This week, a disturbing video was posted to Facebook Live of a mentally disabled white man being tortured in Chicago by four black teenagers. President Barack Obama has since spoken out about the incident, calling it a “horrific” and “despicable” hate crime.
“I take these things very seriously,” Obama told local CBS affiliate WBBM when asked about the attack.
“What we have seen as surfacing, I think, are a lot of problems that have been there a long time — whether it’s tensions between police and communities [or] hate crimes of the despicable sort that have just now recently surfaced on Facebook,” he added.
–Hate-crime charges filed in attack on mentally disabled man–
However, the president said that he was hopeful about the state of race relations, saying that technology has continued to push this issue to the forefront of public awareness.
“The fact that these things are being surfaced means we can solve them,” he said. “But overall, what I’ve seen as president in traveling around the country, is particularly the next generation, young people, their appreciation of people different than then (who) come from different places, have different backgrounds, my daughter’s generation, they’re far more sophisticated about race, far more tolerant and embracing of diversity. So I think that over the long arc, America will keep on getting better.”
“Part of what technology allows us to see now is the terrible toll that racism and discrimination and hate takes on families and communities,” he later explained. “But that’s part of how we learn and how we get better. We don’t benefit from pretending that racism doesn’t exist and hate doesn’t exist. We don’t benefit form not talking about it. The fact that these things are being surfaced means we can solve them.”
