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By Perry Bacon Jr.

Casting aside some of his past wariness on the issue, President Barack Obama has spoken more bluntly about race in the wake of a group of police killings of African-American men.

In interviews and speeches the last several weeks, after grand juries declined to indict police officers in Ferguson or Staten Island for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, the president has invoked the word "racism" a term he has used sparingly in the past when describing conditions in America today to describe the challenges blacks and other minorities face.

He has described racial discrimination as "embedded deeply in society."

And Obama, who in a 2012 interview told the magazine Black Enterprise "I'm not the president of Black America," is now embracing the role of guiding the country in a public debate about how minorities and the police interact. He told Fusion in an interview "nobody's going to be pushing harder than me" on these highly-charged issues.

"The president has essentially changed his racial rhetoric," said Paul Butler, a Georgetown Law professor and civil rights expert. "It has evolved from cultural critiques of African-Americans to his actually saying the word 'racism.'"

Butler, who has criticized Obama's racial policies in the past, added, "I give the president credit for this evolution. I think he understands that recent events illustrate the inadequacy of his signature racial justice initiative 'My Brother's Keeper.' The problem isn't so much Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner needing to pull up their pants as it is systemic discrimination in criminal justice and other arenas."

Some conservatives have criticized Obama's comments, mostly notably former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who said in a recent FOX News interview, "We've had four months of propaganda, starting with the president, that everybody should hate the police."

Several of the president's remarks came before the shooting deaths of two New York City police officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, at the hands of a killer who suggested he was acting in retaliation for the deaths of Garner and Brown. In a statement after those shootings, Obama emphasized "his profound respect and gratitude for all law enforcement officers who serve and protect our communities, risking their own safety for ours everyday."

Some African-Americans worry that Obama's focus on changing police interactions with blacks is too narrow and potentially ineffective. And they argue that the recent comments by both the president and the First Lady on their personal experiences with racial profiling, such as Obama being mistaken for a valet in his years before being elected president, aren't representative of the much more dire situations many minorities face.

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Obama Speaks Bluntly About Race In Wake of Police Shootings