Obama: “Trayvon Could Have Been Me” [VIDEO]

President Obama gave an off-the-cuff speech on the George Zimmerman not guilty verdict and what it's like to be a black man in America. Watch the full speech inside.

“Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,” President Obama said in remarks in the White House briefing room Friday afternoon.

The President added that like many African American young men, Obama had been followed in department stores, seen people lock their cars when he crossed the streets and watched as women clutched their handbags during an elevator ride with him.

“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.”

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Here are the 8 most powerful statements from the President's Speech:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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. And 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.

4. 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.

5. The African-American community is also knowledgeable 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. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.

6. We understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history.

7. And the fact that a lot of African-American boys are painted with a broad brush and the excuse is given, well, there are these statistics out there that show that African-American boys are more violent - using that as an excuse to then see sons treated differently causes pain.

8. So folks understand the challenges that exist for African - American boys, but they get frustrated, I think, if they feel that there’s no context for it or - and that context is being denied. And -- and that all contributes, I think, to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.