Obama Legitimizing Racist Violence

“The philosophy of nonviolence only makes sense if the powerful can be made to recognize themselves in the powerless,” Obama says, which means that non-violence is not contingent on the law or personal ethics, but on the targets of that violence demonstrating that assaulting them is not the best way of extracting loot from them.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but rich people are all for nonviolence. Why wouldn’t they be? They’ve got what they want. They want to make sure people don’t take their stuff. But the principle of empathy recognizes that there are more subtle forms of violence to which we are answerable. The spirit of empathy condemns not only the use of firehoses and attack dogs to keep people down but also accountants and tax loopholes to keep people down.”