Support for the Black Lives Matter movement has skyrocketed in recent weeks after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minnesota. The harrowing video of Floyd's death—as well as the murders of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery—have brought to the forefront the racism and violence embedded within the very framework of law and society in the United States.
Individuals and entire governing bodies have navigated these injustices in America for centuries.
But rest assured, President Donald Trump insists that he'll fix it quickly.
The President went to Dallas, Texas on Thursday to participate in a roundtable on racial justice titled "Transition to Greatness," where he he seemed to promise that Americans would unite to defeat racism in the United States quickly and easily.
Watch below.
The President said:
"Americans are good and virtuous people. We have to work together to confront bigotry and prejudice wherever they appear, but we'll make no progress and heal no wounds by falsely labeling tens of millions of decent Americans as racists or bigots. We have to get everybody together, we have to be on the same path. If we don't do that, we have problems. And we'll do that. We'll do it. I think we're gonna do it very easily. It'll go quickly and it'll go very easily."
Trump's words come just after many of the nation's streets suffocated from tear gas and flames. Videos of police beating peaceful protesters went viral too quickly to count. Legislative skirmishes are erupting on whether to remove statues and flags honoring pro-slavery confederate soldiers.
These are all opposing responses to bigotry, and none of them will go away easily.
In his I Have a Dream speech, Dr. Martin Luther King warned that the "jangling discords of our nation" could transform into a "beautiful symphony of brotherhood," but only if Americans took on the laborious task of hewing a stone of hope out of a mountain of despair.
Dr. King knew in 1963 that this was never going to be easy, and the President's assurance that it would be struck many as a dismissal on his part of the scope of these atrocities.
Then again, people pointed out, Trump has a habit of assuring that insurmountable problems can be alleviated with little effort.
Many Twitter users thought Trump's oversimplification of racism and bigotry was comparable to his early dismissals of the virus that's gone on to kill over 100 thousand Americans.
Hopefully the President will prove skeptics wrong, but 400 years of American history doesn't bode well for his odds.
