wife. We finished. Enough said.’

“Randy will arrive in a few months, after his kids finish out the school year in Mexico City.

“Here’s what [foreign editor] Joe Kahn said about Randy’s time on the International Desk:

” ‘From the scandal over missing Mexican students to Cuba’s shift toward warmer relations with the U.S., Randy has repeatedly shown his fine instincts for covering Mexico and the region. There is no question that Randy’s leadership role in the busy Mexico Bureau has prepared him for the life of an editor, but we will miss his intuitive sense of the big Latin American story when he finishes his successful tour there.’ . . .”

“Floored” Pam Oliver Signs Multi-Year Contract With Fox

“Pam Oliver never saw it coming,” Richard Deitsch reported Monday for Sports Illustrated.

” ‘I was shocked, floored, a monumental surprise,’ says Oliver. ‘The call came out of the blue.’

“The call was from Fox Sports president Eric Shanks and executive vice president John Entz, and it came the second week of January prior to the NFL divisional playoffs. And the call came with a question.

“Would Oliver consider coming back to do NFL sideline reporting for Fox in 2015?

” ‘I think I was silent for a good 10 seconds and then screamed out, What?‘ Oliver recalled on Monday afternoon. ‘I thought: “This makes no sense. What are they talking about?” ‘

“On the surface, what were they talking about? Last year Fox announced that Oliver has been replaced by Erin Andrews on Fox’s top NFL team. Furthermore, management initially planned to remove her from the NFL sidelines entirely. As she recounted to this column last July, ‘To go from the lead crew to no crew was a little shocking. I said I wanted to do a 20th year [on the sidelines]. I expressed to them that I was not done and had something to offer.’

Deitsch also wrote, “After meeting with her bosses, Oliver spoke with her agent, Rick Ramage. They held meetings with other outlets — for sports and news roles — before she ultimately worked things out with Fox and got one final year on the sidelines as part of a new multi-year contract including longform pieces, specials, major interviews and some producing as well. . . .”

Ferrer Heads Project on Misinformation About Hispanics

A report from Media Matters for America last week that found Latino voices are rarely included in Sunday news shows and when they are, are mostly confined to a single topic, is part of a larger project to combat distortions and stereotypes of Hispanics in the media, Miguel Ferrer, the project director, confirmed for Journal-isms on Monday.

Ferrer, senior adviser to Media Matters, is former vice president digital for the Fusion network and managing editor of HuffPost Voces and LatinoVoices.

A March 2 news release from Media Matters announced “the launch of an integrated Hispanic media program designed to combat conservative misinformation targeted at Latinos.

“The program will deploy bilingual communications and research experts across MMFA to monitor English and Spanish-language news media and rebut distortion geared toward Latino audiences, to challenge negative stereotyping of Hispanics and to spotlight the lack of inclusion of Hispanic voices and issues of importance to the Latino community . . .”

The release also said, “Today’s announcement affirms Media Matters for America’s commitment to extend its monitoring, research and analytic expertise to counter the encroaching influences of right wing misinformation targeting Hispanics in both traditional media players (Univision, NBC, CNN) as well as emerging ones (Fusion, Fox News Latino, BuzzFeed). . . “

St. Louis Paper: Disband Area’s Municipal Courts

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which last week urged dumping the Ferguson, Mo., police department and most of the nearly five dozen other police departments in St. Louis County, now says the municipal courts in the county, part of an apparatus that depends on fining citizens to raise revenue, should be disbanded, too.

“In the months following the tragic shooting of Michael Brown last Aug. 9, Ferguson municipal court Judge Ronald Brockmeyer appeared to be one of the people who understood that things had to change,” the newspaper editorialized for its Sunday print edition.

“Even before the Missouri Supreme Court changed a rule to require municipal courts to pay more attention to a defendant’s ability to pay, he issued his own order with at least a few similar guidelines. It was a small step toward turning his court away from the ‘debtors’ prison’ model so many municipal courts in north St. Louis County follow.

