This story is updated at the bottom with a response from Rich Benjamin 
 
 When people hold their breath for your imminent words, isn’t it exasperating when you open your mouth, but don’t say much? 
 
 Finally the president has spoken about George Zimmerman’s acquittal. Even as the country waited for his singular response – the nation’s leader and a law professor who once looked like Trayvon Martin – the president danced around the issues. And what a dramatic anti-climax, listening to the president refuse to say anything insightful or profound about the acquittal. In signature professorial style, the president gave us the “context” to the episode and to black people’s “pain.” But he didn’t offer a meaningful opinion on the episode’s hot molten core: racial profiling, vigilantism, and “Stand Your Ground” laws. 
 
 Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder delivered trenchant thoughts on the acquittal, demanding action. Before an audience of supporters, Holder recently called for a full investigation of Martin's death after Zimmerman's acquittal. Holder vowed that the Justice Department will act “in a manner that is consistent with the facts and the law. We will not be afraid." 
 
 “We must stand our ground,” he told supporters. 
 
 Some of us have an Inner Child. Others have an Inner Nigger. Is Holder the president’s conscience? Or his Inner Nigger? 
 
 Is Holder the president’s aggressive internal mind and voice -- willing to speak truth to power, but unbothered with appearing like an angry black man? 
 
 In 2007, when candidate Obama gave that infamous speech in Philadelphia, distancing himself from Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the nation and media responded with enthralled appreciation. It was, indeed, a heartwarming speech. When Holder gave his NAACP speech this past Tuesday, much of corporate-owned cable media —FOX, CNN, and MSNBC—aborted any speech coverage, in favor of their own cranky commentary. 
 
 Apparently, Holder wasn’t giving America the race speech it wants to hear. 
 
 From guns to gays, here is a man always ready to speak truth to power. (Well, except to the NSA). Little wonder the right has been actively trying to drive him from office, even more so than it does Obama. 
 
 From a tactical standpoint, it’s wise for the president to avoid discussing race and Trayvon Martin. Many white Americans don’t want that discussion. Many whites avoid that discussion due to their sincere ethical desire to wash the stain of racial differentiation from our nation; they see themselves as Reverend King’s color- blind disciples. Still others avoid the topic because they suffer from racial fatigue. They feel harassed and hectored by so-called race hustlers. Enough with that: They want to focus on the technical and legal aspects of Zimmerman’s acquittal. 
 
 Where Trayvon Martin is concerned, the president is also wise to sweep a racial discussion under the rug, because that discussion tarnishes his political capital. Politically, he seeks to run-up his party’s Latino support, by burnishing his reputation for historic inclusion and racial reconciliation. In discouraging too much diversity talk or racial gripe, the president’s image management promotes him as a racial icon with no racial agenda. His image management shrewdly polishes his racial identity even as it downplays it. 
 
 Then there’s Obama’s Dark Doppelganger. Don’t you remember? Holder’s first speech in office as Attorney General set headlines afire because he branded America “a nation of cowards” for skirting frank conversations about race. Holder’s remarks piqued white Americans who lauded their own forward thinking in voting for Obama, only to be called “coward” by Obama’s chief lawyer. (So much for racial catharsis!) 
 
 In that 2009 speech, Holder scolded America for “retreating to our race protected cocoons, where much is comfortable and where progress is not really made.” He darkly warned that if Americans continue to avoid meaningful racial debate, “the coming diversity that could be such a powerful, positive force will, instead, become a reason for stagnation and polarization.” His 2009 insight seems painfully prescient to Zimmerman’s acquittal and our present confusion. 
 
 The Secret Service calls the president “Renegade,” his agency nickname. It seems, these days, that Holder is the real renegade. The country's Rogue Negro. And the president’s repressed Black Id. 
 
 Who can blame Obama for not intelligently confronting race in this horrific dilemma? But we shouldn’t blame his top cop for doing so, either. 
 
 UPDATE, Saturday morning 
 
 Since Salon and I have received a lot of feedback, some of it very upset, about this article, I’d like to take the time to respond. 
 
 First I want to express my extreme admiration for the president and for the attorney general, which I have stated publicly and to them personally. My autographed copy of "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance" is one of my most cherished possessions. 
 
