Barack Obama claimed the United States was still infected with racism – and dropped the N-word to make his point in his first ever podcast interview released this morning.
The President said: ‘Racism, we are not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say n****r in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. ‘Societies don’t overnight completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior.’
The President said that attitudes about race had improved significantly since he was born to a white mother and black father 53 years ago.
But the nation’s history of slavery ‘casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on’.
Obama made the remarks in a podcast for comedian Marc Maron following the fatal shooting of nine people last Wednesday at a historical black church in Charleston, South Carolina. The President said the nation must determine how it can respect the rights of firearm owners while keeping weapons out of the hands of the mentally unstable.