Obama asks Americans to "do some soul-searching" following Trayvon Martin shooting President Obama implored Americans on Friday to "do some soul searching" following the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager in Florida, speaking expansively and introspectively about the nation's painful history of race and his own place in it. Directly wading into the polarizing debate over last weekend's acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin, Obama tried to explain the case through the lens of past discrimination that still weighs heavily on African Americans. The nation's first black president, recognizing the disconnect between how whites and blacks were reacting to the Zimmerman verdict, played the role of translator and sought to explain why the acquittal had upset so many African Americans. "Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago," Obama said. When you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there's a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it's important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away. Obama's 18 minutes of remarks, delivered extemporaneously during a surprise afternoon appearance in the White House briefing room, was the most extended discussion of race in his presidency. He has generally shied away from talking about race relations, although he delivered a memorable speech on the topic during the 2008 campaign and wrote about his own discrimination in his memoir, "Dreams from My Father." A Florida jury's ruling last Saturday that Zimmerman was not guilty of second-degree murder or manslaughter in the killing of Martin has inspired protests and a heated national debate over racial profiling and gun laws. Obama followed reaction to the trial all week, talking about it with family and friends, a senior administration official said. He summoned his top aides on Thursday to tell them he wanted to comment publicly on the shooting death of Martin as well as the discrimination he has felt personally. Obama wanted to "speak from the heart," the official said, explaining why he opted against reading from a prepared script. He spoke in a hushed and at times halting voice, pausing periodically to compose his thoughts. "There are very few African-American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store," Obama said. That includes me. He continued, "There are very few African-American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me, at least before I was a senator. There are very few African-Americans who haven't had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often. And, you know, I don't want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it's inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.