"When Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son," President Obama told reporters Friday afternoon. "Another way of saying that was Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago."
In extensive and personal comments concerning last Saturday's not-guilty verdict for George Zimmerman, the Florida neighborhood watch volunteer who shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon in February 2012, the president said he wanted to add "context" to what's become an intense national discussion about the case and race relations.
"When you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there's a lot of pain," Obama said, "it's important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and history that doesn't go away."
Obama said that "there are very few African-American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they go shopping. That includes me."
He said many African-American men have heard car locks click when they cross a street -- "that's happened to me." And he spoke of African-American men getting on elevators to see "a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she has a change to get off."
"Those sets of experience inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida," said the president.
Adding that he doesn't want to "make excuses" for the fact that young African-American men are "disproportionately ... both victims and perpetrators of violence," Obama also wondered whether if Trayvon had been a "white teen" instead of a young African-American, "from top to bottom both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different."
As for how to respond, Obama:
-- Said violent protests would dishonor "what happened to Trayvon Martin and his family."
-- "Stand your ground" laws and any others that might "encourage" altercations rather than diffuse them need to be reexamined.
-- The nation needs to do some "soul searching."
He ended, though, by saying Americans should not "lose sight that things are getting better. ... Each successive generation is making progress in changing attitudes on race."
He sees that in his own daughters, Obama said: "They're better than we were."
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