In the wake of the Zimmerman verdict, President Barack Obama posed the question to White House pool press, “…if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?,” during a White House daily briefing.
In addition to the host of comments that we reported on Friday, he also offered three suggestions to address social ailments contextually related to issues of race plaguing the Martin-Zimmerman case:
1. Get the Justice Department involved with training local governments to reduce mistrust in the legal system. (It’s worth remembering that this episode started over an outcry that Zimmerman wasn’t arrested at all after the incident.)
2. Examine local laws — such as “Stand Your Ground” — and see if they “may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case rather than diffuse potential altercations.”
3. Think about ways to bolster and reinforce African American boys so they do not get caught up in the legal system (as the statistics indicate they are more likely to be).
