Obama says 'certain right-wing media' outlets are 'stoking the fear and resentment' of white Americans

Progress has been made, former President Barack Obama told CNN's Anderson Cooper, but he finds it's still hard for the "majority" of white Americans to "recognize you can be proud of this country and its traditions and its history and our forefathers, and yet it is also true that this terrible stuff happened. The vestiges of that linger and continue."
Obama told Cooper, in an interview broadcast Monday night, that during his time in office, when he "tried to tell that story, oftentimes my political opponents would deliberately not only block out that story but try to exploit it for their own political gain."
In 2009, Obama commented on Massachusetts police officers detaining Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates, who is Black, while he was trying to enter his own home, saying Cambridge police "acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home." Obama told Cooper his poll numbers dropped with white voters after he made these remarks, and that "gives a sense of the degree to which these things are still ... they're deep in us. And, you know, sometimes unconscious."
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
There are also "certain right-wing media venues, for example, that monetize and capitalize on stoking the fear and resentment of a white population that is witnessing a change in America," Obama said. The nationalization of media and politics is making it so Americans are occupying "different worlds," he told Cooper, and when people are this divided, it "becomes that much more difficult for us to hear each other, see each other. We have more economic stratification and segregation. You combine that with racial stratification and the siloing of the media, so you don't have just Walter Cronkite delivering the news, but you have 1,000 different venues. All that has contributed to that sense that we don't have anything in common."
To try to bridge the divide, Obama said, Americans need to be able to see each other in person, to hold face-to-face conversations. "The question now becomes, how do we create those venues, those meeting places for people to do that?" he continued. "Because right now, we don't have them and we're seeing the consequences of that."
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
-
Epstein files: Maxwell courts a pardon
Feature A new prison transcript shows Ghislaine Maxwell praising Trump as 'a gentleman' while denying his involvement in the Epstein scandal
-
Pentagon readies military deployment in Chicago
Feature The Pentagon is preparing to deploy thousands of Illinois National Guard members to Chicago after Trump threatened to send troops into other major cities
-
Trump: Taking over the private sector?
Feature Donald Trump has secured a 10% stake in Intel using funds from the Biden-era CHIPS Act
-
Trump crypto token launch earns family billions
Speed Read The World Liberty Financial token is now the Trump family's 'most valuable asset'
-
RFK Jr. names new CDC head as staff revolt
Speed Read Kennedy installed his deputy, Jim O'Neill, as acting CDC director
-
DC prosecutors lose bid to indict sandwich thrower
Speed Read Prosecutors sought to charge Sean Dunn with assaulting a federal officer
-
White House fires new CDC head amid agency exodus
Speed Read CDC Director Susan Monarez was ousted after butting heads with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccines
-
DOGE put Social Security data at risk, official says
Speed Read DOGE workers made the personal information of hundreds of millions of Americans vulnerable to identity theft
-
Court rejects Trump suit against Maryland US judges
Speed Read Judge Thomas Cullen, a Trump appointee, said the executive branch had no authority to sue the judges
-
Trump expands National Guard role in policing
Speed Read The president wants the Guard to take on a larger role in domestic law enforcement
-
Trump says he's firing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook
Speed Read The move is likely part of Trump's push to get the central bank to cut interest rates