English: Tavis Smiley, 2011 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Brittney Cooper

Like many on the left, I have vocally and publicly criticized President Obama for the often chastising and paternalistic tone that he takes with African American audiences. However, I was pleasantly surprised by his remarks last Friday in the wake of George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the murder of Trayvon Martin.The most remarkable thing about this speech is that it is the first time that black men’s humanity and personhood have been the subject of a public conversation at the highest levels of government. By stepping into Trayvon Martin’s shoes, President Obama asked the nation to see him, in that moment, first, as a black man, as the kind of national subject who had been subject to racial profiling, to the sounds of locked car doors as he merely walked down the street, to women many of them white women, I suspect clutching their purses and holding their breaths while riding the elevator with him.What the president implicitly acknowledged but did not say is what so many have been saying over these last few weeks: Trayvon Martin’s humanity and believability was on trial. The six jurors who found Zimmerman not guilty — of anything — demonstrated their profound inability to conceptualize black male victimhood. That Trayvon Martin was a young black teenager who was unfairly followed, confronted and killed seemed beyond the scope of their limited racial imagination.The president, however, challenged the validity of the jury’s interpretation, while simultaneously characterizing the proceedings as professional and insisting that we peacefully respond to the verdict. This rhetorical tactic cleared the way for a more potent argument: If a future president could be followed in stores and unfairly viewed as a violent threat, surely it could have happened to an unknown black teenager minding his own business on a neighborhood sidewalk.

Read More Tavis Smiley gets President Obama all wrong – Salon.com.