I am so proud of MY President today when he had the courage to say, essentially, "I am Trayvon Martin."
Yes, I know it will cause him to bleed what political capital he has and therefore issues I care about may suffer.
Yes, I know telling the truth alone won't change anything. But failing to tell the truth will set the status quo in concrete.
I spent a first career in the criminal justice system and a second career teaching about it. There is racial bias in every nook and cranny and the picture drawn by that biased system is the environment is where a middle class kid becomes a threat...and of course he would have no right to defend himself against an older man who outweighs him by fifty pounds ostentatiously stalking, accosting him on a dark street.
You see, some people can stand their ground and others can't.
The racial bias in the application of the stand your ground laws is not opinion. It's arithmetic.
The rise in "justified" homicides as a result of stand your ground laws is not opinion. It's arithmetic.
The Philadelphia speech on race was the best part of his first presidential campaign but it was just that--a political speech.
The risk he took today, speaking off the cuff on this radioactive topic, is not the smartest political move the man has ever made.
He's gotten where he is avoiding the "angry black man" trope. I understand that.
He's walked on eggshells to be everybody's President and by his policies isolate the racists. I understand that.
Yet today's lack of caution is not something for which I can fault him.
The right wing echo chamber is all over his remarks like, if you'll pardon the expression, white on rice.
There's always been a political price tag on the truth.
When President Kennedy was goaded to express an opinion on the sit-ins while they were still going on, he famously remarked ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL that "as a moral leader, the next President must play his role in interpreting the great moral issues which are involved in our crusade for human rights. He must exert the great moral and educational force of his office to help bring equal access to public facilities from churches to lunch counters, and to support the right of every American to stand up for his rights, even if on occasion he must sit down for them."
LBJ's famous prediction that his signature on civil rights legislation would deliver the south to the Republican Party for a generation was, if anything, too optimistic.
Can the first black POTUS do less?
What can you say to those who call him a "black racist" when he was raised by his white mother and his white grandmother? The charge refutes itself for those not wearing tinfoil chapeaus.
So, yes, there'll be a price.
Yes, it might have been wiser to prepare remarks and hug the TelePrompTer.
But I haven't felt such emotion about this President since the night he was sworn in. He makes me feel privileged to live in my times.
