(AFP/Getty Images)
EMPATHY: In the wake of the Zimmerman verdict, President Obama yesterday said that in his younger years he had been racially profiled. (Family photo/ Splash News)
President Obama yesterday opened up about the Trayvon Martin verdict with an emotional speech about the racial divide in America — and compared himself to the unarmed black teen who was gunned down on his way home from a Florida store last year.
“Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago,” the president said in a very personal, moving statement that touched on the “understandable” protests in the verdict’s wake.
“If a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different,” Obama said during an impromptu appearance at the White House daily press briefing.
Young black males are “painted with a broad brush,” Obama said.
Nearly all of them have been profiled at some point in their lives, he added — himself included.
“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,” he told reporters.
“That happens to me — at least before I was a senator,” he said.
“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 the chance to get off,” he said.
“That happens often.”
He said that in speaking to kids across the country, and watching daughters Malia and Sasha as they interact with their friends, he has learned that “they’re better than we are.”
Last Sunday, the day following the acquittal of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, Obama made just one brief statement, devoid of any mention of race, urging “calm reflection.”
His subsequent silence on the verdict had been seized upon by opinion-makers as an abdication by the nation’s moralist-in-chief; but by speaking, he also risks accusations of “politicizing” the verdict.
Obama warned those enraged by the verdict not to count on satisfaction from the Justice Department, which is conducting a preliminary probe into possible charges of civil-rights violations.
“I know that [Attorney General] Eric Holder is reviewing what happened down there,” Obama said.
“But I think it’s important for people to have some clear expectations here.
“Traditionally, these are issues of state and local government,” he said of matters involving criminal laws and their enforcement.
And while Florida’s “stand your ground” law wasn’t used as a defense in the Zimmerman trial, the existence of such laws still sends a message “that someone who is armed potentially has the right to use those firearms, even if there’s a way for them to exit from a situation,” he said.
We should ask ourselves, he said, “Is that really going to be contributing to the kind of peace and security and order that we’d like to see?”
Had Trayvon been armed and of age, “Could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?” Obama asked rhetorically.
“And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman, who had followed him in a car, because he felt threatened?”
Today Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, will attend a 9 a.m. rally with the Rev. Al Sharpton at his National Action Network offices at 106 W. 145th St.
A noon rally is planned for the federal plaza near Police Headquarters as part of Sharpton’s multicity “Justice for Trayvon” day of action.
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