Nearly 5 decades ago, on August 28th, 1963, at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed to the mass of Americans assembled in front of the Lincoln Memorial, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Eight years later, on September 9th, 1971, John Lennon released his now infamous song, “Imagine”, in which he sings, “Imagine all the people living life in peace. You, you may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope some day you’ll join us and the world will be as one.” On Friday, July 19th, 2013, Barack Obama, America’s first half-black/half-white president, dove in head first and fully immersed himself in the racial fray when during impromptu remarks at the White House Press Room he said that “Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago.” Did this comment and many others which he made during his remarks that day kill the dream and set back racial relations in America by 5 decades?

Obama went on that Friday to say “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 probably 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.” What he failed to address in his comments was just why such things still happen to black men today. Why do such attitudes still prevail?

Roughly 13 percent of the population in America is black, yet a disproportionate percentage of crimes in America are committed by blacks – roughly 56 percent of robbery, 50 percent of murder and manslaughter, 34 percent of aggravate assault, 33 percent of forcible rape, 32 percent of burglary, and 29 percent of larceny is attributed to blacks. Is it any surprise that such attitudes about black men, as noted by President Obama, should remain pervasive in the minds of Americans?

Imagine what the impact would be on race relations in American if on that Friday in the White House Press Room President Obama had instead said, “Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago, but in that same situation I would have done things differently. I wouldn’t have called George Zimmerman a ‘crazy ass cracker’. I wouldn’t have punched him in the face. I wouldn’t have wrestled him to the ground, straddled him MMA-style, and beat his head into the pavement. I would have handled it differently. I would have handled it non-violently, just as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would have done.”

President Obama could have capitalized on his own experience with such situations in his youth. He could have related how he handled a Punahou School tennis pro during a racially tinged encounter. In ‘Barack Obama: The Making of the Man’, David Maraniss wrote that fellow Punahou School tennis teammate, Kristen Caldwell, recalled, “We were standing on the lanai looking at the draw sheets that had just been posted for the tennis tournament. … Everyone does the same thing. You look for your name, then run your finger across the draw to see whom you might play as you advance to later rounds of the tournament. … Barry was doing what we all did, completely normal behavior. But [the pro] came over and told him not to touch the draw sheet because he would get it dirty. He singled him out, and the implication was absolutely clear: Barry’s hands weren’t grubby, the message was that his darker skin would somehow soil the draw. Those of us standing there were agape, horrified, disbelieving.” Caldwell went on to note that at age eleven or twelve, an age when children were not to talk back to their elders, “Barry handled it beautifully, with just the right amount of cold burn without becoming disrespectful. ‘What do you mean by that?’ he asked firmly. I could see in his eyes that [the pro] had gone too far – his remark was uncalled for; he had crossed a line – and there were witnesses.”

Had Trayvon Martin responded to George Zimmerman with “just the right amount of cold burn”, just as Barry Obama had done 4 decades earlier, instead of with the animal violence that he inflicted on his “crazy ass cracker” neighborhood watch confronter, he would still be alive today. When confronted by George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin would still be alive today if he had said, “Hey, Mister. I know you may think just because I’m a hoodie-wearing black teenager walking around in your neighborhood that I am little more than a juvenile delinquent, but I’m not. I’m a good kid, and I’m just going back to my Dad’s fiancée’s house after I walked down to the 7-Eleven to get some snacks.” Unfortunately, Trayvon Martin did not do this and, even more unfortunately, President Obama did not use his personal experience handling similar situations to help defuse the racial tensions that are being fomented in our nation and society by the government plantation hucksters and race-baiters.

As America’s first black president Barack Obama has in one speech erased the 5 decades of progress attained since passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, leaving us once again to merely dream and imagine that one day we will live in a nation where people are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, and that all the world will be as one.