https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0lOaVnh-0I

From CBS News:

… The president urged Americans to not “let the actions of a few define all of us,” saying that the “demented individual” who carried out the attack in Dallas was “no more representative of African-Americans” than Dylann Roof, the suspect in the Charleston, South Carolina church shooting, was of white Americans or Omar Mateen, the gunman in the Orlando nightclub massacre, was of Muslim Americans. “They don’t speak for us – that’s not who we are,” the president said. Asked later on what caused the Dallas attacker to open fire on police officer, he added that it’s “very hard to untangle the motives of this shooter.”

Commenter Hepp notes that the President’s opinions on the broad relevance of Dylann Roof’s atrocity have changed, conveniently:

Obama preaches — and sings — in protest of racism

In eulogy for slain pastor, the president issues a call to action to battle the systemic racism that he said the murders must force America to confront. By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE 06/26/15 12:35 CHARLESTON, S.C. – President Barack Obama brought a crowd 5,500 mourners to their feet and led them in singing “Amazing Grace” in an act of defiance Friday against the hatred that fueled the killings of nine African-Americans at the legendary Mother Emanuel church a block and a half away — a eulogy that was also a call to action to battle the systemic racism that he said the attack must force America to confront. He was, preachers who followed him said, “the Reverend President.” Children left in poverty, dilapidated schools, a criminal justice system in need of reform, denied voting rights, black men who don’t get called back for job interviews: this is what the white supremacist killing African-Americans in a church, a place Obama said should be “inviolate” for the community, should remind the country of. The Confederate flag — “we all have to acknowledge that the flag has always represented more than ancestral pride,” Obama said bluntly — must come down. That, though, is just the very beginning of what needs to be done. “By taking down that flag, we express God’s grace,” Obama said, giving his eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney. “But I don’t think God wants us to stop there.” “For too long,” Obama called out to the crowd at one point, talking about the legacy of racism. “Too long!” the crowd called back. Dylann Roof, the shooter, “drew on the long history of bombs and arson and shots fired at churches — not random, but as a means to control. A way to terrorize and oppress.” …

Commenter candid_observer adds some quotes from Obama’s South Carolina eulogy:

“Maybe we now realize the way racial bias can infect us even when we don’t realize it,” Mr. Obama said as Mr. Pinckney’s coffin, draped in a blanket of red roses, sat before him. “So that we’re guarding against not just racial slurs, but we’re also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview, but not Jamal. So that we search our hearts when we consider laws to make it harder for some of our fellow citizens to vote.” By treating every child as important regardless of skin color and by opening up opportunities for all Americans, Mr. Obama said, “We express God’s grace.”

And:

“For too long,” Mr. Obama said, “we’ve been blind to the way past injustices continue to shape the present. Perhaps we see that now. Perhaps this tragedy causes us to ask some tough questions about how we can permit so many of our children to languish in poverty, or attend dilapidated schools, or grow up without prospects for a job or for a career.”

Fair enough.

But, it’s not 1955, it’s the current year. After generations of intensifying propaganda from authority figures, such as the POTUS, about how the white male power structure is out to get the coalition of the fringes, is it all that surprising when a fringe element in the coalition of the fringes starts murdering whites? It’s happened before (e.g., the Zebra murders in California), although the country tries to not remember that.

How about a little more moderation and restraint on the part of the powerful?