Professor Robert C. Smith: How Obama is Raising Visibility of Police Killings

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES -- Obama, de Blasio and Holder are among a new generation of political leaders whose personal stories are propelling police shootings and killings of black men into the national spotlight. Their narratives are being shared at a time when the racial makeup of American politics is more diverse than ever. “It seems to me that Obama is animated in doing this in good part because he has a sense of it that a non-black president could not have,” said Robert C. Smith, a professor of Political Science at San Francisco State University in California. “I think he is compelled in a way that a non-black president couldn’t be.”