{"id":32458,"date":"2013-07-20T03:25:03","date_gmt":"2013-07-20T03:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=32458"},"modified":"2016-09-19T00:51:56","modified_gmt":"2016-09-19T00:51:56","slug":"there-are-very-few-african-american-men-in-this-country-who-haven%e2%80%99t-had-the-experience-of-being-followed-when-they-were-shopping-in-a-department-store-that-includes-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=32458","title":{"rendered":"There are very few African-American men in this country who haven\u2019t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me."},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>You know, when <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin\" target=\"_blank\">Trayvon Martin<\/a> was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there\u2019s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it\u2019s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that\u2014that doesn\u2019t go away.<\/p>\n<p>There are very few African American men in this country who haven&#8217;t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store.\u00a0 That includes me.\u00a0 There are very few African American men who haven&#8217;t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.\u00a0 That happens to me\u2014at least before I was a senator.\u00a0 There are very few African Americans who haven&#8217;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.\u00a0 That happens often&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>President Barack Obama, \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=32454\" target=\"_blank\">Remarks by the President on Trayvon Martin<\/a>,\u201d <em>The White House: Office of the Press Secretary<\/em>, (Washington, D. C., July 19, 2013). <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/the-press-office\/2013\/07\/19\/remarks-president-trayvon-martin\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/the-press-office\/2013\/07\/19\/remarks-president-trayvon-martin<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there\u2019s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,3],"tags":[15253,10143],"class_list":["post-32458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-excerpts","tag-the-white-house","tag-trayvon-martin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32458"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49151,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32458\/revisions\/49151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}