Obama expressed sadness over the recent Floyd murder, as well as other black men and women in recent weeks, in a Facebook post on Friday.
“Like many of you, I am saddened by the recent tragedy,” he wrote. “And I’m tired of a broken heart that never seems to stop.”
“It just goes on, and goes on, and on. Race and racism is the fact that so many of us grow up learning to only deal with. But if we ever hope to get past it, it can’t just be on people of color to deal with it, “he wrote. “It’s up to all of us – Black, white, everyone – no matter how good we intend, to do honest and uncomfortable work to eliminate it.”
He continued, “It starts with self-examination and listening to those whose lives are different from our lives. It ends with justice, compassion, and empathy manifested in our lives and in our ways.”
Obama concluded on a hopeful note, saying he prayed “we all have the strength for the journey, just as I pray for the souls and their families taken from us.”
Her statement came when her husband, former President Barack Obama, shared the same opinion
sentiment on Twitter.
“That can’t be ‘normal’,” the former president wrote, speaking of racism in the United States. “If we want our children to grow up in a country that lives with the highest ideals, we can and must be better.”
Both statements were motivated by sometimes violent protests throughout the country, when people grieved and showed their anger over Floyd’s death. Floyd, 46, died Monday after he was pinned to the ground – handcuffed and unarmed – by a police officer with a knee in Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes when he shouted, “I can’t breathe.”
Floyd’s death was one of several that many people said was a disturbing trend by the police using deadly force on black people. The protest in Minneapolis had drawn comparisons in 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer.