“In the cities where he was a judge or prosecutor, Mr. Brockmeyer refused to charge defendants a $100 down payment for getting old ‘failure-to-appear’ warrants wiped out, a phony reform that some neighboring communities had adopted. And when the Supreme Court issued its new guidelines, Mr. Brockmeyer urged his fellow judges to adopt them immediately, instead of waiting for the rules to be finalized this summer.

“But all along, Judge Brockmeyer was hiding a secret. Two secrets, in fact.

“While he was busy sentencing poor, black defendants to fines they would never be able to afford, he had conspired with a racist court clerk and prosecutors in other cities to fix traffic tickets for friends, family and himself. And as The Guardian reported Friday, Mr. Brockmeyer — even as he was cracking down on people who could not pay fines — owes the U.S. government some $172,000 in taxes and fines.

“Those unfortunate facts are among the many outlined by a Department of Justice report on years of civil rights violations of its citizens by the city of Ferguson. The report blasted the pernicious and hideous practice of using the Ferguson police force and municipal court as fund-raising tools instead of instruments of justice. . . .”

The editorial also said:

“Some immediate steps are needed:

  • “Mr. Brockmeyer must resign as a judge and prosecutor in every city where he works. If he doesn’t, the Missouri Supreme Court should make the decision for him.
  • The Ferguson municipal court should be shut down by the Missouri Supreme Court. Immediately.
  • “The Supreme Court, with the full backing of the Missouri Bar, should pass rules banning the practice that sees attorneys sitting as judges in one venue, and as prosecutors or defense attorneys in others. The conflicts of interest that abound in the traffic court cabal are astonishing. The state Bar and the Supreme Court hold Missouri’s judicial reputation in their hands. They haven’t acted for decades because too many attorneys are making too much money on this perversion of the judicial system. They must act now.
  • “The Department of Justice needs to put all 81 municipal courts in St. Louis County on notice that federal officials are watching. The report is clear that court officials are working together across multiple jurisdictions to oppress poor people while doing favors for the well-connected. ‘I think the DOJ’s work is not done,’ St. Louis Alderman Antonio French, an omnipresent figure early in the protests, told us. ‘I would ask them to set up shop for the next few years and examine many municipalities in St. Louis County. Even if you fix Ferguson, I still have to pass through three other municipalities just to get there. There has to be a complete rethinking of the structure of those local governments in St. Louis County.’ We concur.
  • “Finally, the Missouri Supreme Court should do what was suggested by the nonprofit Arch City Defenders, St. Louis University law school professors, and this page, last fall: Appoint a special master not just to study, but to begin the dismantling of all of the municipal courts in St. Louis County. Yes, all of them. . . .”

Update:

Jennifer Mann of the Post-Dispatch reported Monday, “The Missouri Supreme Court announced Monday that it will take the ‘extraordinary action’ of reassigning all Ferguson municipal court cases to the circuit court, starting next week.

“In a news release, the court announced the move was intended ‘to help restore public trust and confidence in the Ferguson municipal court division.’

“Ferguson municipal Judge Ronald J. Brockmeyer resigned his position Monday afternoon. Dellwood Mayor Reggie Jones said Brockmeyer also resigned Monday as prosecutor there.

“In a phone interview Monday night, Brockmeyer declined to say what would happen with his other municipal court positions as prosecutor in Vinita Park and Florissant, and judge in Breckenridge Hills. . . .”

Short Takes

Transcript of President’s Conversation with Journalists

Aboard Air Force One

En Route Selma, Alabama

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: So I won’t give a big windup. Obviously this is a powerful day for me, being able to take my family and particularly my children down to Selma. But I think it’s also a powerful day for the country. In some ways, the timing is good — the week that the report on Ferguson came out around the same time that the task force that I put together in the aftermath of Ferguson presented its findings and recommendations too.

