Watching President Barack Obama play the race card late last week in the matter of the Zimmerman trial reminded me that the guy from Chicago has truly amazing powers. 
 
 He stood in the White House briefing room, and through the magic of his own silky rhetoric and skill with metaphor, he was able animate the body of a slain African-American teenager, Trayvon Martin. 
 
 Obama pronounced the killing as racially motivated, though he didn't use the words. He didn't have to, such is his prowess. It was so smooth that few noticed. He put the killing in a racial context, and that was enough. 
 
 "You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago," Obama told reporters at the White House on Friday, addressing last weekend's acquittal of Martin's shooter, George Zimmerman. 
 
 Could Obama have been Trayvon Martin 35 years ago? 
 
 Perhaps. If so, then any of us could have been Trayvon Martin. And I could have been Trayvon Martin. Racial motives weren't established at trial. And reportedly, the FBI still hasn't found racial motives in George Zimmerman, who is Hispanic. 
 
 Race was established by the president of the United States, and by other political and media actors. It's a cynical business, about money and power, about keeping divisions between American tribes. There are the black tribes that see Martin in the context of the old civil rights struggles and leverage, and white tribes that see Martin being used to pummel them with racial guilt. 
 
 The algebra of all of this is as old as some musty textbook in your uncle's garage. We've seen it before. We've heard the lines, the formulations, the slogans, and some of us recite them the way we recite phrases from television commercials. We're given just enough evidence and we're told we must choose a side. 
 
 Yet none of this tribalism has anything to do with what happened the night Martin was killed. Politicians don't worry about that. They're experts at the game of tribes, and a tribal America is what nourishes them. 
 
 Americanism should be about something more than tribes and groups. Americanism should instead be about individuals, about individual promise, individual accomplishment. 
 
 Only an individual can give another respect. Tribes can't. What tribes do is battle other tribes over the spoils of government. This has nothing to do with individual respect. It has everything to do with group leverage. 
 
 Clearly, Martin and Zimmerman didn't give each other respect. Each one could and should have walked away, and didn't. Many homicides happen that way, with bad choices and stupidity and anger. Homicides are never political at the beginning. They become so only after the body is cold, when the political actors approach and heat things up. 
 
 The rest of the president's commentary was quite touching, describing how young African-American men are followed in department stores, and how he was one of those followed, or how motorists lock their doors, how women clutch their purses when a black man enters an elevator. 
 
 It was compelling talk for a president who avoids discussing race almost as much as he avoids discussing all those young African-American men shot down in Chicago every year in the street gang wars. 
 
 But first came the sound bite in which he became Trayvon Martin. He knew what he was delivering. It was no accident. The rest of it was the cover. Many will applaud him for initiating sensitive discussion about race in America, and many will miss completely what he did. 
 
 He 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. And he'll be praised. That's skill. That's power. 
 
 Despite Obama's assertion that he could have been Martin, the jury did not believe that the teenager was killed because he was black. 
 
 Many in the news media clearly believed the race angle, which reinforces American tribalism. Perhaps the worst of many violators was NBC News. That network's cynical editing of Zimmerman's 911 emergency call should cost them millions in damages. 
 
 By saying he could have been Trayvon Martin, President Obama bypassed the evidence and established his own motive. Only a maestro could accomplish this. 
 
 "I think it's going to be important for all of us to do some soul searching," Obama said, and I hope he included himself in the search. 
 
 "There has been talk about should we convene a conversation on race," he continued. "I haven't seen that to be particularly productive. When politicians try to organize conversations they end up being stilted and politicized, when folks are locked into the positions they already have." 
 
 They get locked into positions with help from those who would ostensibly lead them away from ignorance and anger and fear. No one wins the game of tribes but the leaders. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The Sunday Tribune is full of interesting and compelling stories, but one I certainly hope you read was written by William Lee. You know him as "Old School," the reporter who helps me with the column. Will Lee has written the story of Sylvester Washington, aka Two-Gun Pete, the Chicago cop with the pearl-handled revolvers who left many men dead and is a legend on the South Side. If you want to know about the real heart of Chicago, then read about Two-Gun: CLICK HERE. 
 
 jskass@tribune.com 
 
 Twitter @John_Kass ||||| 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. ||||| Full transcript of President Obama's remarks on race and the Trayvon Martin case, Friday, July 19, 2013, in the White House press briefing room, as released by the White House: 
 
 
 
 THE PRESIDENT: I wanted to come out here, first of all, to tell you that Jay is prepared for all your questions and is very much looking forward to the session. The second thing is I want to let you know that over the next couple of weeks, there's going to obviously be a whole range of issues -- immigration, economics, et cetera -- we'll try to arrange a fuller press conference to address your questions. 
 
 The reason I actually wanted to come out today is not to take questions, but to speak to an issue that obviously has gotten a lot of attention over the course of the last week -- the issue of the Trayvon Martin ruling. I gave a preliminary statement right after the ruling on Sunday. But watching the debate over the course of the last week, I thought it might be useful for me to expand on my thoughts a little bit. 
 
 First of all, I want to make sure that, once again, I send my thoughts and prayers, as well as Michelle's, to the family of Trayvon Martin, and to remark on the incredible grace and dignity with which they've dealt with the entire situation. I can only imagine what they're going through, and it's remarkable how they've handled it. 
 
 The second thing I want to say is to reiterate what I said on Sunday, which is there's going to be a lot of arguments about the legal issues in the case -- I'll let all the legal analysts and talking heads address those issues. The judge conducted the trial in a professional manner. The prosecution and the defense made their arguments. The juries were properly instructed that in a case such as this reasonable doubt was relevant, and they rendered a verdict. And once the jury has spoken, that's how our system works. But I did want to just talk a little bit about context and how people have responded to it and how people are feeling. 
 
 You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. 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 doesn't go away. 
 
 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. That includes me. 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. 
 
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– 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.