Advice Best Left Ignored

"It is not enough for him to come on national television and pretend there is a false moral equivalency between police people who are armed and black people who are vulnerable constantly to this," Dyson said. "He needs to use his bully pulpit to step up and articulate this as a vision."

So Dyson wants the president to use the power of his office to express the "vision" of how African-Americans are vulnerable to abuse by police? As the head of the executive branch, it is Obama's job to enforce the law. What does such a powerful person understand about vulnerability?

Above all, Dyson believes that Obama -- because of "his unique experience" -- must make the presidency personal.

He put it this way: "The president has a responsibility to say ... 'As an African-American male I know what it means to not have an autopsy report released. I know what it means to have a young man besmirched posthumously with no relationship that we can tell between what that was about on that camera and how he died.' And I'm saying to you that if he could inform American society that, look, yes, we must keep the law, yes we must keep the peace, people must calm their passion, but let me explain to you why people might be hurt, why they might be angry and why they might be upset. That's his responsibility to tell that truth regardless of what those political fallouts will be."

Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder is reading from that script. During his visit to Ferguson, the nation's first black attorney general met with the family of shooting victim Michael Brown and talked about being racially profiled by police and how the experience left him "angry and upset." Holder even told folks that he understood their distrust of police.

"I am the attorney general of the United States," he said. "But I am also a black man."

Holder recalled that, while working as a federal prosecutor at the Justice Department, he was stopped by police in Washington, D.C. He also cited another instance where his car was searched during a traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.

There is nothing wrong with Holder sharing those stories. But it won't do anything to improve the situation in Ferguson.

Obama should continue to speak about what's happening in an American city that has suffered too much. But he must resist pressure to frame that suffering in a racial context. There are enough people doing so already.

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Ruben Navarrette's email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com.