Washington: Calling for unity after deadly shooting in the US city of Dallas, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has said that white people must listen to African-Americans about “what it feels to live with fear and anxiety.”
“White people need to be listening to African-Americans about what it feels like to live with fear and anxiety, to be profiled, to worry about what will happen to their children when they go out to play or out on a date or go for a drive,” Clinton said in an interview yesterday. “We have to listen to the fears of our police officers, who get up every day and do a dangerous job, like the police in Dallas who ran toward the shooting when it broke out after a peaceful protest,” she said responding to questions on shootout at Dallas the deadliest incident for law enforcement in the US after 9/11.
In the aftermath of the Dallas incident, Clinton has called for a national conversation following killing of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota this week. “As a white person, I want to make it clear that whites have to listen. We have to recognise, you know, many of the fears and anxieties that our African-American, our Latinos and others in our society feel. We saw the terrible shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, our LGBT friends,” 68-year-old Clinton said.
She yesterday cancelled her election rally in Pennsylvania where she was to be joined by Vice President Joe Biden. Her Republican rival Donald Trump also cancelled his election event in Miami, Florida. “This cuts across so many of the divides in our country. And it should send a clarion call to every single one of us. We do not want to live like this. We don’t want people, any American, living in fear. We don’t want our police living in fear. And if we want to end that, we have to work together,” she said.
Clinton said, President Barack Obama has done an extraordinary job in trying to explain and provide information to anyone who is willing to listen about the inequities and difficulties that are being confronted by so many of our fellow Americans. “His policing commission that he puts together after Ferguson, Missouri, has excellent recommendations, but not enough police departments have followed them. And I want to put money in the budget when I’m president to make it possible for every police department to implement these important reforms,” she said.