Sound Off: President Gives Personal Speech on Race in America

President Barack Obama delivered his most personal speech on race and racism in America Friday, addressing the George Zimmerman verdict the night before hundreds of planned protests around the country.

Previously accused by some activists of avoiding racially sensitive issues during his first term, the country’s first black president attempted Friday to convey what it is like to be a black man in America in an effort to explain the widespread frustration with the Zimmerman verdict.

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"…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 doesn't go away. There are very few African American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping at a department store. That includes me. 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. That happens often."

"And 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 African American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws, and that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case. And this isn’t to say that the African American community is naive about the fact that African American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system that they are disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence.

 "…So Folks understand the challenges that exist for exist for African American boys, but they get frustrated 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 the same kind of scenario, that from top to bottom both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.

"Where do we take this? How do we learn some lessons from this and move in a positive direction?”

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK IN THE COMMENTS

Does the president’s speech influence how you see the Zimmerman verdict? In answer to his question, are there any lessons to be learned from the fatal shooting, the trial or its aftermath?