Speaking from the Rose Garden, the President predicted that the same sequence would repeat itself until the root causes were addressed.
"We'll go through the same cycles of periodic conflicts between the police and communities and the occasional riots in the streets," he warned.

"And everybody will feign concern until it goes away and then we go about our business as usual," the President said.

His call for a solution that comes from a cross-section of classes and races underscored the president's insistence that he is limited in what he can do to solve entrenched social problems.

He offered a survey of the wide range of social ills that he said exacerbates the problem--including substance abuse, mass incarceration, absentee fathers and failure of public schools.
Change will only come when "we're paying attention all the time," he said.

"The poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history," he said at the time. The more history repeats itself, though, the more maddening it becomes for the White House.

The country, he said, has to do some "soul-searching." "This has been going on for a long time," the President said. "This is not new. And we shouldn't pretend that it's new."

"If we think just sending the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there, without changing those communities, to help lift up those communities and give those kids opportunity?' then we're not going to solve this problem," the President said.

The President spoke vigorously and at length about the need for communities as a whole to wipe out poverty and other underlying issues that have sparked unrest and riots. He cited shortcomings in early education, the criminal justice system and job training.

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