 Major thinkers, from Carl Jung to W.E.B. DuBois to Franz Fanon, have written about the internalized split or hybridized consciousness that conflicts humans. As such, what black person doesn’t understand duality and double consciousness, especially when s/he speaks to multiple publics and circulates in multiple contexts? This question of internal and externalized conflicts, to my thinking, becomes particularly poignant and urgent in this instance: Two of our country’s most powerful black leaders are speaking to multiple audiences in reaction to a horrific race-related event. 
 
 To speak of a person’s “inner child” is not to call that person a child. To speak of a person’s “inner diva” is not to call that person a diva. To speak of a person’s “inner nigger” is not to call that person a nigger. It is merely to wonder what aspect of that person’s outlook that person strategically covers. In his brilliant work "Covering: The Hidden Assault on our Civil Rights," New York University Law Professor Kenji Yoshino asks to what extent leaders “downplay a disfavored trait so as to blend into the mainstream, [because] all of us possess stigmatized attributes, we all encounter pressure to cover in our daily lives.” As Yoshina brilliantly illustrates, mostly in the context of LGBT rights, “covering” one’s reportedly negative “minority traits” has an insidious and detrimental effect on the long-term prospects of civil rights. My Salon article asks to what extent the president covers his race-based thoughts, and whether Mr. Holder is a surrogate, or an active proponent, of the president’s potentially more controversial, but productive, viewpoints. Does Mr. Holder provide the president “cover” for the president to express his opinions on this volatile topic, but in softer terms? Eric Holder has been much more vocal and active on issues of race during this administration; I do not “blame” anyone for this, but I do point it out. 
 
 Some Salon readers were upset by my use of the word “nigger.” I am not the first to use this term in public discussion, nor will I be the last. The term is in wide circulation in the streets, in private homes, in popular culture, in black-generated rap music, and in thoughtful scholarship, most notably in Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy’s exceptional tome, "Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word." My use of the word isn’t haphazard or gratuitous. Language is central to race. Language has been central to Martin’s tragic death and to Zimmerman’s acquittal. Language is central to our implicit and explicit racial biases. As a writer, evaluating speeches, by two capable and eloquent public servants, I use the word “nigger” with deep understanding of its long, complicated existence. 
 
 As someone who has traveled the country extensively talking to people about their racial viewpoints, and in turn has conversed with people about race and those findings, I’m sensitive to the complexity that such discussions bring. As someone who has been called “nigger” affectionately and violently, I do understand firsthand readers' concerns with that term. 
 
 At any rate, this is an important debate, and I am grateful for the feedback, the better to contribute to the discussion. ||||| President Obama did something Friday that he hardly ever does — and no other president could ever have done. He addressed the racial fault lines in the country by laying bare his personal anguish and experience in an effort to help white Americans understand why African-Americans reacted with frustration and anger to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting of Trayvon Martin. 
 
 Mr. Obama’s comments during a surprise appearance at the White House press briefing crystallized the dissonance around this case. In the narrow confines of the trial, all talk of race was excluded, and the “stand your ground” element in Florida’s self-defense law was not invoked by Mr. Zimmerman’s lawyers. But in the broader, more profound and more troubling context of Mr. Martin’s death, race and Florida’s lax gun laws are inextricably interwoven. 
 
 On the first, Mr. Obama said: “The judge conducted the trial in a professional manner. The prosecution and the defense made their arguments.” The jurors, he added, “were properly instructed that in a case such as this reasonable doubt was relevant, and they rendered a verdict.” 
 
 But on the broader context, Mr. Obama eloquently rebutted those — like Representative Andy Harris, a Republican, with his dismissive “get over it” remark on Tuesday — who said that the verdict should have ended discussion of the case, especially talk about race and gun laws. 
 
 “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,” Mr. Obama said, adding that “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.” 
 
 He said 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” or “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,” he said, “includes me.” 
 
 Mr. Obama said African-Americans are also acutely aware that “there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws — everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws.” 
 
 He said it would be naïve not to recognize that young African-American men are “disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence.” But using those statistics “to then see sons treated differently causes pain,” he said. 
 
 Mr. Obama called on the Justice Department to work with local and state law enforcement to reduce mistrust in the policing system, including ending racial profiling. He also called for an examination of state and local laws to see whether they “are designed in such a way that they may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case.” 
 
 Mr. Obama raised questions about the message that “stand your ground” laws send, telling a citizen that he “potentially has the right to use those firearms even if there’s a way for them to exit from a situation.” 
 
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 Mr. Obama noted that Mr. Zimmerman did not invoke that defense. But he said it was still relevant. In one of the most powerful parts of his remarks, he said: “I’d 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?” 
 
