President Obama on Zimmerman Verdict
President Obama spoke for about 17 minutes, without notes and in very personal terms, about our response to the Zimmerman verdict.  You can see him sharing his thoughts here.

Our heart goes out to the families.

Legal issues are complex and ongoing, but once a jury speaks that is how our system works.

And yet our response also includes a lot of very real and understandable frustration, in part because the context for this verdict is often unacknowledged or even denied.

Like Trayvon Martin and his peers today, the president and African American boys and men 35 years ago, it is common to be followed in a store, to hear locks click upon your approach, to feel like you are painted with one broad brush.

These experiences, and the history of racial violence in America, including the disproportionate application of violence through the criminal justice system to African American boys and men…it is through these that the African American community interprets the Zimmerman verdict.

These experiences and this history cannot justify any individual action, but to deny the relevance of these experiences adds frustration to the pain felt in African American communities.  The context matters because it lends meaning to events and actions...and because our circumstances, contexts, can be changed.

There are things we can do, and the president considers a few, including searching our own souls, individually and in our families, so we might continue to become a more perfect union.

That was the basic structure of his brief comments.  Thank you Mr. President, for sharing your thoughts and feelings on this important issue.  Coates is, as usual, worth listening to on this as well.  And a very good friend sent me this lament from a white father.  Of course, the Daily Show gets it right as well.