I think we have a great opportunity to not duplicate the spirit of 50 years ago, but at least draw inspiration from it and try to apply it in concrete ways that can restore trust between community and law enforcement around the country; that can refocus our efforts around criminal justice reform; that can spark a conversation around the continuing legacies in Jim Crow that led to impoverished and isolated communities; and that can provide some impetus for reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act.

Those are all things that I’ll talk about in my remarks today. But the thing that makes it most important for me is not what I have to say, but rather giving Malia and Sasha a chance to soak in some of the history that has given them opportunities that 50 years ago never could have been imagined, and that like all young people that may tend to sometimes take for granted. And with that, I will just open it up. And I will start with you, April, and we’ll just go around the table.

APRIL RYAN, AMERICAN URBAN RADIO NETWORKS: Okay, Mr. President, as we look at issues of race, this has been a very historic window these last couple of weeks. Reflecting on these last couple of weeks and then moving forward, there are markers in history. We have one marker that could be Abraham Lincoln with the Emancipation Proclamation. We have LBJ with civil rights and voting rights. And then people say another marker is you. They talk about post-racial America. Is this post-racial, or would you say post-Obama? Because you have created — effectuated a lot of change in your administration with criminal justice reform and civil rights issues. Would you say that — would you embrace the idea of a post-Obama or post-racial society?

THE PRESIDENT: I’m not sure exactly what you mean by the post-racial versus post-Obama, but here’s what I —

RYAN: You being a marker.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, here’s what I’ll say. I think that there’s no doubt that my election was a significant moment in the country’s racial history. I say that with all humility. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been somebody else. But a barrier was broken. I think that legacy will continue in the minds of children who are growing up never having known to this point a President who wasn’t black. And I think that shapes attitudes among young African American children, but also among all children. And I’d like to think that that will have a useful, lasting effect in terms of people’s attitudes about who can do what, and changes people’s images of what’s possible for any child in America.

I wouldn’t equate my election with seminal moments like the Emancipation Proclamation or the passage of the Civil Rights Act of ’64 or the Voting Rights Act of ’65. Those were massive changes in legal status that represented fundamental breaks with America’s tragic history, and were the pillars — the 13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, 15th Amendment — of Civil Rights Acts of the ’60s. Those were the — those represented the dismantling of formal discrimination in this country. There’s nothing that’s going to compare to that.

Moving forward, our work is to build on that work to fine-tune that work where we see formal discrimination or state-sponsored discrimination still occurring. But increasingly, our work has to do with dealing with the ongoing legacy of a divided society — closing the opportunity gaps, closing the achievements gaps, closing the wealth gaps — that inevitably have been passed on from generation to generation because the gaps were so wide.

And that involves no one piece of legislation, but it requires a host of different efforts. It means investing in early childhood education. It means us making sure everybody is got health insurance. It means the kind of public-private work that we’re doing through My Brother’s Keeper. It means getting more African Americans in STEM education, in math and science and engineering.

And so there’s not going to be one silver bullet, but rather it’s going to be a sustained effort on a variety of fronts that will take us on the next leg of this journey towards a more just society.

ZERLINA MAXWELL, ESSENCE: So I wanted to ask about the Department of Justice report, because you recently said that Selma is now, because of what’s going on in Ferguson and also in New York City. So what are the ways in which we can actually reconcile a lot of these tensions and issues between communities of color and law enforcement that go beyond simply retraining officers? Like, how do we reach a meeting of the minds in a different way?

THE PRESIDENT: I would ask that people take a look at the task force report, because I think they did a really good job. We had police officers, police chiefs, academics, experts of criminal justice, but we also had activists — in particular, two of the young people who were directly involved in mobilizing protests both in Ferguson and in New York.

And what was striking was the way they were able to arrive at a consensus in a fairly short period of time. And training of police departments was important, but they also talked about hiring, and diversifying police forces so that they reflect the community — reinvigorating the concept of community policing so that police officers aren’t just interacting with the community in moments of tension and conflict, but are in the schools helping kids, or working hand-in-hand with the community on a community project.

