Americans are not as divided as some have suggested, Obama says

Reporting from Warsaw —  Despite the week’s deadly police shootings in Dallas, Americans remain united in addressing issues of inequality and injustice, President Obama said Saturday, rejecting comparisons between the recent violence and the turbulence of the late 1960s.

Speaking at a news conference in Warsaw at the end of a NATO summit, Obama said the perpetrator of Thursday’s shooting rampage targeting police officers was no more representative of all African Americans than the shooter in last year’s massacre at an African American church in Charleston, S.C., was representative of all white people.

“As painful as this week has been, I firmly believe that America is not as divided as some have suggested,” Obama said.

“As tough, as hard, as depressing as the loss of life was this week, we’ve got a foundation to build on. We just have to have confidence that we can build on those better angels of our nature,” he said.

Obama said it was too difficult to “untangle the motives” of the shooter.

He also repeatedly defended bringing up his quest for stronger gun control measures in the immediate aftermath of the Dallas shooting, saying it is impossible to separate the issues.

“We cannot eliminate all racial tension overnight. We are not going to be able to identify ahead of time and eliminate every madman or troubled individual who might want to do harm against innocent people,” he said. “But we can make it harder to do so.”

The remarks came at the end of a NATO summit during which Obama has had to divide his attention between discussions about the global fight against terrorism and mounting concerns at home.

His comments about race relations on Saturday were his third public remarks in Poland about domestic shootings – first the killings of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana by white police officers, and then the killings of five white police officers by a black sniper in Dallas.

With more protests expected in the U.S., Obama is cutting short his trip to Europe and coming home early. He plans to visit Dallas next week.

As he spoke in Warsaw Saturday, the president cautioned Americans not to overreact to the violence or to concerns about racial division.

Black Lives Matter activists are angry about the attacks on police in Dallas, he said, and whites all over the county are angry about the police shootings of Philando Castile in suburban St. Paul, Minn., and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La.

“There’s no division there,” Obama said. “There is sorrow ... but there is unity in recognizing this is ... not who we want to be as Americans.”

Full Coverage: Dallas police shooting »

Obama noted that the widespread availability of cell phones has brought greater awareness of violence, even though the rates of crime have dropped since the 1960s.

Previously, mainly black Americans were aware of racial bias in the criminal justice system, he said. Now, because of the camera phones like the ones that captured the images of Sterling’s and Castile’s deaths, no one can turn a blind eye.

At the same time, the videos demonstrated how the licensed possession of firearms by civilians can escalate a police confrontation, Obama suggested.

The guns that police believed Sterling and Castile “caused, in some fashion, those tragic events.”

Police officers, he said, face the reality that anyone they encounter may be armed, even with a deadly assault weapon designed for war.

Memoli reported from Warsaw and Parsons from Washington, D.C.

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UPDATES:

11:13 a.m.: This article was updated with additional remarks from President Obama.

This article was originally published at 10:41 a.m.