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Subject too much. i remember interviewing him years ago and i was asking about race a lot because the book i was writing had -- was mainly had to do with race. and after the interview was over, leaving the oval office and he kind of grabs my shoulder and says, remember, i can't talk about this stuff too much because whatever i say, whatever one word or two words or sentence or paragraph, it becomes a grenade. it becomes so explosive whether it was the skip gates -- incident and this time, he said, look. of course, there's a certain number of people that just don't like me because i'm african-a...

Give me the reaction to the timing and tone of this message. >> it was deeply personal, remarkable how personal it was. as kristen said we've never heard him speak about these issues ever in this. he had only given a speech about race overall in 2008. he said last year my son can be trayvon, you know, and that was a very personal comment. this was much deeper when he talked about being followed when he was shopping. that was something he never said. i was just watching. i have covered him for six or seven years and i never heard him speak in that detail about race and sort of extemporaneously,...

Speech. just to set the record straight. the column i was talking about published in "washington post" basically the same day that president obama spoke yesterday and eugene robinson's point was that president obama should not do what he went out and did later in the day. when the president talks about race, he can't help it even if his intentions are good, people feel threatened. at this point in his presidency he could ignore this absurd reality and say whatever he wants. the unfortunate fact is if his aim is to prevent dialogue on race speaking his mind is demonstrably counterproductive. th...

At double the rate of whites during police interactions and four times as often in encounters with black suspects do they face force from police. these are not differences of 5 or 10 or 20%. the statistics go to suspects, just to treatment. it goes through the our criminal justice system. that is why this case polarizes -- because some people don't see it. if you know those facts, you know what some of those problems are. >> that's sort of the issue here. it's kind of interesting. i thought it was a very powerful thing, powerful speech to listen to. if you look at the history of obama talking ...

Challenges in his life. the dance between the public and the personal. that's what the president has to navigate. >> reporter: a year after his so-called race speech, president obama found himself in the middle of another race-related firestorm. police had arrested an african-american professor, skip gates, in his own home, after he showed i.d. listen to what the president said. >> i think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry. number two, that the cambridge police acted stupidly. in arresting someone when there was already proof that they were in their own home. >> rep...