President Obama made a surprise visit to the White House press room on Friday to speak about the aftermath of the Trayvon Martin case, making some of the boldest and most open remarks about race of his presidency.
President Obama said Friday that all Americans should respect a jury’s acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin, but white Americans should also understand that African Americans are pained by Trayvon’s death and continue to face racial discrimination.
“Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,” the nation’s first African-American president said during a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room.
Obama, who last year said the 17-year-old Florida shooting victim could just as easily have been his son, talked about how he has been subjected to casual prejudice. He also said African Americans need to address the problems of violence in their own communities.
African-American males know they are more likely to be both “victims and perpetrators of violence,” Obama said, and “somebody like Trayvon Martin was probably statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else.”
The problem is that so many people paint with a “broad brush” and see all black young men as potential criminals, Obama said.
While the president began by commending the judge in the case as “professional” and the jurors as “properly instructed,” he also spoke of the case within the much broader context of race in America.
When Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said, This could’ve been my son. Another way of saying that is, Trayvon Martin could’ve 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 doesn’t go away.
That history, Obama said, is especially salient to black men. “There are very few African-American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store—that includes me,” he said. The same goes for African-American men who have heard “locks click on the doors of cars,” or seen a woman in an elevator “clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off.”
He cited racial disparities in the criminal justice system, and how blacks tend to be charged more often with drug offenses and sentenced to longer prison terms than whites. He also said it’s fair to wonder what would have happened in Florida if the shooter had been a young African-American.
Obama said he respects the different views of the verdict, but the trial was conducted professionally, and “once the jury has spoken, that’s how our system works.” While demonstrations and peaceful protests are understandable, he said violence “dishonors what happened to Trayvon Martin and his family.”
Said Obama: “Now, the question for me at least, and I think for a lot of folks, is where do we take this?”
While the Justice Department investigates whether to charge Zimmerman with civil rights violations in the case, Obama said state and local levels should examine whether changes to laws can head off violent confrontations. He cited laws to ban racial profiling, and proposed new kind of training for law enforcement in order “to reduce the kind of mistrust in the system that sometimes currently exists.”
The president also questioned the wisdom of Florida’s “stand your ground” law, which, in the view of critics, all but encourages confrontation that could turn deadly.
Obama also suggested people consider whether Trayvon also had the right to stand his ground, adding: “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?”
The president’s comments also looked at the real problems of “poverty and dysfunction” in African-American communities, saying they can “be traced to a very difficult history.” As he said, young African-American men are disproportionately “both the victims and perpetrators of violence,” and Trayvon was “statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else.” But that’s no excuse for unequal treatment.
The fact that a lot of African-American boys are painted with a broad brush and the excuses given—”Well, there are these statistics out there that show that African-American boys are more violent,” using that as an excuse to then see sons treated different causes pain.
To combat these broad social issues, Obama offered three broad suggestions:
1. Get the Justice Department involved with training local governments to reduce mistrust in the legal system. (It’s worth remembering that this episode began with an outcry that Zimmerman wasn’t arrested at all after the incident.)
2. Examine local laws—such as “Stand Your Ground”—and see if they “may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case rather than diffuse potential altercations.”
3. Think about ways to bolster and support African-American boys so they do not get caught up in the legal system (as the statistics indicate they are more likely to be).
Even despite the discriminatory experiences Obama described, African-Americans perceive less discrimination in some areas today than they did 10 and 20 years ago, according to the results of a new Gallup survey. A shrinking share of blacks blame discrimination for black-white disparities in jobs, income, and housing.
The president did not address many of the true causes of violence in African-American households like the incredibly high number of single mothers, drug abuse and gangs. These factors contribute, among all races, to make violence commonplace.
