Ted Cruz Says President Obama Has Made Race Relations Worse

Ted Cruz Says President Obama Has Made Race Relations Worse

Presidential hopeful and senator Ted Cruz has accused Barack Obama, the country’s first African American president, of having “inflamed racial tensions” during his time in the White House.

Via Raw Story:

Cruz, a Texan who is running for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, made the comments in a speech at a US Hispanic chamber of commerce event in Washington DC. The speech included other controversial assertions, including that the growth of national support for same-sex marriage was “heartbreaking” and that Democrats had tried to “scare” Hispanics into voting for them by talking about immigration.

Cruz said that Obama “could have chosen to be a leader” on race relations, but instead “has made decisions that I think have inflamed racial tensions – that have divided us rather than bringing us together”. Cruz also got in a dig at Vice-President Joe Biden, saying a comment Biden made during the 2012 presidential race had likewise detracted from racial comity.

Americans have become more focused on racial tensions during the Obama presidency, polls have found. Following the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014, the proportion of Americans naming “race relations” or “racism” as the top problem facing the country spiked to 13% in a Gallup poll , a 20+-year high.

Cruz placed blame for the phenomenon not on the seemingly constant high-profile cases in which unarmed black men have been killed by police officers since Eric Garner was killed in July 2014, but on the president.

Do you think President Obama’s term as president has been helpful or harmful with America’s race relations problem?