Obama speaks out for Black Lives Matter movement

President Obama openly sided with the “Black Lives Matter” movement Thursday, saying bias and excessive force by law enforcement officials against blacks in America is “real.”

“The African American community’s not just making this up,” Mr. Obama said during a discussion of criminal justice reform at the White House. “It’s not just something being politicized. It’s real, and there’s a history behind it, and we have to take it seriously. That is a legitimate issue we’ve got to address.”

The president said the social-justice movement, which resulted in street demonstrations in 2014 after the shooting death of an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Missouri, and other incidents, is aimed at “a specific problem that is happening in the African-American community that’s not happening in other communities.”

“There is a specific concern as to whether African Americans are sometimes not treated in particular jurisdictions fairly or are subject to excessive force more frequently,” he said. “We as a society, particularly given our history, have to take this seriously.”

He said the Black Lives Matter movement became twisted by critics into a theme that “these folks are opposed to police, and all lives matter.”

“The notion was somehow that saying ’black lives matter’ was reverse racism, or suggesting that other people’s lives didn’t matter, police officers’ lives didn’t matter,” Mr. Obama said. “Whenever we get bogged down in that kind of discussion, we know where that goes. That’s just down the old track. Everybody understands that all lives matter. Everybody wants strong, effective law enforcement.”

Mr. Obama created a task force on 21st century policing last year that came out with recommendations for better relations between police and minority communities.

As he has on occasion, the president also said he himself has been the target of racial profiling as a younger man.

“As a young man, there were times when I got stopped when I was driving, and I didn’t know why,” Mr. Obama said.

He also said activists in the Black Lives Matter movement must “recognize that police officers have a really tough job and we’re sending them into really tough neighborhoods. They’ve got to make split-second decisions.”