President Obama delivered an emotional and frank surprise speech Friday in the aftermath of the not guilty verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman.
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks about the Trayvon Martin case in the press briefing room at the White House in Washington, July 19, 2013. (Photo by Larry Downing/Reuters)
“Trayvon Martin could have been me – 35 years ago,” President Obama said during a surprise speech Friday afternoon from the White House.
Speaking publicly for the first time on the case since the jury returned a not guilty verdict for George Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, the nation’s first black president discussed the status of young black men in a frank and emotional speech.
“I did want to talk about context and how people have responded to it and how people are feeling,” the president said. “You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why in the African-American community at least, there is a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.”
Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges on Saturday. He claimed it was self-defense that led him to shoot Martin, an unarmed black teen, in Sanford, Fla., February 26, 2012.
“There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed while they were shopping at a department store,” Obama said. “That includes me.”
“There are very few African-Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often,” Obama continued. “I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida, and it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.”
The president praised the peaceful protests that have happened around the country in the aftermath of the verdict, and said it was time for the whole country to “do some soul-searching,” while also calling for that soul-searching to not be tainted by hollow political promises.
“How do we bolster our African-American boys?” he asked. “The more that we can do to give them a sense that their country cares about them and values them and is willing to invest in them.”
He grappled with trying to explain why many in the black community reacted personally to verdict and with calls for further investigation into the death of Martin.
The fact that a lot of African-American boys are painted with a broad brush and the excuse is given that ‘Well there are these statistics given that show that African-American boys are more violent,’ using that as an excuse to then see sons treated differently causes pain. I think the African-American community is also not naïve in understanding that statistically someone like Trayvon Martin was probably statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else. So folks understand the challenges that exist for African-American boys, but they get frustrated I think if they feel that there is no context for it and that context is being denied. And that all contributes I think to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in a same kind of scenario that from top to bottom both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.
A number of commentators immediately remarked on the candidness of the country’s president speaking on race and in such specific and personal ways.
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“For this president to come out and be so full-throated about it…says something about race, says something about this president and the time that we’re in, how important it is to have a black president,” said Joy-Ann Reid, managing editor of African-American news site TheGrio, Friday on MSNBC.
“My sense is that we’re going to look back on this moment with the president of the United States standing and making the statements he did in a couple of critically important ways,” said Melissa Harris-Perry, host of her eponymous weekend show on MSNBC. “Just that recognition of the humanity and the history of black people from the president of the United States is absolutely historic.”
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After a six-woman jury cleared Zimmerman of all charges, a number of black organizations, including the NAACP, called on the Department of Justice to consider the case under federal hate crime rules.
Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the NAACP’s annual meeting in Florida earlier this week and spoke out against the state’s Stand Your Ground laws that allows an individual to use deadly force if they fear for their lives. Although Stand Your Ground was not used in the Zimmerman defense, Florida police initially said they could not arrest him because of such state laws.
“It’s time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense,” Holder said.
Obama acknowledged on Friday that “each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes when it comes to race.” But, he added, “It doesn’t mean that racism is eliminated.”
Amanda Sakuma contributed reporting.