Obama: US Cannot Dismiss Peaceful Protests Amid Lingering Racial Inequality

The United States cannot dismiss peaceful protests by the Black Lives Matter movement among continued racial inequities in the country, President Barack Obama said on Tuesday during a memorial service for five police officers killed in the city of Dallas, Texas.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Obama cited studies that show African-Americans are more likely to be pulled over, arrested or receive longer sentences and even the death penalty for the same crimes as white offenders.

"When all this [systemic inequality] takes place more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act [of 1964], we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as trouble-makers or paranoid," he stated.

The US president emphasized that race relations have improved dramatically during his lifetime, citing 20th Century US laws that ended legal discrimination on the grounds of race such as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

Obama delivered the remarks at an interfaith service honoring five police officers killed in Dallas on July 6 by former Army reservist Micah Johnson. The shooter opened fire during a protest in Dallas against the police killing two African-American men in the states of Louisiana and Minnesota earlier in the week.