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• But the president was quietly keeping tabs on the country's response to the outcome of the racially charged trial, particularly in the black community. He discussed it with his family. He was ready to address it during a series of interviews with Spanish-language TV stations earlier in the week, if asked. He wasn't.
• By Thursday, aides said Obama was telling top advisers the country needed to hear from him, not in a way the White House would script it but in a frank discussion of his views and experiences as a black man in America.
• On Friday, he stepped up to the podium in the White House briefing room and delivered a rare and extensive reflection on race by a president who has shied away from the issue even as he is constantly dogged by it.
• "When Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son," Obama said. "Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago."
• ___

• MIAMI (AP) -- When President Barack Obama told the nation on Friday that slain black teenager Trayvon Martin could have been him 35 years ago, many black Americans across the nation nodded their head in silent understanding.
• Like the president, they too have seen people walk across the street and lock their car doors as they got near. They, too, know what it's like to be followed while shopping in a department store.
• In many ways, it was the frank talk on what it can be like to be black in America that many African Americans had been waiting to hear from Obama, especially since a Florida jury last weekend acquitted neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in Martin's shooting death. And it generated a range of reactions -- a reflection of the diverse opinions and experiences the conversation on race in the U.S. provokes.
• "I think he was trying to give the other side of the equation," Angela Bazemore, 56, an administrative assistant who lives in New York City, said. "Black people and brown people everywhere feel like they've been heard."
• Others felt his comments, while helpful, still only scratched the surface of an issue that is inherently more complex than the color of one's skin.
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