Charles Ogletree: Race Relations ‘Worse Now’ than Six Years Ago

Charles Ogletree: Race Relations ‘Worse Now’ than Six Years Ago (RealClearPolitics)

CHUCK TODD, MEET THE PRESS: Professor Ogletree, I was trying to get your basic reaction to this. Last people that studied this question, only about one in four African Americans say the situation of black people in this country is better now than it was five years ago.

It's a double-digit drop from 2009 and sort of the euphoria of the election of the first black president. Are we really no better off today? Is the African American public right about this? We're no better off today in race relations than we were six years ago?

CHARLES OGLETREE, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL: I think we're right Chuck. And I hate to say this, but I think about what my father and grandfather told me about race relations way back when I was a young kid, how they were devastated with the idea of separation based on race. It is worse now. We think of people who don't have jobs, who can't go to school, people who can't get healthcare.

And we are in a situation right now that will create Fergusons over and over and over again. It's not just in Ferguson, Missouri. It's going to be around the country. And we see this racial divide, despite the fact that it's a black president, who I love dearly, there's a racial divide in America that's not going to end with Trayvon Martin being killed, with Michael Brown being killed, with the 12 year old being killed by police. It's not going to end at all.