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Obama: US future depends on addressing racial bias

US president launches non-profit to address opportunity gaps faced by young men of color.

05.05.2015 - Update : 05.05.2015
Obama: US future depends on addressing racial bias

NEW YORK

The future of America depends on solving the problems emanating from inequalities along racial lines, President Barack Obama said Monday.

Obama's remarks came at a press conference in New York following the launch of the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, a non-profit aiming to address "persistent opportunity gaps" faced by young men of color.

The organization expands on Obama's year-old My Brother's Keeper initiative, which was launched in the wake of the death of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, killed in a confrontation with an off-duty neighborhood watchman in Florida in 2012.

"America's future depends on us caring about this. If we don't, then we will just keep on going through the same cycles of periodic conflict," Obama said, referring to a string of recent police-involved killings of black suspects across the country, including Michael Brown in Missouri, Eric Garner in New York and Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, among others.

The incidents have stirred racial tensions, setting off nationwide protests over perceived injustices within the U.S. justice system.

"The catalyst of those protests were the tragic deaths of young men and the feeling that law is not always applied evenly in this country," Obama said.

"In too many places in this country, black boys and black men, Latino boys and Latino men experience being treated differently by law enforcement. In stops and in arrests and in charges and in incarcerations. The statistics are clear up and down the criminal justice system, there is no dispute," he said. 

Obama's address follows a week of tense demonstrations in Baltimore, organized by those protesting the death of black man Freddie Gray who apparently sustained injuries while in police custody.

Gray's death sparked mass demonstrations in Maryland’s largest city against police brutality that devolved into lawless melees on two separate nights, forcing the mayor to enact a week-long curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. The curfew was lifted Saturday.

The protests have spread to other cities including New York, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco and Oakland, California.

Prior to his remarks to the press, Obama held a round table meeting with a number of black students from across the country who recounted "stories of some of these young men being stopped and put on the ground by police for no reason."

"If we’re going to be successful in addressing some of the challenges that young men of color face around the country, that their voices have to be part of how we design programs and how we address these issues. Because they’ve got a lot to say, and what they say is powerful and makes a big difference," Obama said during the meeting.

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