There were specific sets of issues around accountability and transparency — making sure that police departments are disclosing data, particularly around fatal shootings; making sure that investigations and prosecutions are independent. There was discussions around technology and how those could be used properly. And there was, I think, throughout, an emphasis on police departments acknowledging when mistakes are made or problems happen, rather than getting into a defensive crouch.

Now, I think the challenge for the task . . . is going to be there are 18,000 law enforcement jurisdictions — police departments, sheriffs departments — spread out all across the country. The question then is, how do we push down these recommendations into the local level. Because the vast majority of law enforcement is not done at the federal level.

They had some specific recommendations for federal law enforcement, but many of those have already been implemented. For example, they talked about the need to demilitarize law enforcement responses to protests. That’s something that I had already signed an executive order to start looking at.

And so I think our next task now is not only to engage police chiefs and sheriffs departments and others across the country around why this is good for them as well as good for the community, but where there may be resistance to change — figuring out are there ways that we can get some leverage. And at some point, some of that’s going to require I think leadership from governors and mayors, as well as police departments. I think states are going to have to care about this and not just the feds.

REMBERT BROWN, GRANTLAND: Mr. President, so since you were — since I  was in college, which is when you were elected, I’ve watched everything you’ve had to go through — jumping through hoops, going over hurdles, everything. And there’s been a common notion amongst my peers — peers who were very interested in getting into politics, being politicians, even that — this idea of if Barack Obama can’t say or do what we think he wants to say or do as President, then could any of us ever do that if we get into politics, be it about Ferguson, about gay rights — any of these things where we feel we know what he wants to say, but he can’t really do it at that moment.

Is that a sentiment that you are commonly aware of? And does it at all inform kind of how you want to wrap up your presidency? And I guess if you were trying to advise someone in this climate that wanted to make some change or have an immediate impact, would you advise them into getting into politics?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I mean, let me say a couple things about that. First of all, one of the things I’m very proud about, from the time that I ran for the U.S. Senate to me running for President to being President is I’ve said what I meant. I haven’t engaged in a lot of editing. Now, I don’t always say it the way I might say it if I’m sitting over at the dinner table with Michelle. I might not say it the way I say it if I’m on the basketball court with some of my buddies. But the trajectory of what I’ve said, what I care about around policy, I haven’t had to bite my tongue. I think that’s a mistake.

A lot of times where this comes up in the African American community has been the notion of, well, he hasn’t just said this is racist, or he hasn’t just called out what somebody did, or he hasn’t specifically talked about why the African American community as opposed to poor folks or middle-class folks generally need help, and hasn’t targeted enough the racial problems in this country. And I’ve answered that publicly as well, which is I am the President of all people, and if I pass legislation that is boosting their income tax credit for low-income workers, I know by definition that African Americans will be disproportionately helped by that.

The notion that I would describe that as a bill targeting African Americans not only does not get — help it get passed, but it also then ignores all the white folks who are also struggling, and all the Hispanic folks who are also struggling. And my job is to build coalitions of like-minded people who care about the same issues I care about.

When it comes to issues of racial justice around — that are very specific around criminal justice, whether it’s Trayvon or Ferguson or other circumstances, I have been very forward-leaning, with the exception that I have not commented on active investigations or potential prosecutions. The reason for that is not because I’m self-editing, the reason is the formal role I have. Eric Holder is my boss — or I am Eric Holder’s boss. The prosecutors who are investigating the cases report to Eric Holder, and if it looks like I’m putting thumbs on the scale, that can have an adverse impact on the resolution of these cases.

Now, to go to young people generally, and how they might think about public service, I don’t think that politics is the only way to serve. You can write a great book. You start a wonderful business. You start a non-profit. You’re a principal or a teacher inside a school that’s doing a great job. Those are all meaningful ways of advancing the cause.

