African-Americans Put Obama on the Line

How the Unrest in Ferguson Echoes the Political Situation in the US

The events in the town of Ferguson, where the local black population is in an uproar in response to the acquittal of the police officer who killed a black teenager, have put Barack Obama in a tough situation. The most conservative circles of the Republican Party have long been telling of this kind of disorder, motivated by Obama’s immigration policy. He could lose the support of even his biological electorate — the people who share his skin color.

Although the unrest of the African American community isn’t a new occurrence, and, admittedly, it has been worse in the past, for President Obama the situation in Ferguson is particularly difficult for one obvious reason: He is the first African American to hold the presidential post. The head of the American government has already condemned the chaos and called on society to accept the court’s verdict. However, as was noted on Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal, the reaction of the American president to what happened was quite restrained, whereas in other cases, he has used more emotion when speaking out about resonating events.

A presidential trip to Ferguson still is not in the works. However, the White House press service said the idea is being discussed, and president will take it into consideration when the situation quiets down.

However, even after outbursts in Ferguson abate, experts predict that what has happened there will be used to political ends and could end up swaying the 2016 presidential elections. Obama is “taking a hit” with these uprisings, because the conflict has latched onto the overall American character and Republicans are actively using it, says an expert on America, Areg Galstyan.

Obama, Glastyan notes, called on the local authorities to avoid taking harsh measures against the demonstrators. The authorities of the state of Missouri are well equipped to react harshly, but the use of force is fraught with the possibility of future escalation. Immigrants, who also participated in the disorder, make up about a quarter of the population of the town.

Opponents of Obama associate the events in Ferguson with Obama’s immigration policy. They consider it to be ineffective, notes our expert, who is convinced that “Republicans will politicize these events to the fullest extent.” Just a few days ago, at the end of last week, the president initiated another reform in the sphere of immigration. It was strongly opposed by the GOP.

The so-called tea party, a radical libertarian group of Republicans, would probably take the largest sum of political points from the ordeal.

“Already back in 2009-2010, the tea party foretold of a national uprising that would come from the policy that Democrats are putting out. Now, they will be called visionaries,” says Glastyan.

One of the leaders of the tea party and a potential Republican presidential candidate, Senator Rand Paul, has already spoken out against the administration’s behavior in regards to Ferguson. In it, he sympathized with the fates of impoverished African Americans. “Can some of the disparity be blamed on a higher rate of crime in the black community? Yes, but there is a gnawing feeling that simply being black in a high-crime area increases your risk for a deadly altercation with police,” writes Paul in an article published this week in Time Magazine.

Some experts see Paul’s announcement as an attempt to attract sympathy from black voters in his fight for the presidential seat. For any politician, that particular electorate holds an enormous mobilizing possibility. Remember that 95 percent of representatives of that population voted for Obama in 2008.

In the meantime, public opinion polls demonstrate that America remains divided on the racial situation in the country.

This week, a poll by CNN/ORC showed a high dependency of political ratings on affiliation with one group or the other.

Forty-five percent of the non-white population (blacks, Latinos, and Asians) say that the police officer should have been sentenced on murder charges, whereas only 23 percent of white people agreed with the statement.

“Those who partook in the demonstration hardly delve into the details on which the court founded its decision. They took action based on the mainstream logic that ‘the court acquitted a white who killed a black,’” says Glastyan.