For me, President Obama‘s off-the-cuff, highly personal remarks about the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman case were close to spellbinding. I watched his 18-minute talk twice last night, and again this morning. It reminded me of listening to Howard Zinn riff during a Boston University lecture. No more teleprompter jokes for the rest of Obama’s term.

“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 N.Y. Times reports. “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.'”