Bishop T.D. Jakes on healing after Dallas police ambush
The nation is still grieving and racial tensions remain high in the aftermath of last week's deadly police ambush during a protest against police brutality in Dallas.
Bishop T.D. Jakes of The Potter's House Church held a special town hall meeting at his Dallas megachurch Sunday, which was attended by police, local leaders and family members of shooting victims. According to Jakes, the pain overtaking the nation is indicative of "unresolved issues" that must be addressed in order to move forward.
- Dallas mayor: Our police officers died for Black Lives Matter movement
- NAACP president on "horrific" Dallas ambush, police shootings
Like others, the pastor of the megachurch pointed out the "irony" of Dallas police being targeted since the city is not in the "quagmire of police brutality" seen in other parts of the country, and he commended the leadership of Dallas Police Chief David Brown and Mayor Mike Rawlings. However, the pastor said with the latest tragedy, the nation has "reached a cusp."
Jakes said "something has to happen," beginning with conversation -- even if talking can be uncomfortable.
"I think we have a propensity to think, 'let's just be quiet and let's not say anything about it. Maybe it'll go away,'" Jakes told "CBS This Morning" Thursday. "You can't just shush things up and make them go away... There's a certain degree of infection in these various communities and when you see this kind of swelling and uprising, you have to respond in a way that gives care and attention."
But he expressed frustration that the conversation has turned into a war over "semantics." The killings of five police officers when a sniper opened fire last Thursday -- during what was meant to be a peaceful protest over the police shooting deaths of two black men -- was followed by immediate backlash against the Black Lives Matter movement. Critics -- including former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani -- slammed the activists as racists.
"Whenever a person makes a statement you need to go back to the person and see what their intention is, and they've been quite clear that the intention is not to say that white lives don't matter... but it is to bring attention to the swelling and the problem in black communities so they feel like black lives are not being treated as if they mattered," Jakes explained. "We're worried about terminologies. I think it's irrelevant what the term is. Let's go on the issue behind the term and let's fix it."
Jakes also said the fallout from the lone act of the sniper -- a black Army veteran -- on blacks was "unfair," comparing it to the response to the South Carolina church massacre last year.
"It's interesting because when the African American young man did what he did, people tied it back to our community and they tied it back to Black Lives Matter. But when Dylan Roof did what he did, the white community did not have to bear the brunt of one individual," Jakes explained. "Forty million African Americans in this country. That one incident doesn't reflect the opinion of all of those people."
Despite the importance of bringing attention to the issue, Jakes added that "conversations will not fix it." He also called for action, pointing to what he described as the "dysfunctional" criminal justice system, and chastised both Republicans and Democrats for "not doing anything," despite bipartisan support for reform.
"We have to fix that thing because not only does it create injustice on the sidewalk but we also create communities of people who were once incarcerated, who can't get a job, who can't get a place to stay and how can you expect people to survive if they don't have the very basics of fundamentals of life itself?" Jakes said. "We know how to fix it and we can fix it."
One way to begin making amends, Jakes said, is to reform the membership of police departments to better reflect the demographics of the communities they serve.
"So that sensitivity goes beyond a training that you had five years go toward day-to-day experiences that goes on in the patrol car," Jakes explained.
Jakes also agreed with Chief Brown's remark that cops are being asked to do "too much," and called for greater support for law enforcement.
"It's way too much and then we have certain communities that are disproportionately dealing with issues like that because of poverty and joblessness and those police officers who go in there are underpaid," Jakes said. "We have to listen at the police officers and we have to respond to them in such a way that they can do their jobs more effectively."