Referencing the Holocaust

"[They] had to witness helplessly as the Jews of that [Hungarian town in 1944] town were herded by  gendarmes into cattle cars and how the gendarmes threatened and drove off local citizens, including his [supporter of client Anita Krajnc] mother, who were trying to give them [Jews being transported to death camps] water." 
"The Nazi[s] forced Jews and gays and gypsy [sic] and those they saw as others into trains and trucks and carted them off to slaughter. Is it the same right that the Crown now argues that [the farmer] has, that it was legal?"
"There are many important parallels that we can draw from the two things. One is our inability to have emotional contagion, somehow. Why don't we feel the suffering of others? How do we close ourselves out to that, whether it be Jews being herded into a train or whether it be pigs?"
Gary Grill, lawyer appealing before an Ontario court

"Everyone knows that giving water to thirsty Jews on a cattle train is a small act of charity and what really should have happened is they should have been saved, you know, from being gassed and murdered. And what I did was a small act of charity to that pig who was slaughtered."
"I feel guilty. If I'm guilty of anything it's for not doing enough and I'm sure the people who didn't do enough for the Jews and for others, that's the guilt that they feel." 
Anita Krajnc, defendant charged with public mischief

Anita Krajnc gives pigs water near a slaughterhouse in Burlington, Ont. Krajnc is on trial charged with criminal mischief charge for her act. (Elli Garlin)

It grates on Jewish sensibilities to hear time over time, the Holocaust as an episode of the most barbaric, sordid episodes in human history, a near-total genocide, being named as an example of horrors befalling victims of far more trifling events. As though the casual evocation of the grim history of a totalitarian government bent on overturning the world order, adding a sideline of mass extermination could be compared with infinitely less far-reaching, but compellingly sad events.

As though such comparisons deliberately trivialize the annihilation of millions of innocent children, their mothers, fathers, grandparents -- leaving survivors traumatized in a lifetime of mourning -- while the stunned world that preferred to avert their eyes under the pretense that such barbarity represented an overactive imagination, did nothing in response to stop the carnage.

In this instance, comparing that dread time in history to the carting off of animals to a slaughterhouse, with no pity or concern for the conditions in which the animals were kept prior to slaughter.

But this woman, 49-year-old Anita Krajnc, responded in compassion to the plight of thirsty pigs and attempted to give them water to assuage their thirst. In so doing, earning the umbrage of the farmer who was carting the animals, leading to the criminal charge of mischief for daring to approach and proffer some relief to the animals.

Now on trial for her public offence, her lawyer has likened her reaction and the response it elicited to the incomparably desperate condition of human beings treated like cattle on their way to the slaughterhouses of the Third Reich.

A society, however, immune to feelings of compassion for the anguish and suffering of animals, reflects a society which is so hardened-off of emotional support for other animals, that it is hard to imagine it would react compassionately if it were other humans in their midst who were the subject of inhumane treatment, and seen to be suffering before their very eyes. As such, perhaps it is apt indeed to contrast and conflate the two events.

It is no small cruelty to maltreat animals, no less so than to do the same to human animals.

The German population is known to love animals and to care for them, on the other hand. Their general support for ensuring that life was tolerable for animals they viewed as requiring the care of humans did not, unfortunately extend during the Nazi era to those other animals living among them who were considered to be dispensable sub-humans in a general atmosphere of anti-Semitism, and contempt for Gays and for Roma.

The window dressing of animal care on the one hand, and the willingness to submit to the propaganda machine portraying Jews as expendable scum, a convincing argument in the mass psychosis of hatred.

Is this a case for a universal conscience, or an example of the magnitude of horror minimized by slighting the existential rights to conscionable support of all animals?

Racist Bigotry in Canada

"Racism and intolerance exist in every community, but we do have a problem in Winnipeg. Instead of shrinking from the challenge, we need to rise up and we need to do better as a community."
"Winnipeg has a responsibility right now to turn this ship around and change the way we all relate."
"My wife is [of] Ukrainian heritage. My family is Metis. I want my boys to be as proud of both of those family lines."
"We're here together to face this head-on as one community."
Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman

"I'm not here to pacify racism or to provide a politically correct statement on the reality of racism within the institutions that we function within every day."
"I guarantee that right now somebody's having a racist experience in a restaurant, or on the streets in Winnipeg somewhere. I'm not here to pacify that or to say that it's OK. But what I am here to do is I'm here to acknowledge the great work of people who get up every morning of every day to challenge racism in this city."
Grand Chief Derek Nepinak, head, Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs

"I have a right to be different. If we as a society make that a basic principle -- that all human beings have a right to be different -- we'd go a long way to solving the intolerance that many people experience."
"Instead of putting each other down, we should be trying to lift each other up."
Ovid Mercredi, former national chief, Assembly of First Nations

'The Manitoba capital is deeply divided along ethnic lines. Its Native citizens suffer daily indignities and horrific violence,' the Maclean's article alleges. (CBC)

Canada's news magazine, Maclean's, has published a new issue creating aa newly-controversial argument that Canada has a larger race-relations problem than does the United States. And, it states, the face of that bigotry exists in Winnipeg. Where racial discrimination is alive and raw. Where Native Canadians are held to be uniformly of sub-par intelligence, whose culture and heritage is not worthy of respect. It isn't hard to find statistics showing that First Nations people are over-represented in Canada's prisons.

Pan-handlers surfing the streets, aboriginal women who are drug-addicted and working the streets. Petty criminals of aboriginal background. Alcoholism a problem of staggering dimensions. Reserve councils misappropriating tax-paid funds meant to improve the lives of their tribal dependents. High unemployment among aboriginals. And along with all of that the contempt that some segments of Canadian society holds them in; worse, the depredation of sociopaths on Native women.

It's hard sometimes to figure out where the primary responsibility for the social well-being of First Nations lies. People do have to be responsible for themselves. Other groups have traditionally experienced the wretchedness of oppression and deprivation owing to their status in society, held to be inferior to the majority populations. Yes, the damage to self-esteem and human nature's ability to rebound is severe, but there is also inner resilience that must be called upon.

Simply put, there is no reason why First Nations people cannot be as deliberately capable of more responsibility for themselves, leading inevitably to improved outcomes for succeeding generations. There is an enormous responsibility residing within the prevailing larger populations to ensure fairness, but there is also the need for First Nations leaders to take stock of their own deficiencies and to lead their people toward a place of greater self-respect.

That it is incumbent upon themselves to raise their families by healthy nurturing, and to eschew alcohol and drugs and social-welfare dependency rather than imprint them on their children's evolving values. The inequities facing aboriginals in Canada are undeniably existent. There is no reason for Native Canadians not to be proud of their heritage, but pride should lead to striving for an exemplary lifestyle, not one of dependency on social welfare, drugs and alcohol.

There are more than ample role models from within the First Nations communities for young aboriginals to look up to and emulate. Those who have achieved an advanced academic eduction and who now equal any other ethnic groups in the professions of education, law, medicine, architecture, the humanities and the arts and sciences, demonstrate more than amply that there is no deficit in intelligence quotient, their success illustrates the ambition to achieve success for their futures.

What some can do, others can strive toward, and however far they advance themselves they can take personal pride within. But it does take determination and effort and the desire to achieve a set goal. As for those within society who prefer to believe stereotypes have the last word, and who view First Nations people as somehow inferior to themselves, what they are succeeding in doing is diminishing themselves through their own lack of intelligence.

Winnipeg's new mayor, himself of aboriginal descent, defended his city, declaring the universality within Canada of racism. He plans to lead his city away from its current well-earned reputation as a place where First Nations disrepute is to be found, aspiring to see that Winnipeg can "lead the nation" in the eradication of racism. Racism is a damningly dire pathology that afflicts human nature and it will never be entirely eliminated.

But the effort to decrease its effect on society through education and a focus on leading people to a better place for themselves on either side of the spectrum of polarized mistrust is the path that must be taken to make Canada a better place, one fully respective of a Native history, heritage and culture that is an integral part of the country. At the same time, First Nations people must themselves work at improving themselves, as we all must do.

The city's chief of police is black. Chief Devon Clunis has stated he doesn't believe Winnipeg is the only city trying to come to grips with racism in Canada. "We need to have a difficult conversation in our city respective of race. I think you are seeing who is starting that conversation today", he noted.

No Illusions to Shatter

"Whether or not these remarks are private, they are now public, and they represent his views."
"I fully expect to get the support I need."
Adam Silver, NBA commissioner, U.S.A.

All those who believe their intimate lives are private, beware. If the National Security Agency doesn't get you, there's always the possibility that your mistress might. The NSA's mission statement is on an elevated plane of public service through intelligence gathering for the purpose of protecting American interests and by extension society at large.

