Barack Obama invokes N-word during interview on racism in America

‘Racism, we are not cured of it,’ the president said on Marc Maron’s podcast, sharing his opinions on race relations while remaining pessimistic on gun control.

Barack Obama invoked the most charged racial slur in American society during an interview published on Monday, as part of an argument that while the US has made great strides toward equality, racism still pervades the nation.

“Racism, we are not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not,” Obama told comedian Marc Maron, who interviewed the president for his popular podcast on Friday and released their conversation online on Monday.

“It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don’t, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior.”

“The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives,” he continued, “that casts a long shadow and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on.”

Obama at the same time urged Americans to adopt a long-term perspective on race relations. “Do not say that nothing has changed when it comes to race in America, unless you’ve lived through being a black man in the 1950s or 60s or 70s,” he said.

“It is incontrovertible that race relations have improved significantly during my lifetime and yours and that opportunities have opened up and that attitudes have changed. That is a fact.

“If we made as much progress over the next 10 years as over the last 50, things would be better. That’s within our grasp.”

The president maintained a tone of optimism despite the spate of racially charged killings and incidents in recent months, which culminated in the horrific murders of nine people during a Bible study session at a historically black church in South Carolina last week.

“The trajectory of progress always happens in fits and starts,” he said. “You have to balance what you want and where you’re going with what is and what has been.”

“Progress in a democracy is never instantaneous, and it’s always partial,” he said.

When it came to the prospects of gun control legislation in the wake of theCharleston shooting, Obama was far less hopeful.

“I don’t foresee any legislative action being taken in this Congress,” he said. “And I don’t foresee any real action until the American public feels a sufficient sense of urgency and they say to themselves, ‘This is not normal, this is something that we can change and we’re going to change it’.”

The suspect in that shooting, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, was arrested in North Carolina hours after the attack. Roof is the presumed author of a lengthy manifesto that rails against black people and espouses ideas of white supremacy.

Obama went on to say that the intransigence of Congress on gun control had “disgusted” him after the 2012 shooting of an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, an attack that killed 20 children and six adults. “Unfortunately the grip of the NRA on Congress is extremely strong,” he said.

He also bemoaned the rush to purchase guns after every mass shooting: “Gun manufacturers make out like bandits, partly because [of the belief that] the federal government and the black helicopters are coming to get your guns.”

Obama repeated sentiments from his speech after the Charleston shooting, saying “I’ve done this way too often” and “there’s no other advanced nation on earth that tolerates multiple shootings on a regular basis and considers it normal”.

The president was more confident about reforms to policing practices around the nation, telling Maron that police often have “a really tough job” because they work in “communities that are poor, are systematically locked out of opportunity [and] suffer from legacies of discrimination that have built up over generations”.

He said police can improve relations with their communities through closer interaction with residents, coordination with activists and by increasing early education and opportunities for those communities.

Obama said such concrete steps were the means to realize reforms, but also said that practical considerations were what influenced his decisions about controversial national security policies including drones and mass surveillance.

“Whatever abstract views you have about drones or that you have about intelligence-gathering,” he said, “if you were sitting there in the situation room, you’d realize that you’ve got some responsibilities and you’ve got some choices to make, and it’s not all clearcut the way oftentimes it gets presented.”