Obama used the n-word in a frank podcast interview about race

Barack Obama
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Comedian Marc Maron has interviewed hundreds of celebrities on his WTF podcast, but none higher profile than President Barack Obama. The commander-in-chief stopped by Maron's garage to talk U.S. race relations in an episode released Monday. In the aftermath of last week's deadly shooting at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, the president cautioned listeners against believing racism no longer exists:

Racism, we are not cured of it. And it's not just a matter of it not being polite to say n-gger 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. [WTF with Marc Maron]

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

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.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Julie Kliegman

Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.