"Given the nature of today's communications, the pervasive convergence we see in those communications, where everything is connected to everything, NSA has to ensure its compliance through a variety of mechanisms. We first work very hard to understand the nature of the telecommunications domain. We also work very hard to understand what our explicit authorities are in traversing that domain in the hunt for foreign intelligence. And finally, we, from the moment we design our systems, to employing those systems, to sorting through, sifting through what we might get from those systems, ensure that at every step of the process we worry not simply about what we've obtained, but whether we had the authority to obtain it and whether we've treated it in exactly the right way."

Your mistress, on the other hand, may resent it that your legal wife is suing her insultingly as an opportunistic gold digger skilled at extracting funds and valuables from "wealthy older men". And Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling is both wealthy and 'older', by about a half-century than his one-time paramour V. Stiviano.

Former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, right, and V. Stiviano, left, the woman who recorded his racist rants

What he saw in her was the allure of youth and beauty, complementing what she acknowledged in him; money, influence, power. Like the slave plantation owners of a century earlier who kept their favourite slaves as occasional bedmates, the bigoted man whose world-class sport team is reliant on the athletic skills of blacks, tolerates them as the vehicle he needs, and seeks out intimacy from a biracial black/Mexican.

Presumably, V. Stiviano, the darling of this world-class racist had an agenda in mind when she secretly taped a bedroom conversation. When intimacy takes place between an overweight, ill old man and a sprightly curvaceous young woman the result is not necessarily salacious, as this tape gives testament to, but rather a boring conversation that ensued to draw out the extent of his bigotry.

So what could possibly have been Donald Sterling's inamorata's purpose in recording evidence of his vibrant racism, and then broadcasting it through social media other than to shout out to the world what the man represented? And then watched complacently as the man who showered her with gifts of inestimably high value was crucified with a $2.5-million fine, public humiliation and a life-ban from his team and the NBA.

Revenge, it has been often said, is best served cold. And perhaps this was the incentive, having watched as the Los Angeles chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People hypocritically hailed the man for heroic public service recognition, the latest a lifetime achievement award, to man they well knew was a hateful bigot. It is no secret he has been repeatedly sued for racial discrimination.

Was it a kept woman's decision to end her alliance with a repugnant man whose virulent rants against blacks and Mexicans burdened her with guilt as a black-Mexican? To demonstrate that she decided, after all, to shed her sequined cloak of obsequious accommodation in selling herself for cold, hard cash? Giving the finger to the NAACP, that she could cynically commit to what they dared not.

"They want to know why the NAACP would give an award to someone with my track record", Mr. Sterling said several years back. After all, he did such wonderful things for the black community, giving minority children fee seats at Clippers games, taking out costly newspaper advertisements celebrating Black History Month, and all is forgiven. So what if he ejects minority tenants from his properties claiming they stink, they're smelly, lazy, and alcoholic.

"He also has, over the years we looked at, contributed to a lot of minority charities, including the NAACP", Leon Jenkins president of the Los Angeles chapter, said, justifying the organization's intention to award him with the latest lifetime achievement award. The NAACP handing out awards to a singular individual of huge wealth whose most notable achievement throughout his lifetime has been to build a reputation as a racist.

And though much has changed in the life of the two principals, with Donald Sterling no longer enjoying his celebrity seat at NBA games, and divested of his ownership of the Los Angeles Clippers, and Vanessa Stiviano is no longer his kept woman, she still carries the bags that cost a king's ransom, and drives the flame-red Ferrari that represent why she enjoyed being kept by the man she put in his place.

All in the details: She was seen carrying a multi-thousand dollar Hermes bag, Ferrari neatly parked.

Anti-Semitism 'on the rise' say Europe's Jews

By Bethany Bell BBC News

Swastikas and slogans were daubed near a synagogue in Salzwedel, Germany

Many Jews in Europe say anti-Semitism is increasing, particularly on the internet, according to a survey by the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA). 

The survey of 5,847 Jewish people said 66% of those who responded considered anti-Semitism to be a problem.

Three out of four respondents, 76%, believed anti-Semitism had increased over the past five years.
The survey was carried out in 2012 in eight countries which are home to about 90% of the EU's Jewish population.

Respondents in Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Sweden and the United Kingdom were asked to give "their opinions and perceptions on anti-Semitic trends and anti-Semitism as a problem in everyday".

They were also asked about their personal experiences and worries about their own safety and that of family members.

There was particular concern about anti-Semitism online. About three-quarters of respondents considered that to be a problem which is getting worse.

A British woman in her 50s, quoted in the survey, said she had "experienced more anti-Semitic comments" since going on Facebook "than I ever have done throughout my whole life".

