WASHINGTON
— President Obama did not mention race even as he addressed it on Friday,
instead letting his person and his words say it all: “If I had a son, he’d look
like Trayvon.”
Weighing in for the first time on the death of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black
teenager shot and killed a month ago in Florida by a neighborhood watch
volunteer, Mr. Obama in powerfully personal terms deplored the “tragedy” and, as
a parent, expressed sympathy for the boy’s mother and father.
“I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And when I think about
this boy, I think about my own kids,” Mr. Obama said. “Every parent in America,”
he added, “should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we
investigate every aspect of this and that everybody pulls together — federal,
state and local — to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.”
While speaking movingly from his perspective as the father of two girls, one a
teenager, Mr. Obama notably made no reference to the racial context that has
made the killing of Trayvon and the gunman’s claim of self-defense a rallying
point for African-Americans. Since Mr. Obama first began campaigning to be
“president of all the people,” as his advisers would put it when pressed on
racial issues, he has been generally reluctant to talk about race. And after his
historic election as the first black president, Mr. Obama learned the hard way
about the pitfalls of the chief executive opining on law enforcement matters
involving civil rights.
His remark at a news conference in the summer of 2009 that a white police
officer in Cambridge, Mass., had acted “stupidly” in arresting a black Harvard
law professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., at his home led to a national controversy
that ended with Mr. Obama holding a peacemaking “beer summit” with the two men
at the White House.
Until Friday, Mr. Obama had refrained from commenting on the death of Trayvon,
17, a high school student who was killed on the night of Feb. 26 in Sanford,
Fla., near Orlando. George Zimmerman, 28, the neighborhood watch volunteer, said
he fired at Trayvon in self-defense, although there is no apparent evidence that
the teenager, who held only a bag of Skittles candy and an iced tea, was doing
anything wrong.
But when a reporter asked about the case at a White House event introducing Jim
Yong Kim as his choice to be president of the World Bank, Mr. Obama, who
typically leaves such events ignoring the shouted questions of reporters, seemed
prepared.
“It was inevitable given the high-profile nature of this story that he would be
asked about it,” his press secretary, Jay Carney, said later. He added that Mr.
Obama “had thought about it and was prepared to answer that question when he got
it.”
Mr. Carney himself had refused for days to speak for Mr. Obama about Trayvon’s
death, and other advisers on Friday likewise declined to weigh in on the
thinking at the White House about the case and its repercussions. Mr. Obama’s
mostly white male inner circle has long been reluctant to talk for their boss
when the subject is race, given how personal it is for him. One aide, speaking
only on the grounds of anonymity, said that there was no internal debate about
how to respond to Trayvon’s death, but that Mr. Obama wanted to await the
Justice Department’s initial review of the case and the announcement this week
by his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., that the civil rights division
would investigate.
In his remarks, Mr. Obama endorsed the Justice Department investigation as well
as efforts by local and state agencies in Florida to examine the circumstances
of the shooting. Trayvon’s parents “are right to expect that all of us as
Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves, and that
we’re going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened,” Mr. Obama said.
The president indicated his caution in not reacting earlier was due to the
hazards of addressing an issue under inquiry. “I’m the head of the executive
branch and the attorney general reports to me so I’ve got to be careful about my
statements to make sure that we’re not impairing any investigation that’s taking
place right now,” he said.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader who organized a rally on Thursday
night in Florida protesting the handling of the case and has been working with
the Martin family, praised Mr. Obama’s comments and took issue with black
critics who say the president should have spoken out sooner.
“We’re trying to win a case, not just have the president make high-profile
statements,” Mr. Sharpton said in an interview. “As one who’s been with the
family, the president making a statement before the Justice Department announced
an investigation could have been used by Zimmerman to say the White House was
pre-judging a legal case.”
Charles J. Ogletree, an African-American law professor at Harvard who taught Mr.
Obama there and remains a confidant, said there was no doubt the president had
been moved by Trayvon’s death. “Nothing is more frightening for a parent than
losing a child,” Professor Ogletree said. “I know personally that he felt this
pain, from the moment he was made aware of the case.” He added: “He has two
young daughters. This is personal.”
Mr. Carney said he could not say whether Mr. Obama planned to call Trayvon’s
parents, as some black activists have urged. Boyce D. Watkins, a Syracuse
University professor and the founder of the Your Black World coalition, said
Friday in a Twitter message, “If Trayvon’s mother were white, would Obama give
her a call?”
Dr. Watkins, in an interview, called Mr. Obama’s statement “a step in the right
direction,” but added that the president could “squash a great deal of the
criticism” with a call to the parents. And while applauding Mr. Obama’s comment
that his own son would look like Trayvon, Dr. Watkins said the president’s
remarks were characteristic of how Mr. Obama talks to black people.
“That’s what I would refer to as a standard political smoke signal that
President Obama sends through the back door to the black community,” Dr. Watkins
said. “He communicates to the black community in code language. That’s a subtle
way of saying, ‘I know this kid is black.’ ”
Mr. Obama’s comments appeared to prompt several of the Republicans campaigning
to run against him to weigh in against the shooting for the first time. Both
Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum said that based on what they knew, Florida’s
“Stand Your Ground” self-defense law should not apply in Mr. Zimmerman’s case.
Speaking publicly for the first time on Friday evening, Craig A. Sonner, Mr.
Zimmerman’s lawyer, said on CNN that he would not use the Stand Your Ground
defense should his client be charged in the shooting. He said he would use
self-defense.
Mr. Santorum, campaigning at a shooting range in Louisiana, which holds a
presidential primary on Saturday, called the decision of local officials not to
immediately prosecute Mr. Zimmerman “another chilling example of horrible
decisions made by people in this process.” Mitt Romney, the Republican
front-runner, told reporters in Louisiana that the shooting was “a terrible
tragedy, unnecessary, uncalled for and inexplicable at this point.”
