By Greg Sargent

Obama has often been called upon to use his unique historical position as the first black president to engage the nation in a conversation about continuing racial injustice. In a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room just now, he waded into the debate over the shooting of Trayvon Martin in a remarkably personal manner that will probably cause far more extensive ripples than even his big 2008 race speech did.

Obama’s remarks will be chewed over for some time to come, but I just wanted to focus for now on a couple aspects of it. Obama made what amounted to an extended plea for people to try to understand how African Americans might view the shooting of Trayvon. He then segued into a discussion of “stand your ground” laws:

I know that there’s been commentary about the fact that the stand your ground laws in Florida were not used as a defense in the case.

On the other hand, if we’re sending a message as a society in our communities that someone who is armed potentially has the right to use those firearms even if there’s a way for them to exit from a situation, is that really going to be contributing to the kind of peace and security and order that we’d like to see?

And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these “stand your ground” laws, I just ask people to consider if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman, who had followed him in a car, because he felt threatened?

And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.

Obama is stating that the evaluation of such laws cannot be divorced from a racial context. In his initial response to the verdict, Obama avoided the topic of race, and alluded only to the “passions” that it had unleashed, in essence striking the tone of conciliation that has become so familiar. Today Obama placed the debate over the shooting — and over stand your ground laws — squarely in the context of the African American experience and the country’s history of racial discrimination, arguing, in effect, that race is inevitably the subtext of such arguments.

Read More Obama takes on race.