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President Barack Obama will do what he’s done so many times as president, he will speak with and to families who have lost loved ones to senseless violence.

He will speak to a confused, angry, grieving and divided nation.

This time he will combine two tightropes that he usually walks separately – race and gun violence.

He will hear from people like Dr. Brian H. Williams, a surgeon who happens to be black and who happens to have treated the injured officers who were rushed to the emergency room in Dallas last week.

He is fighting a tug of war within himself about police and race.

“I understand the anger and frustration and the distrust of law enforcement. But they are not the problem.  The problem is the lack of open discussions about the impact of race relations in this country.  And I think about it every day that I wasn’t able to save those cops when they came here that night. It weighs on my mind constantly.”

The President will hear and should address what Dr. Williams says about unity.

“This killing it has to stop.  Black men dying and being forgotten, people retaliating against the people who are sworn to defend us we have to come together and end all this.”

Williams represents the fear many Americans, especially African Americans feel about police officers.

“But for me that does not condone disrespecting police officers.  That’s something I struggle with constantly. And I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do with that.”

Dr. Alexander Eastman is a surgeon and a Dallas police officer who happens to be white and who happens to be friends with Dr. Williams.

The President should also address what Eastman so eloquently discussed – that we don’t often hear about the black and white and people of other ethnicities who are actually examples of what Americans should be doing instead of segregating themselves.

“We work together, we play together, we vacation together.  Our families know one another.  Our wives know one another.  Our children know one another.  And I think that as I’ve watched all of us struggle through this, Brian and I have had some very long hugs and the beginnings of some really challenging conversations about how we move forward.”

That’s the only way folks.

That’s the only way.

We cannot continue to segregate ourselves because we disagree or because we have big problems, historic problems, monumental problems.

Retreating to respective corners have been the downfall of many nations.

That shouldn’t happen to the greatest country on earth.

That shouldn’t happen especially when the one thing we do have in common as black, white, Asian, Latino and so on is one thing, one simple yet powerful word – American.

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