But we can’t ignore politics. That’s how we make determinations about our institutional arrangements in this society. That’s how resources get allocated. That’s how we decide whether a school gets money or a young person gets a student loan, or a young private gets sent to war and how he or she is treated when they come back, or whether we’re going to protect our seniors from economic insecurity when they retire.

Those are all political issues, and to avoid them makes no sense. And the notion that there are going to be times where you have to compromise in politics suggests that you don’t have to compromise at Grantland, or you don’t have to compromise as a business person. That’s more a reflection of young people, thinking you can do whatever you want. The truth of the matter is, is that we live in a society where you got to work with others and not everybody is going to agree with you all the time. And the more your influence expands, the more a diverse set of people you’re going to have to deal with. That’s a skillset you’re going to need no matter what.

DEWAYNE WICKHAM, USA TODAY: Mr. President, in 1957, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his first speech at the Lincoln Memorial, and he said to the nation, give us the vote, and we will help — black voters will help change the nation for the better. We got the vote in 1965, a lot of changes have occurred. Are you concerned that the ruling in Shelby, the Shelby case, threatens the reversal of many of those changes?

THE PRESIDENT: I’ll address this in my speech today. I don’t think we should underestimate or downplay the risks that enforcing voting rights becomes more difficult in the absence of some of the tools that were provided in the Voting Rights Act and that were stripped out by the Shelby ruling.

Part of the challenge of voting rights has always been how do you catch up to all these local jurisdictions everywhere that may be engaging in illegal practices. And part of what preclearance allowed the Justice Department to do was to say, we’re not going to go chasing you around, playing whack-a-mole all across the country; if you want to make some significant changes, you got to come to us. And so it was a way of expanding enforcement coverage in an efficient way.

That’s why I think reauthorization that addresses some of those lingering gaps is very important. I think it’s also important to understand that there are jurisdictions that are instituting changes in voting rights with the specific purpose of making it harder to vote, and for the specific purpose of making it harder for certain groups of people to vote. And we have to push back But two things I do want to also emphasize. The first is that our rights to vote are preserved through the 14th Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause. They’re not dependent on the Voting Rights Act. And I think people should understand that there’s no prospect of wholesale reversal of the gains that have been made. This is an issue of how do we make sure our enforcement is effective, that it’s not a gutting of voting rights.

And the second point is if you eliminated every restrictive voting law, every photo ID law on the books; if you reverse the Shelby rule tomorrow, we still have, at best, half our folks voting on a regular basis. The other half made their own decision not to vote. They disenfranchised themselves. This last midterm we had about a third of the eligible population voting.

So it’s useful for us to remind ourselves that as important and serious as these restrictive efforts are, as hard as we have to push back against them, with those changes in place, we could still be voting at a 90 percent rate or a 95 percent rate. That would transform our politics immediately. And that’s part of what I think a day like today should lead us to reflect on: How much change was brought, how much power was generated by folks who had so much less than us and were up against such greater odds than us.

If we summoned a fraction of the courage and determination and perseverance that they brought to bear, imagine what we’d do now.

CHARLES BLOW, THE NEW YORK TIMES: So in 2007 you spoke in Selma. You talked about the Moses generation, which is the civil rights generation, and the Joshua generation. And there were some acknowledgements of struggles and gaps that you talked about already — empathy gap, vote gap, education gap, economic gap. I would even add to that now, racial gap, as polls now show that people at least believe that the relationship between races is getting worse, not better, under your administration.

And you also talked about — you were kind of critical — you talked about — were just speaking about lack of kind of voter participation, fatherhood, internalized oppression. Eight years on, how do you register the change, if any, in the Joshua generation and how they are progressing or not? And what do you view your role in that is or is not? And what do you think your legacy will be for that?

THE PRESIDENT: That was a big question. So this — we’ll wrap up since we’re landing. First of all, let me say that I am skeptical that race relations have worsened over the last six years. And I say that because we’ve got very short memories. What is true is over the last several years, there have been some significant episodes that have been highlighted and discussed in the media that have led, I think, people to think about this more.

