People Who Don't Think Race Matters In Ferguson Think Obama's Remarks Are Racist.

ARIT JOHN
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Few people were surprised
when conservative
commentators started
criticizing President Obama
for commenting on the
Michael Brown shooting and
aftermath in Ferguson,
Missouri, and a new Pew poll
shows why: white and
Republican Americans are
more likely to think race is
getting too much attention in
Ferguson.

Conservative
commentators calling the
president racist are just the
most prominent and
extreme examples of people
who think Obama is
addressing race issues that
don't exist.
In the last week, right-wing
blog WND published a
column by Larry Klayman
arguing that the president
was the "Racist in chief" for
siding with his "black
brothers" against "'whitey.'"
Fox News' Todd Starnes
wondered why the president
offered condolences to
Michael Brown's family,
but didn't offer his
condolences to the cop who
shot him.

Daniel Greenfield at
FrontPage magazine wrote
that the president "tends to
avoid explicitly racist rhetoric.
Instead he empowers those
who do."
The essays are the extreme
example of what Pew shows
is a common trend: 47
percent of white people
think race is getting too
much attention, as opposed
to only 18 percent of blacks
and 25 percent of Hispanics.
Sixty-one percent of
Republicans think race is
receiving too much focus,
compared to 46 percent of
Independents and 21
percent of Democrats.

The
divide is more extreme now
than when Trayvon Martin
was killed, but still in both
cases there was a divide
between whites and blacks.
With that in mind, it makes
sense that white
conservatives would see the
president's remarks as race
baiting. Last year, the
president said Trayvon
Martin "could have been my
son" and explained that:
There are, frankly, very
few African-American
men who haven't had
the experience of
walking across the
street and hearing the
locks click on the doors
of cars. That happens
to me, at least before I
was a senator. ... And I
don't want to
exaggerate this, but
those sets of
experiences inform
how the African-
American community
interprets what
happened one night in
Florida.

Then, too, he sparked
negative conservative
reactions including one from
the aforementioned Todd
Starnes.

Source: www.thewire.com/politics/2014/08/people-who-dont-think-race-matters-in-ferguson-think-obamas-remarks-are-racist/378719/