Barack Obama Quotes

The coffers are full of money and equipment for the Ferguson Police and the Missouri National Guard to put down a potential uprising, but no money for actually uplifting the people of Ferguson, St. Louis, Missouri and around the nation.

You also had in Detroit that summer, an early variation of Ferguson. A black prostitute was shot in the back by police. And all of the efforts that a very progressive police chief and mayor of that period had put into trying to restore race relations started to fall apart again, and you could see that unraveling for several years until the riots or rebellion of 1967.

You have to understand the Newark Riots - a lot of people understand that the pain was the initial explosion of anger and alienation, but after that, the response, sending the National Guard troops - a lot of violence was carried out and perpetrated by those who were allegedly coming here to protect residents.

Urban riots must now be recognized as a durable social phenomenon. They are a special form of violence ... mainly intended to shock the white community.

Part of the attraction of the riots is the looting, which seems to be almost unrestrained. I always thought that when rioting breaks out, looters must be shot. Otherwise the situation will get entirely out of hand. [Lyndon] Johnson has made all the right gestures but it is exceedingly difficult to see any end to the tension, let alone the violence which seems to be in some way part of the American way of life.

Black Lives Matter is the culmination of racial divide. They're nothing more than the last socially acceptable hate group in America.

The thing that happened in Ferguson touched many of us in a specific way.

The share of Americans who say race relations are bad in this country is the highest it's been in decades, much of it amplified by shootings of African-Americans by police, as we've seen recently in Charlotte and Tulsa.

We are sitting on many powder kegs. Whether it's Ferguson, or St Louis, or like the other night, or Baltimore. Or different parts of Chicago.

Listen, 'The Purge' actually exists in some form or another in many places around the world when you think about it.

How long must the American community afford special treatment to blacks?

History simmers beneath the surface in more communities than just Ferguson.

The issue of civil rights was too much for the establishment to handle. One of the chapters of history that's least studied by historians is the 300 to 500 riots in the U.S. between 1965 and 1970.

Indiscriminate firing by police on people is absolute barbarism. Instead of solving their problems, the government is trying to suppress the people by force.

When it came to political power, blacks need not apply. Add to this steaming stew the growing tensions over the Vietnam War and the movement for civil rights, and you had plenty of elements to fire the imagination of a novice journalist.

There's not a racial divide in the city of Ferguson.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

'Occupy' is nothing but a pack of louts, thieves, and rapists, an unruly mob, fed by Woodstock-era nostalgia and putrid false righteousness. These clowns can do nothing but harm America.

There's a full-court press to put down an uprising around Ferguson, but no preparation for lifting up the people there.

You know, many people have called me, friends from the nationalist camp, revisionists and so on, from around the world, have called me over the years - and now again because of what happened - and they are all very cynical about the police and the authorities.

The relationship between violence and nonviolence in this country is interesting. The fact of the matter is, you know, people do respond to riots. The 1968 Housing Act was in large response to riots that broke out after Dr. Martin Luther King was killed. They cited these as an actual inspiration.

The Negro today perhaps has more political power than ever before and he is worse off than ever before. It is not votes but dollars that count in this civilization.

It's more dangerous to be black in America...If you are a normal white American, the truth is you don't understand being black in America, and you instinctively underestimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk in a way that you have to be corrected.

We don't want something for youth at risk, we want something for black youth at risk.

If blacks are oppressed in America, why isn't there a black exodus?