But the notion that Trayvon Martin or the Garner case or Ferguson wasn’t happening in all the years before that — that is not how it was experienced by me in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. I recall something called the Rodney King riots that was a pretty big deal. And so part of how these surveys get generated is what’s been in the news at a particular point in time. I would actually argue — and people express skepticism, and they’re free to do so — that we continue to make steady progress, because I see in each successive generation people more open to talking about these issues, people talking about them with more clarity. I think that’s true within the white community, I think it’s true within the African American community.

I think the fact that our society is becoming more diverse so it’s not just black, white, but now it’s Hispanic and Asian and even within the African American community, there’s West Indian and African as well as African American — all of that in the mix makes our kids more sophisticated, more willing to talk about these things in a serious way, but also I think more willing to listen to how other people see the world and view the world, and that permeates our culture as well.

As problematic as Ferguson was, as painful as the Garner case was, there was no violence of great significance. And there was no backlash that permeated the white community. And people actually had a fairly civil conversation, and we ended up creating a task force and now we’ve got recommendations. And the police department is, for the most part, talking very constructively with us about how to move forward with it.

It doesn’t mean that the problems aren’t there. It doesn’t mean that they’re all going to get solved. It doesn’t mean that there’s not going to be a resistance when the rubber hits the road. But I compare how the debate has evolved over the last year and a half compared to how it might have evolved 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago, and I’d say we’ve progressed.

Now, more broadly, when you talk about the Joshua generation and its role, I think that we see at a grassroots level, at a community level, all kinds of folks who are picking up at the top.

The work we’re doing with My Brother’s Keeper, you see mayors and you see philanthropists and you see churches, and you see school leadership excited and engaged and investing, and seeing what works. I think at a policy level, we have continued to push and refine those things that we know will make a difference in the lives of our children — things like early childhood education or intervening with kids so that they’re reading at grade level by the time they’re in third grade, or looking more carefully at zero-tolerance policies and suspensions and the disparities there.

And now, having a really serious conversation around criminal justice issues and sentencing — a conversation that is bipartisan and wouldn’t have even been considered 10 years ago.

But having said all that, we can’t separate the challenges facing the African American community from the broader trend lines that we’ve seen in our society. And I am very proud of the fact that we saved an economy that could have gone into a Great Depression. We are now in an extraordinary recovery. Things have stabilized. Jobs are being created. Wages are starting to tick up. But where I have not been successful — in part because we had to do so much early work just averting disaster — is reversing some of these longer-term trends in terms of inequality, wage stagnation, the greater difficulty of blue-collar men, in particular, to attach to the labor market.

And as a consequence, I don’t think we’ve made the kind of progress we need to make when it comes to the link between social justice and civil rights, and economic justice. And that is not a problem unique to the African American community; that is a broader problem. And if it’s true that that is going to increasingly be the principal challenge that we face, then we’re going to have to shape a political message and a political coalition that allows us to aggressively address those issues. And right now, we don’t have that.

And so I guess if you ask me, in terms of my personal role, how this has played out, I think our policies have been sound, I think our vision has been right. I think we have made enormous progress, and I can show demonstrably how the lives not only of African Americans but working and middle-class people across the board are improved as the results of my presidency. But I have not — we have not fully addressed this core problem of increasing inequality and the squeezing of the middle class and the eroding ladders into the middle class.

And I also think that the coalition that I was able to construct twice as a presidential candidate has not yet translated into the kind of coalition that can capture the Congress and state legislatures and state houses where a lot of that economic work is going to have to be done.

So going forward, I’ve got the Congress I’ve got, and I think my job is to try to frame these issues as effectively as I can so that they’re at the center of the debate in 2016, to help mobilize people as much as possible to get them engaged in that set of elections — not just the President, but Congress, state and local races — and at the same time, do as much as I can, wherever I can, whether through executive actions or our convening power or occasionally passing bills through this Congress that can make a difference.

 

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