Cory Booker reacts to Pres. Obama’s remarks about Trayvon Martin
Today on The Lead with Jake Tapper, Newark Mayor and U.S. Senate candidate Cory Booker joined the program to react to President Obama’s remarks about the Trayvon Martin case and the race conversation in America.
MAYOR BOOKER on PRESIDENT OBAMA: “I’m really happy he said it… I was grateful that he came forward, not with some practiced speech, not reading from a teleprompter, but speaking from the heart in a way that could touch other hearts.”
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
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JAKE TAPPER, HOST: And for more reaction to the president’s remarks today, we’re joined now by Newark mayor and U.S. Senate candidate, Cory Booker, who joins me now by the phone.
Mayor Booker, thanks so much for calling in.
A personal speech here, uh, by the president.
What’s your reaction?
MAYOR CORY BOOKER, D-NEWARK: Well, I’m really happy he said it. And, uh, sometimes you break through the noise and the sound bites by getting personal, helping people to understand, uh, your own experiences and sharing that heart and that spirit with the country.
So I was grateful that he came forward, not with some practiced speech, not reading from a teleprompter, but speaking from the heart in a way that could touch other hearts.
TAPPER: He definitely spoke from the heart. He definitely was talking, uh, not just as a leader, but as an African-American, as someone who has experienced some discrimination in this country. Talk a little bit, if you would, about the line, uh, that politicians have to walk when it comes to talking about things relating to their own personal experience, um, with the risk of alienating, or at least not communicating, with some of the people listening.
BOOKER: Well, I actually think it’s a good thing. I think the more we hear the, uh, experiences of others, the more we’re able to relate them to our own experiences.
Look, we live in a nation where, if you listen to women talk about often the treatment they get, the second class treatment they get, you understand it’s real and you see how it evidences itself in a military that does not deal with the issues of rape in the right way.
If you listen to Muslim-Americans talk about now how it feels to be in a state of constant suspicion, you can relate it back to yourself.
So to have the president start from a very human experience but then to bridge out a little bit and help other people understand, most importantly, that we are all in this together, that we all share a common destiny, that the challenges of, uh, an inner city African-American boy does relate to our lives and we are invested in that outcome, no matter what our opinion.
TAPPER: The president notably said that Trayvon Martin could have been me in the past.
What’s your experience?
You — you have grown up in a world of some privilege. Your parents having worked hard to — to, uh, achieve in this country. You went to a nice school. Uh, you had a nice job before you became a city councilman and a mayor, not that those aren’t nice jobs, but you know what I mean.
Have you experienced the same kind of things that President Obama talked about today — clutching purses when you walk into an elevator, locking car doors when you walk down the street?
BOOKER: Yes, I wrote a very emotional arti — article in the — my student newspaper at Stanford after the Rodney King, uh, verdict, uh, and really expressing the pain it was having that kind of suspicion directed toward you, having interactions with the police, uh, being accused of stealing a car that I was driving, uh, that was my own. And — and, you know, that — that builds up. And it’s — it’s really frustrating. Uh, it’s really challenging.
But for me, you’re right, in many ways, uh, I grew up with, uh, a lot of privilege. And the challenge for me now is I see that a lot of these racial disparities, uh, that are experienced or (INAUDIBLE) treatment, um, manifest itself into pretty awful realities for other Americans, especially those, uh, that are struggling in — in — in poor communities.
And so when you have situations like New Jersey, where, uh, the black population is somewhere around 13, 14 percent, but the prison population is over 60 percent black, uh, we all have to understand, uh, that whether we want to point fingers of blame, the reality is, we all should accept responsibility, es — especially if we’d all understand that every child born in America is born equal and born with no higher proclivity for crime.
And this is where I think things are getting lost in this larger discussion, uh, as people fall into camps or point fingers of blame. Uh, that life, I see, we only have, really three options. We can accept things as they are, choose to blame others and do nothing or accept responsibility as a community for changing things.
And in order to create that climate, it has to start with two understandings. One is a knowledge that we need to know more about each other. And two, a knowledge to understand that we’re all in this together. And in some senses, I think the president was just talking about to — to America in that way, let’s understand each other. Let’s find deeper knowledge and love for one another.
And let’s also understand, if we do nothing as a country, we’re going to continue to have challenges and problems that affect us all, because the prison population soaring in America affects us all. Uh, dislocation and poverty affects us all. We’re all lesser by our inability to address these issues.
TAPPER: Mayor Booker, one last question before I let you go — and we appreciate your calling in, uh, from the road there. If you’re — you’re campaigning in New Jersey. You’re running for Senate. You’re appealing, uh, to, uh, an electorate that’s very different than the Newark electorate. And more than 50 percent of Newark, New Jersey is African-American. And as you pointed out, the vast majority of New Jersey voters are white.
Um, what do you say to those who say, look, Trayvon Martin started it?
Trayvon Martin, uh, was beating up George Zimmerman and this isn’t about race, this is about one specific encounter and I — I hear from people like this all the time on Twitter and on Facebook and — and e-mail, this is a false issue, that, yes, we can talk about racism, yes, we can talk about discrimination faced by African-Americans, but this case is the wrong way to do it and — and, uh, I know a lot of people out there resent, uh, people talking about well, we need to come to an understanding, we need communication, because they think it’s really only one side that wants to be heard from.
BOOKER: Well, look it, this case obviously is going to bring up strong feelings amongst a lot of Americans. And that’s understandable.
But one thing that I find a point of hope is that it’s forcing other issues, uh, whether they’re directly related to this case or tangential or what have you, it’s — it’s giving us an opportunity, as a country, to have more of a conversation about racial disparities and even economic disparities that exist in this country.
And so my hope for New Jersey, as we spend billions of dollars, uh — uh, as a state, uh, investing in prison systems and police, as we spend billions of dollars, uh, paying for the failure of — of public school systems in poor areas, as we spend billions of dollars, uh — uh dealing with the consequences of poverty, uh, that often is stratified along a — or correlates with racial lines, if we can come to a better understanding, I mean even a sense of urgency, that we can’t allow these issues just to lay fallow. We’ve got to find a way to bring our country and in New Jersey, our state, together to deal with these issues.
Because as we’ve seen in Newark, we have the potential not only to deal with issues of race and disparity, uh, but to empower people to succeed, whether they’re coming out of prison or going into a grade school, that if we do more as a community, we can overcome the racial lines and the lines of poverty and really become, uh, as the president said in the end of his remarks, a much more perfect union.
TAPPER: All right, Mayor Cory Booker, good luck out there on the campaign trail.
We’ll talk to you soon.
BOOKER: Thank you very much.
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