SD
Larry Downing / Reuters
President Barack Obama
speaks about the Trayvon Martin case in the press briefing room at the White
House in Washington, July 19, 2013.
By Michael O'Brien, Political Reporter, NBC News
President
Barack Obama made a surprise appearance at the White House Friday to discuss
African-Americans' reaction to last weekend's verdict in the George Zimmerman
case, saying that "Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago."
"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's 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 -- that doesn't go away,"
he said.
Obama addressed the issue personally as well, saying,
“There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the
experience of being followed when they are shopping at a department store.
And that includes me.”
He recalled his own experiences before becoming a
nationally-recognized politician, noting, “There are very few African- American
men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the
locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a
senator. 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.”
And he contended that these attitudes often shape
perceptions in the United States.
“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,” he said.
Asked if the president had thoroughly contemplated his
remarks, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, “I don’t think there’s
any question, and you can judge by what he just said and how he said it, he
knows what he thinks and he knows what he feels, and he had not just in the
past week but for a good portion of his life given a lot of thought to these
issues.”
Obama also suggested that the outcome of the case could
have been different if Martin were white. "If a white male teen would have
been involved in this scenario," he said, "both the outcome and the
aftermath might have been different."
The president also nodded to the Justice Department
investigation which is probing whether or not to bring federal civil rights
charges against Zimmerman. But Obama also urged state and local officials to
review their own procedures to see how to improve their law enforcement
practices.
He also called for a review of so-called "Stand Your
Ground" laws, a central issue in the case.
"If Trayvon Martin was of age and was armed, could he
have stood his ground on that sidewalk?" Obama asked. "If the answer
to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we should
examine those laws."
Obama said he wanted to "reiterate what I said on
Sunday, which is there are going to be a lot of arguments about the legal
issues in the case. I'll let all the legal analysts and talking heads
address those issues."
The president added, "The judge conducted the trial in
a professional manner. The prosecution and the defense made their arguments.
The jurors were properly instructed that in a case such as this, reasonable
doubt was relevant and they rendered a verdict. And once the jury's
spoken, that's how our system works."
And though Obama sidestepped the idea of demanding a new,
national conversation on race -- and while he said that racism was far from
eliminated -- the president ended on an upbeat moment, expressing his view that
race relations are "getting better."
"I don’t want us to lose sight that things are getting
better. Each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing
attitudes when it comes to race. I doesn’t mean that we’re in a post racial
society. It doesn’t mean that racism is eliminated," he said. "But
you know, when I talk to Malia and Sasha and I listen to their friends and I
see them interact, they’re better than we are."
Obama added: "We have to be vigilant and we have to
work on these issues, and those of us in authority should be doing everything
we can to encourage the better angels of our nature as opposed to using these
episodes to heighten divisions. But we should also have confidence that kids
these days I think have more sense than we did back then, and certainly more
than our parents did or our grandparents did, and that along this long,
difficult journey, we’re becoming a more perfect union -- not a perfect union,
but a more perfect union."
This story was originally published on Fri Jul 19, 2013 1:46 PM EDT
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