She added: "This is very dispiriting. The speed at which hostile comments and misinformation can be passed around is frightening and leads to a sense of deep unease, which may not connect with the day-to-day reality of being Jewish in a diverse society."

The survey found 29% of those surveyed had considered emigrating because of concerns about safety, with particularly high figures recorded in Hungary (48%), France (46%) and Belgium (40%).
It found one in five respondents had personally experienced at least one anti-Semitic verbal insult and/or a physical attack in the year before the survey.

Perpetrators of the most serious incidents were described as "being perceived as someone with Muslim extremist views, 27%, left-wing political views, 22%, or with right-wing views, 19%".
Respondents said the most frequent comments made by non-Jewish people in the UK were: "Israelis behave 'like Nazis' towards the Palestinians" and "Jews exploit Holocaust victimhood for their own purposes" (both 35%).

In France 52% of the Jewish people surveyed described anti-Semitism as a "very big problem" in their country, in Hungary the figure was 49%, while in the UK it was much less - 11%.

The survey showed significant differences between Western and Eastern European countries.
In Latvia, only 8% said the Israeli-Arab conflict had had a large impact on how safe they felt, but the figure rose to 28% for Germany and was as high as 73% in France.

FRA Director Morten Kjaerum said this reflected differing histories, as well as recent patterns of immigration.

"I think that there is across Europe... a traditional form of anti-Semitism that goes back in history for a long time," he said.

"But then we also see a particular sort of anti-Semitism reported by the respondents, namely the anti-Semitism which comes out of the conflict in the Middle East. And this is where you have to be careful: when do you have a legitimate critique of whatever your position may be in terms of that particular conflict and when would it be an anti-Semitic statement?"

The FRA said EU countries should work "urgently" to find effective ways to combat online anti-Semitism. It called on public figures to condemn anti-Semitic statements.

The President of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, welcomed the survey, but said "the fact that a quarter of Jews are not able to express their Jewishness because of fear should be a watershed moment for the continent of Europe and the European Union."

"The Jewish reality in Europe is of great concern and the authorities need to deal with incidents of hate and intolerance in a holistic manner, to really combat these manifestations before it is too late.
"We would like to see concrete steps being taken, including creating legislation to specifically deal with anti-Semitism and racism, bolstering law enforcement agencies and ensure a zero-tolerance approach to anti-Semitism, even, and perhaps specifically, when opinion-shapers and decision-makers engage in these forms of hate," he said.

Related Stories

• Increasing attacks in Germany
  07 NOVEMBER 2013, MAGAZINE
• Did France ignore the Islamic radical threat?
  22 MARCH 2012, EUROPE
• New attacks target Jews in France
  28 MARCH 2012, EUROPE
• Chief rabbi fears anti-semitism
  30 DECEMBER 2012, UK
• France boosts synagogue security
  07 OCTOBER 2012, EUROPE

NYC Deliveryman Wins $900,000 Verdict in Anti-Semitic Harassment Suit

October 29, 2013 12:32 pm The Algemeiner

Author:

Zach Pontz

Share this Article

Tags:

Adam Wiercinski anti-Semitic Artur Zbozien holocaust Lawsuit Mangia 57 Matthew Blit Nazi gas chambers New York Post verdict Zyklon B

Adam Wiercinski. Photo: NY Post. 

A New York City deliveryman has won a $900,000 jury verdict, payback for the anti-Semitic harassment he endured while working at a Midtown eatery for more than a decade-and-a-half, the New York Post reported. 

“It’s a very happy ending — I’m in another world,” said Adam Wiercinski, who worked at Mangia 57.

According to the lawsuit filed by Wiercinski, supervisors would call him a “Jewish pederast,” throw pennies at him, and make other anti-Semitic jokes.

One manager, Artur Zbozien, was particularly brutal, often passing gas in front of Wiercinski, and then joking that the gas was Zyklon B, the poison used in Nazi gas chambers during the Holocaust, the lawsuit claimed.

“How can I explain to you — he passed wind, loudly,” Wiercinski told The Post of Zbozien.
“Everybody laughed, and then he said, ‘See, this is your Zyklon B, you stupid Jew.’”

According to the Post, Wiercinski worked at the West 57th Street restaurant from 1992 until 2008, staying despite the abuse because, “He was 50 years old,” explained his lawyer, Matthew Blit. “He said, ‘Who else is going to hire a 50-year-old deliveryman.’ He was afraid.”

Jurors heard just three days of testimony last week and reached a verdict Thursday in just four hours, Blit said.

