But again, he didn't pick that narrative. He didn't make a assumptions if you look at his words.
Wait a minute -- of
course he picked that narrative. You
quoted him. He said he didn't know the specifics of this incident, but nevertheless immediately launched into the general narrative where it is the
police who are at fault -- including tossing in the gratuitous claim that the police "acted stupidily" despite admitting he didn't know all the facts. Here's exactly what he said:
"I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that."
Had he stopped there -- fine. That's where you
should stop when you don't know all the facts. But he chose to then advance a particular narrative anyway:
But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately."
How did he know that narrative was even relevant to what actually happened?
The issue of race relations and law enforcement was clearly the broader issue in this as that's what the discussion was about nationally. It's the reason it was a story. Obama states that he does not know if it played a role but acknowledged the broader issue.
Wow. This is a great illustration of the problem. You see only
one narrative possible. One issue. A problem that only has fault on
one side -- that of the police.
There is a
second narrative, which actually turned out to be the
true narrative in this case. And that's the narrative where someone is rude and antagonistic to a police officer who is just doing their job and being polite. The rude, antagonistic person creates the problem in the first place,
and then claims the issue was racism rather than their own behavior.
Why isn't that also an
important message to get out there? That just as we expect police not to be racist, it is up to us as citizens not to be assholes, create problems, and then
falsely attribute the problem to racism.
Why didn't the President go with
that narrative after saying that he didn't know all the facts? Why did he choose instead to go with the police "acting stupidly", and then talk about mistreatment of minorities by police?
Of course, what he should have done was not mention
any issue or narrative before knowing the facts. But then, that's not how people who have a bias behave.