 If the answer is “at least ambiguous,” Mr. Obama said, “we might want to examine those kinds of laws.” 
 
 Mr. Obama said Americans needed to give African-American boys “the sense that their country cares about them and values them and is willing to invest in them.” 
 
 He said he was not talking about “some grand, new federal program” or even a national “conversation on race,” which he said often ends up being “stilted and politicized” and reaffirms pre-existing positions. 
 
 In a way, Mr. Obama began that conversation with these remarks, while speaking directly to African-Americans who have longed to hear him identify with their frustrations and their anger. 
 
 It is a great thing for this country to have a president who could do what Mr. Obama did on Friday. It is sad that we still need him to do it. ||||| Several people who have had conversations with Mr. Obama’s top aides said a president who has rarely spoken about America’s racial tensions from the White House was particularly torn about appearing to force the hand of Eric H. Holder Jr., the attorney general, when it comes to any investigations in the case. 
 
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 The White House’s original plan — for Mr. Obama to address the verdict in brief interviews on Tuesday with four Spanish-language television networks — was foiled when none of them asked about it. 
 
 Instead, he appeared in the White House briefing room with no advance warning and little of the orchestration that usually accompanies presidential speeches. Mr. Obama spoke for 18 minutes, offering his own reflections and implicitly criticizing gun laws and racial profiling methods — both of which, critics say, played a role in Mr. Martin’s death. 
 
 Mr. Obama continued to avoid criticizing either the conduct of the trial or the verdict, in which a jury found a neighborhood watch volunteer in Sanford, Fla., George Zimmerman, not guilty of all charges in the killing of Mr. Martin in February 2012. 
 
 But in the most expansive remarks he has made about race since becoming president, Mr. Obama offered three examples of the humiliations borne by young black men in America: being followed while shopping in a department store, hearing the click of car doors locking as they cross a street, or watching as women clutch their purses nervously when they step onto an elevator. The first two experiences, he said, had happened to him. 
 
 “Those sets of experiences inform how the African-American community interprets what happened one night in Florida,” Mr. Obama said. “And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.” 
 
 For black leaders who had beseeched the president to speak out — inundating White House officials with phone calls — his remarks were greeted with a mixture of relief and satisfaction. 
 
 The Rev. Jesse Jackson said Mr. Obama had no choice but to confront mounting concern among African-Americans about the Martin case and recent Supreme Court rulings on affirmative action and voting rights. 
 
 “At some point, the volcano erupts,” Mr. Jackson said. 
 
 From the moment the verdict was announced on Saturday night, black activists had called on Mr. Obama to express the anger and frustration of their community. The pressure only increased after he issued a carefully worded statement urging respect for the jury’s decision. 
 
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 “We needed this president to use his bully pulpit,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist and host on MSNBC, who urged Mr. Obama’s advisers to have him speak out. 
 
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 The parents of Mr. Martin, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, said they were “deeply honored and moved” by Mr. Obama’s comments. “President Obama sees himself in Trayvon and identifies with him,” they said in a statement on Friday. “This is a beautiful tribute to our boy.” 
 
 For some black activists, however, Mr. Obama’s remarks were too little, too late. Tavis Smiley, a radio host who has long been a critic of the president, said the president has chosen to “lead from behind” on race issues. 
 
 The president’s advisers selected the White House briefing room as the location for Mr. Obama’s remarks during the Thursday meeting, calculating that it would be less formal than a full-dress speech — but would shield him from the questions he would likely face in a longer interview about why he had waited days after the verdict to speak. 
 
 The advisers said Mr. Obama was anxious to confront the issue of race in a way that he has not since he ran for president in 2008. In a landmark speech to defuse the political storm over his Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Mr. Obama spoke about what he called “the complexities of race” in America. 
 
 As president, Mr. Obama has only periodically returned to the subject. And on the few occasions that he has, it has often been in reaction to an event — a black Harvard professor’s arrest, or Mr. Martin’s death. A month after Mr. Martin was killed, Mr. Obama said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” 
 
 The president’s remarks on Friday were different: more expansive, more personal and more reflective of the concerns of fellow blacks. His comments mirror public opinion among African-Americans, according to polls. 
 
 A telephone poll conducted June 13 to July 5 by Gallup found that blacks were “significantly less likely now than they were 20 years ago to cite discrimination as the main reason blacks on average have worse jobs, income, and housing than whites.” It found that 37 percent of blacks today blame discrimination. In 1993, 44 percent said the same. 
 