“He’s in shock,” the lawyer said of Wiercinski’s reaction to the hefty jury award. “He was so happy. It’s a moral victory for him.”

What Are Their Chances?

"I like her very much. She looks very much like me, and I want her back home. We will take care of her, and I can help my mother."
Minka Ruseva, 14, Nikolaevo, Bulgaria

Minka Ruseva, daughter of Sasha Ruseva, covers her face in a Roma neighborhood of Nikolaevo, Bulgaria, Friday, Oct. 25, 2013. Sasha Ruseva, a Bulgarian Roma woman, is under investigation by Bulgarian authorities trying to find out if she is the mother of a suspected abduction victim in neighboring Greece known as "Maria" whose case has triggered a global search for her real parents. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda) / AP

"We are very, very happy with this outcome, because we have proved what we said from the outset. ... The adoption, as it happened, was not of a legal nature but it was not abduction."
Costas Katsavos, lawyer for Christos Salis and Eleftheria Dimopoulou

Christos Salis and Eleftheria Dimopoulou experienced the profound misfortune of having their intimate family relations with their five children -- one of whom was informally adopted as a baby -- viciously disrupted by a state authority accustomed to hounding Roma and suspecting them of every manner of brutality and criminality possible to impose upon an ethnic group of huge unpopularity.

They had taken in a newborn whom its mother, an impoverished Roma woman working temporarily in Greece from Bulgaria, was unable to take back home with her, out of the goodness of their hearts. They had young children of their own, but they willingly responded to the pleas of the desperate Bulgarian mother of the newborn, to care for the child along with their own, as if she were their own.

And they did just that until government agency workers, noting that the four-year-old child living with the other children of the Greek Roma couple bore no resemblance to them, and leaped to the conclusion that she was with them as a result of criminal child trafficking. Their repeated reassurances that she was their own were ignored, and they were accused of criminality, and jailed.

The Canadian Press

But their story of having taken the child in, responding to the desperation of a Bulgarian Roma mother has proven to be true. Sasha Ruseva, 35, and her 37-year-old husband Atanas, stepped forward to declare themselves the biological parents of the little girl the news media in their frenzy to support the theory of Roma malfeasance, named "Maria".

There are six million Roma living in Europe. Racist bigotry against them is endemic in the countries of their birth where they are relentlessly slighted, and constantly vulnerable to violations of their human rights. They live in high unemployment, poverty and social dislocation, viewed with distaste for their cultural habits and accused of criminality, their children maltreated and their future prospects dim.

Sasha Ruseva explained she had given birth to a baby girl while in Greece working as an olive picker, but was too poverty-stricken to care for the little girl. She has since given birth to two more children, and is mother to a total of ten. Some of her other children bear a striking resemblance to the child found with the Greek couple. The inference on the little girl's 'discovery' was that she was abducted from some 'white' European family.

Both Greek authorities and the Bulgarian prosecutor's office are trying to establish whether there are  grounds to prosecute both parties on the theory that the mother sold the child. Despite that the Greek family love the little girl, raising her as their own, Bulgarian social services say the little girl is to be returned to Bulgaria for adoption. "Maria will first be brought to a family crisis centre, and after, they (authorities) will seek for suitable foster family."

Fourteen-year-old Minka Ruseva, one of the Rusev family's ten children saw pictures of Maria on television and thinks of her as being her sister. In pre-trial incarceration, charged with abducting Maria and committing document fraud, Christos Salis 39, and Eleftheria Dimopoulou 40, plan to seek legal custody of the little girl who has been their daughter for the first four years of her young life.

With so many "authorities" determined to wrest the child from those who love the little girl, one can only wish them the very best of luck.

The Dream Realized

"To dismiss the magnitude of this progress, to suggest as some sometimes do that little has changed, that dishonours the courage and the sacrifice of those who paid the price to march in those years. But we would dishonour those heroes as well to suggest that the work of this nation is somehow complete.
"The arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice but it doesn't bend on its own. To secure the gains this country has made requires constant vigilance, not complacency.
"Because they kept marching, America changed. Because they marched, the civil rights law was passed. Because they marched, the voting rights law was signed. Because they marched, doors of opportunity and education swung open so their daughters and sons could finally imagine a life for themselves beyond washing somebody else's laundry or shining somebody else's shoes."
U.S. President Barack Obama

Ceremony: Obama watches on as members of Martin Luther King Jr's family ring a bell beneath the Lincoln Memorial during the ceremony

Standing at the Lincoln Memorial, before the image of the very man whose vision of an end to slavery in America created a national upheaval in a bloody, fierce civil war, the black man who is the inheritor of Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream spoke movingly of what he knows very well. With him, the King family, and with them former presidents of the United States.

