Mayor Bill de Blasio offered a very personal take on the deadly police-involved shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota during an interview Monday morning.
He appeared on CNN's "New Day" with first lady Chirlane McCray and renewed his call for unity between the police and the community.
But he also spoke about fears that people of color face every day, including his own son.
"When I talk to Dante, it's come to the point that he assumes that this is a part of life, a part of reality. Doesn't mean he's hopeless, doesn't mean that he doesn't want to be a part of changing the world, but I think it's a very simple equation. If you have white children you don't have to give them that particular warning, you gotta prepare them for a lot of other things in life, but you don't have to give them that particular warning," De Blasio said.
The mayor says that no one should live in fear, and says it's an issue America needs to overcome in order to move forward.
Demonstrators gathered again in the city on Sunday to protest the police shooting deaths of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota.
Hundreds marched from Times Square to Union Square in a protest that was much calmer than other recent demonstrations.
They raised their fists and held signs in remembrance of shooting victims Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
Police say there were no arrests.
Similar demonstrations were held in Memphis, Atlanta, and Boston over the weekend.
Meantime, the Dallas police chief is defending his departments use of a robot-delivered bomb to kill the shooter in Thursday's deadly attack on police.
At a news conference Monday, Chief David Brown says officers had already been killed when they decided to use a bomb to kill 25-year-old Micah Johnson.
The chief says 11 officers fired at the shooter and two people used the robot to kill him. The chief says the robot is still functional.
As the investigation continues, officials are starting to comb through more than one hundred hours of body cam footage and dashcam video as they attempt to learn more about the attack that left five officers dead and several others injured.
"Our plans are to date and time stamp the entire incident with all video footage available so that we can see from the beginning as much as we can real time action as it happened," Brown said.
Authorities say Johnson may have had a much bigger attack in mind.
The Army veteran Johnson kept a journal of combat tactics and had an arsenal of weapons at his home that included bomb-making materials.
President Barack Obama is set to visit Dallas on Tuesday to speak at an interfaith memorial service for the five slain officers.
He is expected to be joined by Vice President Joe Biden and former President George W. Bush.
The White House says President Obama plans to "personally express the nation's support and gratitude" for the service and sacrifice of the officers who were killed.
The president cut short his European trip to go to Dallas.
He spent his final day in Spain meeting with the country's acting prime minister and addressing U.S. troops at Naval Station Rota.