 Mr. Obama has also shown more willingness to speak in personal terms. At Morehouse College in Atlanta in May, he told graduates, “Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down.” 
 
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 His remarks Friday were also reminiscent of the tone in his speeches during his trip to Africa earlier this month. After standing in the cell that Nelson Mandela occupied for 18 years, Mr. Obama told a South African audience, “You’ve shown us how a prisoner can become a president.” 
 
 On Friday, Mr. Obama brought that message home, urging Americans to be honest with themselves about how far this country has come in confronting its own racial history. 
 
 “Am I wringing as much bias out of myself as I can?” he asked. “Am I judging people, as much as I can, based on not the color of their skin but the content of their character? That would, I think, be an appropriate exercise in the wake of this tragedy.” ||||| President Obama made a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room Friday to share his thoughts on the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, saying it is important to look at the case through the lens of past discrimination. 
 
 "Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago," Obama said, during extensive and deeply personal remarks that lasted for 18 minutes. "And 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 -- that doesn’t go away." 
 
 Obama continued: "And 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." 
 
 Obama spoke in a quiet and sometimes halting voice, without notes, touching on both his own experience as a black man and what he sees in his daughters, Sasha and Malia, and their relationship to children of other races. "There are very few African American men who haven't had the experience of being followed in a department store. That includes me," he said. 
 
 But he also struck a hopeful note, saying, "As difficult and challenging as this episode has been, things are getting better." 
 
 The president said that his daughters and their friends are "better than we are, they’re better than we were, on these issues. And that’s true at every community I’ve visited across this country." 
 
 “We should also have confidence that kids these days, I think, have more sense than we did back then, and certainly more than our parents did or our grandparents did," Obama said. "And along this long journey, we’re becoming a more perfect union, not a perfect union, but a more perfect union.” 
 
 Obama said he and his deputies were considering a few concrete policy options in the wake of the Zimmerman verdict, such as trying to train state and local law enforcement officials how to better deal with issues of racial bias, and exploring whether state laws such as "Stand Your Ground" might "encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations" rather than defuse them. 
 
 More broadly, he said he wanted to pursue a "long-term project" of "thinking about, how do we bolster and reinforce African American boys? And this is something that Michelle and I talk a lot about. There are a lot of kids out there that need help, that are getting a lot of negative reinforcement." 
 
 It is important, Obama said, for individual Americans to "do some soul-searching" about their own inherent racial biases, and ask, "Am I wringing as much bias out of myself as I can?" 
 
 "That would, I think, be an important exercise in the wake of this tragedy," he said. 
 
 More on this story: 
 
 Full video of Obama's remarks 
 
 Full transcript 
 
 The Fix: President Obama's remarkably personal speech on race 
 
 Robert Zimmerman: 'I'm glad he spoke out today'
– President Obama's surprise comments yesterday on the George Zimmerman verdict—"Trayvon Martin could have been me"—continue to resonate today. Examples: New York Times editorial: It lavishes high praise on Obama for "laying bare his personal anguish and experience" to explain why black Americans were so frustrated by the acquittal. His important, eloquent words went beyond the specifics of the trial and "crystallized the dissonance around this case." It's great we have a president who can do that, but it's "sad that we still need him to do it." Jonathan Chait, New York: It was "instantly historic," he writes. "Obama understands that interjecting himself into a racialized controversy carries risks, but he also believes that the electorate of the future is on his side. His remarks are probably aimed not at the present but at posterity." John Kass, Chicago Tribune: All the people praising the speech are missing something, Kass argues. Obama "played the race card and they didn't see it coming. He attributed racial motive to a homicide even though the race angle was never established in court." His "silky rhetoric" helped him get away it—the president "bypassed the evidence and established his own motive. Only a maestro could accomplish this." Rich Benjamin, Salon: He calls the speech a "dramatic anti-climax," arguing that Obama didn't say anything "insightful or profound." But Benjamin, who is black, raised a ruckus when he compared Obama's response unfavorably to Eric Holder's "trenchant" remarks. "Some of us have an Inner Child. Others have an Inner Nigger. Is Holder the president’s conscience? Or his Inner Nigger?" The comment drew so much reaction that Benjamin later addressed the issue in his post, saying that he used the term "with deep understanding of its long, complicated existence." CBS has the full transcript of the president's remarks.