In a strangely partisan show of unity. But one has to ask what kind of unity is it when American blacks celebrate their equality and the two major political parties of the country mutually exclude one another? Where were the Republican presidents to join with the Democratic presidents? It was not solely Democrats who supported Martin Luther King's vision in the final analysis, but Republican ones as well.

President Obama's immediate predecessor was responsible for elevating blacks to positions of elite political administrative authority during his lengthy presidency; Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, for example. The sad and sorry spectacle of the memorial presenting as a unitary political event speaks ill of the organizers, the current administration and the party he represents.

President Obama himself spoke disparagingly of his political opponents at a time when there should have been a memorial session of a great American historical event to bring them together in unity of purpose. Speaking of them as those who "practise the old politics of division". In fact, there is division aplenty within the black community itself. The division of the social elite, the black aristocracy and achievers, and the greater unwashed community of the rudely ungroomed, social failures.

And the culture that unites them, black celebrity figures in entertainment, politics, sports and society and rap with its sexist, racist, criminal clever asides. Black America has its black comics, actors, singers, television personalities and intellectuals of note. And it has its shadowy, sorry criminal class of dope dealers and gangs, preying on one another and causing social unrest and misery among their own. A culture of single mothers, absent fathers, poverty and children abandoned to fate.

A one-time community organizer and briefly state senator is now the towering figure of president of the United States of America. There is pride in the black community; the ultimate has been achieved. But has it? The figure of commanding authority is there, but has that made any difference whatever to the status of black youth intent on gangs, drugs, guns and criminal activities? A crime rate that continues and continues to prey on its own?

An event that overtook history and made America giddy with the prospects of its own racial freedom, salvation from the history that so shamed them. And so impressing the international community that nothing seemed impossible And because nothing seemed impossible the Nobel Peace prize was awarded rather precipitously to someone who had distinguished himself by nothing more than high-flown rhetoric, promising that element that resides deep in the emotional hearts of all of humankind; 'hope'.

Crowds: Tens of thousands of spectators watch President Obama speak at the service marking 50 years since the iconic address

The audacity of his vision so enthralled his people, the electorate, the nation and the global community that he towered well above the office he held. He has since floated back to ground, his once-ebony hair grey, the global problems laid at his office door too numerous to count, his decisions uncertain, their outcomes problematical.

And the world continues to spin on its axis.

'Trayvon Martin could have been me' - Barack Obama

BBC News online -- 19 July 2013

President Obama: "Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago''

President Barack Obama has said that "Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago", in his first comments on the case since last week's verdict.

The unarmed black 17-year-old was shot and killed in Florida in February 2012.

George Zimmerman, 29, said he opened fire on the teenager in self-defence and was acquitted of murder by a Florida court last week.

In an unexpected press call, Mr Obama said very few black men in the US had not experienced racial profiling.

Mr Obama said the pain that African-Americans felt around the case came from the fact that they viewed it through "a set of experiences and a history that doesn't go away".

He said African Americans were also keenly aware of racial disparities in the application of criminal laws.

"That all contributes to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different," Mr Obama said.

He shared his experiences of being racially profiled in the past, such as being followed while out shopping.

"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.

"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 has a chance to get off," he said.

Mr Obama also hailed the "incredible grace and dignity" of Trayvon Martin's parents in the way they reacted to the verdict.

Saturday's not-guilty verdict for George Zimmerman from the all-female jury of six prompted nationwide protests, with further demonstrations planned for this weekend

 

Calling for "soul-searching" from Americans on issues of race, he also sounded a hopeful note, saying that race relations were improving with each generation.

Saturday's not guilty verdict for George Zimmerman from the all-female jury of six prompted nationwide protests, with further demonstrations planned for this weekend.

Mr Obama called for the protests to remain peaceful, saying any violence "dishonours what happened to Trayvon Martin".

He said that although criminal matters and law enforcement were traditionally dealt with on a state and not a federal level, it would be useful to examine some state and local laws to see if they encourage confrontation in certain situations.

On Wednesday, US Attorney General Eric Holder cited the case as he urged a nationwide review of "stand your ground" laws, such as those in place in Florida, which permit the use of deadly force if a person feels seriously threatened.

The issue was never raised during the trial, though the judge included a provision about the law in her instructions to the jury, allowing it to be considered as a legitimate defence.