Obama on race

President Obama shocked the White House press corps on Friday afternoon when he showed up unannounced at the daily press briefing. The president spoke for about 15 minutes, very personally, about how the George Zimmerman verdict felt to African-Americans like him, and whether we may be able to wring something good out of it. “Trayvon could have been me 35 years ago,” Obama told reporters before sharing a few of his own personal experiences with racial profiling. Like being tailed by security in department stores, or crossing the street to the sound of car door locks clicking. But beyond the anger and the protests, said the president, the important question is: "Where do we take this? Are there some concrete things we might be able to do?” He offered three: better training for police, more support for young black men and a careful reconsideration of laws like Stand Your Ground. The president asked the law's most ardent supoorters to consider this: "If Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman, because he felt threatened? And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.”