{"id":32479,"date":"2013-07-21T01:46:15","date_gmt":"2013-07-21T01:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=32479"},"modified":"2015-09-27T18:03:19","modified_gmt":"2015-09-27T18:03:19","slug":"obama-from-rev-wright-to-trayvon-martin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=32479","title":{"rendered":"Obama, from Rev. Wright to Trayvon Martin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obama, from Rev. Wright to Trayvon Martin<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Washington Post<\/a>
\n2013-07-20<\/p>\n

Dan Balz<\/strong><\/a>, Chief Correspondent<\/p>\n

President Obama\u2019s<\/a> comments on Friday<\/a> about the killing of Trayvon Martin were remarkable in many respects, but not least because of the distance he has traveled since the equally notable speech he delivered in 2008<\/a> during the controversy about his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When Obama \u2014 then an aspirant to the presidency \u2014 spoke in 2008, he sought to translate and explain the grievances, fears and resentments of both whites and blacks concerning the volatile topic of race in America. He spoke as a bridge builder who was trying to give something close to equal weight to the views of each side.<\/p>\n

On Friday, he again sought to calm a roiling controversy, but he spoke as an African American who happened to be president, and he spoke to explain why the not-guilty verdict for George Zimmerman<\/a> has been so difficult for so many African Americans to accept…<\/p>\n

…He barely mentioned George Zimmerman. He said he would let legal analysts and talking heads deal with the particulars of the case. Instead, his comments were all about Trayvon Martin and the black experience in America. \u201cI 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 doesn\u2019t go away,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This is, after all, a president who wrote a book \u2014 \u201cDreams From My Father<\/a>,\u201d about his search for racial identity as the child of a white mother and an absent black African father. He has thought long and hard about the complexities of race in America, and it was clear from what he said Friday that this is something he and his wife talk about privately.<\/p>\n

He spoke not just as an African American but also as an African American male \u2014 \u201cTrayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago\u201d \u2014 in a country where young African American males regularly die from gunshots or are, as he noted had happened to him, subject to being followed while shopping in a department store, no matter how innocently, or who can hear the locks on car doors click when they walk along a street…<\/p>\n

Read the entire opinion piece here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obama, from Rev. Wright to Trayvon Martin The Washington Post 2013-07-20 Dan Balz, Chief Correspondent President Obama\u2019s comments on Friday about the killing of Trayvon Martin were remarkable in many respects, but not least because of the distance he has traveled since the equally notable speech he delivered in 2008 during the controversy about his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,63,8,26,20],"tags":[15264,2875,10143,2581],"class_list":["post-32479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-barack-obama","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-dan-balz","tag-the-washington-post","tag-trayvon-martin","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32479","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=32479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42938,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32479\/revisions\/42938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}